Dematerialisation is the process by which physical share certificates of an investor are converted to an equivalent number of securities in electronic form and credited into the investor’s account maintained with his/her depository participant (DP). It is like having a bank account where instead of money, you hold securities in your account.

In order to dematerialise physical securities held by an investor, he has to fill in a DRF (Demat Request Form) which is available with the DP and submit the same along with physical share certificates one wishes to dematerialise. Separate DRF has to be filled for each ISIN Number. The complete process of dematerialisation is outlined below

Do dematerialised shares have distinctive numbers?
Unlike physical shares, dematerialised shares do not have any distinctive numbers. These shares are fungible, which means that all the holdings of a particular security will be identical and interchangeable.