New Delhi, Aug. 25 -- For most of the last decade, a bond in India was something investors heard about but rarely owned. The minimum ticket was Rs.10 lakh, then Rs.1 lakh-numbers that quietly told the average retail investor that this market was not built for them.

That has changed. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has lowered the minimum face value of privately placed debt securities to Rs.10,000, while online bond platforms now put hundreds of issuances within a few clicks. For the first time, a schoolteacher in Indore and a fund manager in Mumbai can access the same bond.

But access is not the same as understanding. When yield is the first, and often the only, number an investor sees, it is easy to treat a bond like ...