Ashish Chauhan

Ashish Chauhan

Ashish Chauhan (Ashishkumar Chauhan) currently works as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer[1] (BSE) of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), Asia's oldest stock exchange. In addition, he also acts as the MD and CEO of Indian Clearing Corporation Limited (ICCL) which provides clearing and settlement services to Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and United Stock Exchange (USE). Before joining BSE, Ashish worked as CEO of Mumbai Indians (2009), a cricket team of Indian Premier League (IPL), President and Group Chief Information Officer (CIO)(2005–2009) of Reliance Industries Limited, India's largest business house with a turnover of more than US $ 40 billion per year, CEO, Reliance Infosolutions Pvt Limited, a company with more than 3000 IT professionals, Chief Information Officer (CIO)(2003–05) of Reliance Infocomm Limited (Reliance Communications now with more than 100 million customers)and founder of India's largest stock exchange National Stock Exchange of India (NSE)(1993–2000)as well as an officer at Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI)(1991–93).

Ashish also serves on the Board of Directors of Central Depository Services Limited (CDSL), United Stock Exchange of India Limited (USE), Bank of India Shareholding Limited (BOISL), BSE Training Institute Limited (BTI) and Marketplace Technologies Limited.
Ashish is considered as the father of the India's exchange traded financial derivatives markets due to his pioneering efforts in bringing exchange traded financial derivatives in India (1995–2000).[citation needed] In the process of creating the first exchange traded financial derivatives market for India, he created NSE-50 Index along with Dr. Ajay Shah and Dr. Susan Thomas of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) and popularised it. He also created NSE's certification in Financial Markets (NCFM) to prepare the Indian participants for trading in derivatives, equities, depository operations, mutual funds distribution etc. NSE has become a very successful derivatives market due to his pioneering efforts.

Ashish worked with 4 other colleagues from IDBI, to set up NSE in 1993. Ashish worked with NSE till 2000 and handled equities markets, setting up of derivatives markets, listing, clearing, settlement, survelliance, membership, certification, marketing, sales, IT, premises, construction and several other areas.

At NSE, Ashish set up the first successful screen based trading framework in equities in India which has grown to be the largest equities market in India. It is ranked as the third largest market in the world by number of trades.

Ashish is also considered as the pioneer in the field of commercial satellite communications technology in India. The nationwide satellite communications network he set up for NSE in 1993-94 paved the way for a highly successful nationwide trading system of NSE.

Ashish has been consistently ranked amongst the best CIOs in the world by Information Week, US, CIO Magazine, US, Chemical Week magazine US etc.

As a part of his assignments at Reliance, Ashish worked as the CIO of Reliance Infocomm, a telecom company, till 2005. He was associated with Reliance Infocomm from concept to implementation and operations. Reliance Infocomm became the second largest mobile operator in India with more than 35 million customers in less than 4 years of its operations. Reliance Infocomm also operates landline, broadband and international business. Ashish is credited with setting right the billing system for Reliance Infocomm in 2004-05 which had more than 15 customers at the time.

As the Group CIO, Reliance, from 2005 to 2009, Ashish developed and implemented a coherent framework for IT implementation, operations and maintenance in manufacturing, petrochemicals, refining, oil and gas, gas pipeline, life sciences, consumer retail, urban infrastructure and several other Reliance group initiatives.

During the period 2005-2009, he also acted as a CEO and Managing Director of Reliance Infosolutions Limited, a company providing IT services to Reliance group with more than 1500 employees. Reliance group boasts of the largest SAP implementations in India in addition to having several hundred applications in different verticals it operates in. Reliance group has won several International and Indian awards for the most effective IT utilization since 2005.

From July 2005 to August 2007, Ashish also handled additional responsibilities as the Head, Corporate Communications for Reliance Group. Ashish was also involved in the legal and commercial activities related to de-merger of Reliance group in 5 companies in 2005-06.

Ashish also achieved several corporate communications milestones during 2006-2008 period including IPO of Reliance Petroleum Limited (RPL), which became the largest IPO from India in 2006, launch of Reliance Retail, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Digital etc. Reliance was rated by Business Today as the most covered corporate in India overall and from positive media coverage perspective for 2006 and 2007 when Ashish was in-charge of the Corporate Communications for Reliance group.

Setting up and Operating NSE (1993–2000)

Ashish is known as one of the five founders of India’s largest automated exchange: the National Stock Exchange (NSE), which is considered to be amongst the top three markets in the world ranked by number of trades per day and the largest single stock futures market in the world. At NSE, he was in charge of setting up and operations of Equity and Derivatives markets for over 7 years in addition to setting up initial IT infrastructure amongst several other activities. The satellite communication network he set up for NSE has acted as a technology demonstrator for many other companies in India. Due to his work at NSE, he is considered the father of ‘modern exchange traded financial derivatives’ markets in India as well as the person who brought the ‘commercial satellite telecom’ to India. He is also known as the creator of NSE-50 (Nifty) Index, the largest traded stock Index in Indian derivatives market. Ashish introduced many innovations in the Indian financial markets. Some of them include NSE‘s certification in Financial Markets (NCFM), Screen based IPOs in India etc..

Ashish was also responsible for marketing equities markets to investors across the country as the Head of Business for Equities market. Later on from 1995–2000, he was also involved in setting up derivatives regulatory framework in collaboration with SEBI, creating public opinion in favour of derivatives and NSE, collaborating with educational institutions to offer courses in derivatives, selecting and implementing IT systems for derivatives trading at NSE, training of intermediaries, their certification, etc.

During his stint at NSE, he was also involved in setting up listing department of NSE. He has been credited with listing of more than 800 companies in the span of a few years. He was also in charge of Membership Department during the period which manages enrollment and operating relationships with the exchange members. Construction and premises of NSE facilities (including NSDL, NSCCL etc.) were managed by him till the year 2000.

Stint at BSE

At BSE, Ashish has been responsible to bring the mobile based stock trading in India. In addition, he has been responsible for introducing delivery based derivatives, real time cross margining, web based IPO, web based mutual fund distribution framework, cloud based order routing services to members and their customers and several other innovations.

Ashish was awarded the first ever award for Best IT Usage instituted by the Computer Society of India (CSI) in 1997 for his pioneering work in using IT for Financial Transactions at NSE. Earlier, from 1991–93, he worked as an Industrial Finance Officer in the Project Finance Department of Industrial Development Bank of India. He holds a B.Tech. in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), and Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM). Due to his extensive experience and knowledge in the field of Financial Derivatives Markets, Equities Markets, Commodities Markets and Information Technology,

Ashish has served on several government and regulatory committees on pro-bono basis. Currently, he serves on Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), PNG on Information Technology, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)’s Primary Market Advisory Committee(PMAC) and Forward Markets Commission (FMC)’s Risk Management Advisory Committee amongst others.

He has delivered guest lectures to students at various business schools such as Stuart School of Business, University of Illinois US, University of Colorado, Denver, US, etc. He has also delivered lectures at the conferences organized by Futures Industry Association (FIA), Futures and Options Week (UK), Reserve Bank of India Training College, National Institute of Bank Management, National Insurance Academy, Regional Institute of Income Tax Department, Indian Institute of Insurance, Institute of Charted Accountants, Institute of Company Secretary etc.

Ashish has contributed to many books, newspapers, magazines and journals on the subject of Information Technology, market microstructure, financial sector policies, automation of markets, creation of indices etc. He and his writings have been widely quoted in magazines, academic journals and trade journals in India and abroad.

Ashish holds Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (1989) and Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (1991).

Awards

 

Some of the awards given to Ashish for his work at Reliance include,

1. The Global CIO 50, IT Leaders Changing the Business World, Information Week, May 2009

2. The NASSCOM – CNBC TV 18 IT User Award, Manufacturing Sector, November 2008

3. Indian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) Award, KNOW Network, November 2008

4. Bronze Winner, Excellence in Information Integrity (EII) Award, for profit category, Information Integrity Coalition (IIC), US, October, 2008

5. The World Is Open Award, Red Hat, March 2008

6. Best IT implementation of India, PC Quest Magazine India for 4 consecutive years 2005,2006, 2007 and 2008

7. CIO 100 Award, Jaipur India, 2008

8. CIO Excellence Award, Chemical Week, Florida, US, 2007

9. CIO Hall of Fame Award, CTO Forum, Istanbul, Turkey, 2007

10. CIO of the Year’ ‘IT-People’ Mumbai, January, 2007

11. Skoch Challenger CIO of the Year Award February 2007

12. Technology Senate Intelligent Enterprise award Express Computers, India, 2006

13. Gold CIO of the Year 2006 and Silver CIO of the Year 2005 Award by CIOL, with Data Quest Magazine, India

14. CIO-100 award CIO Magazine, California, US, 2005