Ashish Chauhan, MD & CEO, NSE, says “although we were the pioneers of automated trading and the rest of the world became automated later on, they have gone for literally 24 hours trading. We have remained with 6 hours 15 minutes trading but that is besides the point. As and when people feel comfortable of extended hours in the stock markets, we will do it. We are not in a hurry.”

On extending working hours on stock exchanges
Ashish Chauhan: In a way, all the brokers have to agree. SEBI has to agree. So, whenever they tell, we will do it, otherwise in GIFT City we have 22 hours of exchange working, which works on our own technology. In India itself, in the Indian jurisdiction, we have commodity exchanges working till 11:30 in the night, so we have some examples and other things. But as and when people feel comfortable in the stock markets, we will do it. We are not in a hurry.But phase one will, of course, be F&O.
Ashish Chauhan: Naturally, because that is what the rest of the world does because although we were the pioneers of automated trading and the rest of the world became automated later on, they have gone for literally 24 hours trading. We have remained with 6 hours 15 minutes trading but that is besides the point.

As we speak, the market touched record highs and you have earlier forecast a $50 trillion market cap by 2047. Do you think we are poised to touch that and achieve that mark?
Ashish Chauhan: Broadly speaking, my hypothesis is that the technology creates wealth and India is now becoming the tech centre of the world and so a large part of the new wealth will be created in India and the way things have happened over the last 10 years of using technology in all walks of life, including in governance, has in a way created an ecosystem, a confidence that we are a tech nation and new wealth will be created using technology. Broadly speaking, we have already reached $4.5 trillion, $4.6 trillion of wealth using stock markets.

In the next 25 years, if we continue to do well, we are poised to reach $30 trillion GDP and $50 trillion of market capitalisation.

In the near term, from the NSE perspective, what sort of market share gains and volume growth are you targeting?
Ashish Chauhan: We are not in any competition. The idea is how do we provide together with, of course, our regulator well-regulated, well-functioning, uninterrupted, low-cost markets and that is what our perspective is.

Today, we are the largest exchange in the world in terms of number of trades, number of orders per day by miles. Almost every day, we would be doing somewhere between 30% and 50% of all trades in the world in all actions put together. One does not think of market share when you are a regulator.

Since we are talking about innovation and taking the next leap forward, from a trading perspective, should we expect any newer products coming?
Ashish Chauhan: In a way, the way the regulatory structure works is that any new product that has to come has to be applied for and then SEBI goes through its committees, they issue consultative papers and then in case everyone finds it okay, then they allow the exchanges to introduce in a measured way, new products etc.

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