Ashish Chauhan

His first break came in 1993, when the Government proposed a stock exchange in the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Chauhan was a member of the core team that founded the NSE, and responsible for setting up their equities and derivatives markets from 1993 to 2000.[9] His work at NSE, involved market operations, membership, clearing and settlement, surveillance, regulations, sales, marketing, IT, premises etc. Chauhan himself was involved in creating the trading infrastructure at NSE and was instrumental in creating NSE-50 (Nifty), the most traded index in derivatives in India, NSE's certification in Financial Markets (NCFM), IPO through screen and several other innovations in the Indian capital markets.[7] In addition, he was instrumental in setting up initial Information Technology infrastructure including the first commercial satellite telecom network in India for NSE.[10] He was also involved in conceptualization of National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCCL) and initial set up of National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL). He looked at NSE's risk management system along with two others. The team created a metric to measure liquidity in stocks—called impact cost—which is now standard practice.[7] Due to his work in setting up modern exchange traded financial derivatives in Indian markets, he is known as the 'father of derivatives' in Indian finance. In July 2022, Chauhan was appointed as managing director and chief executive officer of National Stock Exchange (NSE) [1] [11]

In 2001, Chauhan left NSE to begin his entrepreneurship venture, financed by the Reliance group, and soon began working for Reliance Infocomm.[7][12] In 2004, Chauhan became the chief information officer (CIO) of Reliance Infocomm, and then the Reliance Group CIO in 2005.[7][12] He was also the CEO of the cricket team Mumbai Indians, owned by Reliance Industries, in its formative years.[12]

After leaving Reliance Industries, Chauhan joined BSE as Deputy CEO in 2009 and was appointed as CEO in 2012.[13] He is credited with reviving BSE including making it the fastest Exchange in the World with less than 6 microseconds response time,[14] introduction of Mobile Trading,[15] state of the art online real time surveillance system,[16] introduction of several market leading products. In addition, he has also been responsible for revamping of BSE, bringing in the entire spectrum of products including equity, currency, interest rate derivatives and commodities to BSE. Under his guidance, BSE has taken leadership position in setting up Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Platform, Offer for Sale (OFS), Mutual Funds Distribution through Exchanges, e-IPO etc.[17] As of October 2018, BSE commands more than 70% markets share in these segments.

Under Ashish's leadership and vision, in 2012, BSE became the first Exchange in the country to launch a dedicated SME platform for listing of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). As of October 2018, the BSE SME segment is the market leader of its kind in India with about 275 SME listed, 54 of which have grown and successfully migrated to the main Board of the Exchange.[18]

As a big believer of equity inclusion, in 2013 he pushed BSE to develop a Mutual Fund Distribution Platform - BSE StAR MF. This web-based transaction processing platform with fully automated online mutual fund collection & settlement system has become one of the most acceptable platforms in the mutual fund ecosystem.[19] As of October 2018, the BSE StAR-MF platform is India's largest digital platform to distribute Mutual Funds and commands a market share of close to 80% among exchange distributed funds. The robustness and seamlessness of BSE StAR MF along with Swiftness of Distributors query resolution through real time interaction has created an ideal ecosystem for all stakeholders in India Mutual Funds Industry.[20]

He was also instrumental in setting up India's First International Exchange "India International Exchange", which was inaugurated by the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi in January 2017 at Gandhinagar, Gift City.[21] India INX is the first exchange to introduce a single platform across multi-assets, equities, commodities, currencies and interest rate derivatives. It is also the first exchange to launch gold options

In January 2017, he successfully completed the IPO of BSE which was pending for over 10 years.[22] BSE IPO was oversubscribed 51 times, with the public offer received bids for 550.8 million shares against 10.8 million shares on offer.[23]

In October 2018, under the leadership of Ashish, BSE commenced trading in gold and silver contracts to mark its entry into the commodity derivatives segment and become India's first universal stock exchange and currently offers all assets classes, including equity, mutual funds, currency, and commodity in its portfolio.[24]