Jignesh Shah: When the going gets tough, the tough get going

No matter whether you are a technocrat or a bureaucrat, professionals of all hues often find inspiration in lessons of various kinds, be they from history, politics or poetry. As they say, life's battles do not always go to the strongest man but the man who ultimately wins is the man who thinks he can! The case of fintech entrepreneur Jignesh Shah is no different.

Mr. Jignesh Shah, often acknowledged as the ‘Innovator of Modern Financial Markets,’ is known to lead from the front. He is known for his passion and the man has overcome many a hardship to achieve this glorious path in his life as well as battling the tough terrains that came on the way. Over the years, he has never taken an easier path and has always worked hard for his way forward. With such a strong history to back him up, one cannot doubt the missionary zeal that Mr. Jignesh Shah has.

After setting up 10 exchanges across six continents in a span of ten years, the engineer-turned-financial market wizard now sees 100-times bigger business potential in a 'startup ecosystem' which he feels can create up to 10 crore jobs over the next decade.

After a payment default of Rs 5,600 crore in 2013 at his smallest venture National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), which had a daily trading volume of Rs 200 crore as compared to more than Rs 1.20 lakh crore a day at his biggest exchange MCX, Shah was forced out of all Sebi-regulated businesses under regulatory orders amid a multi-agency probe. However, most of the cases like forced merger of NSEL with 63 moons, or applying MPID to NSEL case, have been quashed by the courts. The merger has been set aside by the Supreme Court and the Bombay high court in a recent judgment declared that attachment of assets of 63 moons technologies is completely illegal and should not be done as it was never a Financial establishment but was just a platform provided to buyers and sellers for transaction of commodities.

In this light, Shah says he is confident now that the time has come to start his second innings as court orders are absolving him of all the charges one after another as no agency could prove even a single paisa of wrongdoing on his part, nor on part of his companies.

Shah’s story is really inspiring. Although it was established way back that no money trail has been traced to NSEL, FTIL or Jignesh Shah but still he was targeted again and again because of the vested interests that wanted to finish his FTIL group completely because its innovative products posed a severe threat to their monopolistic regime. However, his journey has once again proved that patience and perseverence are previous values whose rewards have no measure.