NSE is still the first achievement and probably the largest I will ever have: Ashish Chauhan

Economic Times

28-07-2025

Ashish Chauhan, MD & CEO, NSE, says in a way, his life in the stock market started with the NSE. He was a part of the team that set up NSE originally and most of what is considered as NSE now including screen based trading or Nifty or derivatives were in a way reporting to him. After almost 34 years since he started working on NSE, it is still the first achievement and probably the largest he will ever have.
ADVERTISEMENT A boy from IIT Bombay, IIM Calcutta to this glorious journey that you have had and now you have a book on your life as well. How does it feel?
Ashish Chauhan: It is life as usual. Basically, the book is not written by me, somebody else has written and the book captures some portion of my journey from childhood. So, in a way, it is kind of déjà vu, but with somebody else's perspective.
Absolutely. But it must feel special, right? You have a legacy and now you have a documented legacy.
Ashish Chauhan: Yes, why not? In some ways, you feel a little different when somebody or some book comes about your life. I wrote a book on the Bombay Stock Exchange, The Temple of Wealth Creation. At that time, BSE was 140-year-old. So when you write a book, you need to do a lot of research and come up with lots of facts and remove the facts from fiction and so it is hard work. Somebody has done it for me, I am delighted and also grateful.
Is the idea of one nation, one exchange feasible? Ashish Chauhan answers
Absolutely. And it gives us a peak into your life and how you have gone from strength to strength. What a glorious past you have had BSE, IPL, and now at the helm at the largest stock exchange, National Stock Exchange as well.
Ashish Chauhan: In a way, my life in the stock market started with the NSE. I was a part of the team that set up NSE originally and most of what you consider as NSE now including screen based trading or Nifty or derivatives were in a way reporting to me. So, after so many years, almost 34 years since I started working on NSE, is still the first achievement and probably the largest I will ever have.
Absolutely that is a feather in your cap. But let us talk about the book a little bit. I was very intrigued by the concept of sthitapragya, rooted in the Bhagavad Gita. What does it mean?
Ashish Chauhan: Sthitapragya is a very spiritual word in Bhagavad Gita and it embodies stoicism with spirituality. A person who is nothappy in happiness and not sad in sorrow, a person in equilibrium, who is always balanced and can continue doing their work. That is also the philosophy of sthitapragya . Pragya is knowledge, sthita means steady. The steady knowledge. The person who is steady in the knowledge is a sthitapragya . And in a way you continue to do your work without being elated or in a sorrowful state and continue your duties.
And that defines Ashish Chauhan – sthita and pragya , steady knowledge?
Ashish Chauhan: No, according to the author, that is how I would put it.
ADVERTISEMENT You were part of the formative years of the National Stock Exchange 30 years ago. From there, did you ever imagine that today the National Stock Exchange would be what it is?
Ashish Chauhan: The first time when I was told to shift, I was a project finance officer in IDBI in 1991. I joined in '91 after college at IIM and was basically doing project finance. That means you need to do a lot of projections of future cash flows and other things for companies. I was one of the young ones and at that time, computers were not in use. IDBI bought computers. And so people started going on strike. All officers and employees went on strike saying computers will take our jobs. I was just out of college and I started doing Lotus 1-2-3 which was there and my other colleagues would take a month to create those spreadsheets, but once I have prepared, it used to take me a few seconds to change the projections and that was like magic. So, my bosses started thinking that I am good at it, whereas I was actually not an IT engineer. I was a mechanical engineer, who knew how to do Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel sheet as we call now.
ADVERTISEMENT But when NSE had to be set up, one of the initial team members dropped out. They needed a young person who was an engineer, who knew IT, and who would not say no – and that was me. That is how life sometimes happens through serendipity. I was moved from the 9th floor to the 19th floor and for me it was just another job. I had no idea of how life would pan out later on, but it has worked out well.
So, from that upgrade of 9th to 19th floor, which floor are you headed in next?
Ashish Chauhan: Now, of course, I am on the seventh floor of NSE, but life takes you up and down and I have seen my share of things. When you write books like this, you do not write about the not so glorious parts; but naturally every life has its own ups and downs and we need to be acutely aware that what you read is only a small fraction of trials and tribulations people go through and that has been the case for me. I come from a Gujarati medium school and did not know English. So IIT just went into learning English instead of engineering and things like that. I do not see any life without its own internal struggles even if you think that it is rich in so many other ways.
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