SEBI shortlists 4 bidders to deploy web intelligence tool to boost surveillance of social media, other platforms

Markets regulator Sebi on Monday shortlisted four entities, including Amtrak Technologies and ESF Labs, for deploying a "web intelligence tool" to increase surveillance of social media and other online platforms.

Through this, the regulator would probe violations of various securities laws by individuals, groups and other entities.

Apart from Amtrak Technologies and ESF Labs, the other two entities shortlisted are Lab Systems (I) Pvt Ltd and Pelorus Technologies Pvt Ltd, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in its notice.

This came after Sebi, in September, invited Expression of Interest (EOI) from solution providers to implement, install and maintain a 'web intelligence tool'.

Noting that the internet usage has risen exponentially over the last few years, which resulted in production of immense amounts of unstructured publicly available data on the web, Sebi had said this unstructured data has the potential to provide deep investigation insights about various entities, individuals, groups and topics related to violations of various securities laws.

Manual extraction and analysis of massive amounts of unstructured publicly available data in order to reveal actionable insights is usually time consuming, tedious and has limited efficacy.

As per the notice, Sebi was looking for a web intelligence tool which provides AI (Artificial Intelligence) based solutions to extract and analyse unstructured publicly available data to gain deep intelligence insights about various entities, individuals, groups and topics.

The new tool is expected to save time, ease the analysis process and improve efficiency in the overall investigation process.

Listing out the requirement, the regulator had said that the new tool should gather unstructured publicly available data from the web, including public websites, social media platforms, open source databases among others, in respect of relevant entities, individuals, groups and topics. It should enable investigators to easily analyse massive amounts of complex unstructured data using its AI and data analytics capabilities.

It should have capability to visualise the data in the form of a network chart to find insights about connections among relevant entities, individuals and groups. The visualisation should be interactive and allow users to work with the data as per user requirement.

The tool should generate ready-made reports based on the defined report templates, and the users should be able to create and modify report templates without any coding requirements.

Recently, Sebi unearthed a large number of insider trading and front-running cases where 'mule accounts' were being used with the help of latest technology tools.