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25 years of NSE: How it revolutionised stock trading in India

Having begun its journey 25 years ago, NSE has been a catalyst for change ever since

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A man walks past the NSE building in Mumbai | Photo: Reuters

Devangshu Datta
To explain how the NSE changed Indian trading environment requires a description of what stock trading was like, before the NSE arrived. India had a multitude of stock exchanges in the early 1990s with thousands of listed stocks, most of which were listed only on one or two exchanges. 

Trading involved picking up the phone, and calling a broker who would give a quote. If you wanted to trade a share listed on an exchange that was not local to your city, it involved making an STD (subscriber trunk dialling) call. There were no mobile phones and needless to say, no