We want to remain a young exchange forever: NSE chief

It overtook within a year of launch, more than 100-year old Bombay Stock Exchange as India's biggest bourse

Having completed 20 years of operations, country's top stock exchange NSE wants to remain a young bourse forever, while building on its experience to forge ahead on its path to join global leaders in this space, says its chief executive Chitra Ramkrishna.

"At heart, we always want to be young and we always want to be energetic. In fact, we are only in our teens," Ramkrishna said, while talking about 20-year journey of NSE (National Stock Exchange), which commenced operations in 1994.

Within a year of launch, it overtook more than 100-year old Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) as India's biggest bourse.

Having brought new-age technology to the trading business in India along with a lot many other innovations, NSE has always been referred to as a young exchange, given its rival BSE being in existence since way back in 1875.

While a few other stock exchanges, such as MCX-SX and United Stock Exchange, have come into existence in the past couple of years, their presence is yet to expand to entire spectrum of exchange business and their business volumes are also yet to reach comparable levels.

Asked whether she would want NSE to be continued to known as a young exchange, Ramkrishna told PTI, "Experience can certainly contribute a lot to any business. At the same time, the dynamism of youth is very necessary if you want to forge ahead. For us, when we look at being 20, our biggest challenge is how to marry these two factors -- youth and experience."

Ramkrisha, one of the four Indians on the Fortune list of 50 most powerful business women in the world, has been part of NSE every since its inception. She took over as MD and CEO in April 2013 after serving in various other positions.

"In the past 20 years, we have gained experience and set up a business, and now we need to ensure that those standards are not just maintained, but we are able to improve upon that.

"When you start, there are no risks, but today we are obviously more conscious of risks and it is the experience that teaches us ways to handle the risks," she said.

"You cannot ignore any of the two factors (youth and experience) and we will certainly be more conscious of our risks now, since we are 20 years old.

"The challenge is that we should not let that tie us down, and we would not let that tie us down," Ramkrishna said on an optimistic note.

Confident of the Indian stock market becoming one of the "really large powerhouses" of the world, she said that time has come to unleash a new set of changes by the government, regulators and exchanges to realise this potential.

"This will not only help India meet lofty goals of being among the top markets globally, but also make it competitive and attractive for large sovereign wealth funds and large long-term funds from abroad for capital inflows," she added.

"NSE is fully geared up to do its part, be it new products, new infrastructure etc, to contribute to the growth of Indian markets for its next big leap," she said.