One of the major developments that took place in the Indian capital market in the past two decades is the development of derivatives market.  The derivatives market in India started in the year 2000  and the futures trading was started in 2000 in the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE) and the trading in options  commenced in the NSE in 2001.  Since then the equity derivatives market has exhibited exponential growth both in terms of volume and number of contracts traded.  The major aim of this paper is to study the performance of  equity derivatives market in India since its inception to till date.  The data relating to equity derivatives in futures and options were collected from the official website of NSE www.nse.org .  The data so collected has been analysed using percentage analysis to trace the growth in equity derivatives market.   There is growth in index futures and index options as well as growth in stock futures and options have been anlysed in this paper.  The study found that  the performance of Indian equity derivatives market is showing an upward trend since its inception in 2000.  Out of the four derivative products, viz, stock futures, stock options, index futures and index options, the share of index options is dominating the NSE.  This reveals that the Indian investors’ awareness about derivatives trading is growing in general, and index options in particular.

KEY WORDS: Capital market, derivatives trading, futures , options, NSE