New Delhi, March 27 -- India's tightening of algorithmic trading rules is triggering a fresh battle among brokers to build, own and scale in-house strategies to win clients and assets.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), through a circular in February 2025, operationalized a framework for retail participation in algorithmic trading by allowing brokers to act as "principals" and host different algorithms on their platforms.

The new norms, which become fully applicable on 1 April, allow stockbrokers to host third-party algorithms while also offering their own in-house algos to clients. Retail investors can also develop their own software for application programming interface (API)-based trading.

For a segment that had grow...