What are types of debt instruments one can look at?

Debt as an investment avenue is not new to Indians. Indians have traditionally been investing in government sponsored schemes and bank deposits. We have got public provident fund or the company provident fund, we also have the small saving schemes like postal monthly income scheme or recurring deposits in post office or national saving certificates etc. these are the traditional debt instruments.

Apart from that Indians have also been investing heavily in bank deposits. Very familiar product. Company deposits also have been quite popular. These are all debt instruments, but periodically we also keep seeing issuances of debentures or bonds by various corporations or public sector undertakings. There are government securities in which an individual can invest. Whenever the RBI issues government securities there is a Rs 25,000 ticket size for retail investors and up to 5 percent of the total issue is reserved for retail investors. Recently in a new development RBI has started issuing inflation-indexed bonds, so that is an addition to the menu available.

Outside of these investments there are two non-traditional or not-so-popular kind of debt instruments, one is the products which comes from the insurance companies like endowment plans etc. which are looked at as insurance, but essentially they are a combination of debt investments and insurance and finally mutual funds also have debt funds right from liquid to the long-term bond investments. Depending on an investor's requirement one can select these investments.