National E-Repository Limited., one of the first Commodity Repository in India, established in February 2017 and promoted by institutions of national stature like NCDEX, NABARD, ICICI & SBI, launched as a national level market infrastructure institution that will record and store Warehouse Receipts in electronic form (eNWRs) in the Indian commodities market under the aegis of Warehouse Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA), Government of India.

The mission of Warehousing Development and Regulation Authority (WDRA) is to regulate and ensure implementation of the provisions of the Warehousing (Development and Regulation) Act, 2007 for the development and regulation of warehouses, negotiability of warehouse receipts and promote orderly growth of the warehousing business in the country for the benefit of farmers and financial institutions through transparency and trust.

With the entry of Repositories in the Warehouse Receipt ecosystem, the dynamics change drastically. NERL is one such Repository functioning under the purview of WDRA. NERL has Repository Participants (also known as RP) who act as agents of the Repository and help onboarded Depositors onto the system and facilitate the process of generating electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (eNWR) and pledging on the Repository system. The Depositor needs to reach out to an RP in his region (which are listed on the NERL official website) to open a Beneficiary account on the NERL system. He/she can request the warehouseman to generate eNWRs against this account number upon depositing his produce in a WDRA registered warehouse which accepts eNWRs. These warehouses need to carry out mandatory quality and quantity checks as per WDRA guidelines. All the details of the commodity stored is captured in the system giving absolute transparency to the Depositor with a view to each stage of the process. These eNWRs can be used for trading on the Commodity Exchanges and also for pledging with Banks. Since all stakeholders are plugged in to the system, accessing details regarding eNWRs becomes less cumbersome with lower turnaround time. Digitization of Negotiable Warehouse Receipts makes the adoption of these instruments far easier, quicker and feasible.

All transactions post generation of eNWR such as transfer /pledge creation/ de-pledge will happen with the concurrence of Warehouseman confirming the availability of goods and his/her acceptance to the transaction.