It was homecoming for Ashishkumar Chauhan when he took over as MD and CEO of National Stock Exchange (NSE) in late July. The former MD and CEO of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) was, in fact, a part of a core team that had set up NSE in the early 1990s. He had played a vital role in building NSE as the country’s premier, modern stock exchange.      

A go-getter technocrat, Mr Chauhan is a mechanical engineer from IIT Bombay and an alumnus of IIM Calcutta. Young Chauhan began his career as a banker when Industrial Development Bank of India (now IDBI Bank) recruited him from the IIM Calcutta campus in 1991.

Two years later, his career took a significant turn, when he was included in the core team that set up NSE. The Mumbai-based stock exchange –which was set up after a major securities scam rocked the stock market in 1992 – was planned to be a modern, screen-based, online trading platform as an alternative to BSE, the then predominant bourse. Mr Chauhan and his core team went about working intricately and setting up systems and practices that would herald a new age of modern trading as we know it today.

Mr Chauhan was instrumental in setting up initial information technology infrastructure at NSE, which replaced open, outcry trading with online, screen-based trading. He helped create the Nifty-50, the most-tracked stock index of NSE. A commercial satellite telecom network was set up in the country for NSE, which enabled stock trading on computer screens in the cool confines of homes and offices across the country.

The core team involving Mr Chauhan played a vital role in setting up modern, exchange-traded financial derivatives. Since then, NSE has been the undisputed leader in the Indian derivatives market. National Securities Clearing Corporation and National Securities Depository – the two organisations that have contributed immensely in cementing transparent, online trading and swift settlement of trades – owe their existence to the untiring efforts of Mr Chaihan’s team. The team also went on to set up a metric to measure liquidity in stocks, which is a standard practice in stock trading today.

In 2001, Mr Chauhan left NSE to begin his entrepreneurial venture, financed by the Reliance Group. Later, he began working for Reliance Infocomm, becoming its chief information officer (CIO) and thereafter getting elevated as CIO of the Reliance Group.

Mr returned to the world of stock exchange in 2009, this time joining rival BSE as its deputy CEO and then taking charge as its MD and CEO in 2012. His long stint at BSE witnessed Asia’s oldest stock exchange diversifying into new areas, including currencies, commodities, equity derivatives, SMEs, startups, distribution of mutual funds and insurance policies, spot markets and power trading. He is also credited with the successful initial public offer (IPO) of BSE – the first stock market in the country to go public.

Now back at NSE, Mr Chauhan faces an uphill task of steering the once-premier stock exchange back to its glorious days. NSE’s image today is badly tarnished by co-location scam, embarrassing scandal involving the Himalayan Yogi and Chitra Ramakrishna – the former MD and CEO of NSE – and other issues. Besides, NSE is pinning its hopes on Mr Chauhan to set the ball rolling on its long-pending IPO. The new NSE chief certainly has his plate full as he returns to the stock exchange he set up almost three decades ago.