Chitra Ramkrishna

Starting out as a chartered accountant, her first brush with finance came in 1985 when she joined the project finance division of Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI). Ramkrishna then had a stint at Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and returned to IDBI two years later.[3] She soon found herself as one of the five handpicked by the late SS Nadkarni, who was then IDBI chairman, to set up NSE from scratch.[3]

Ramkrishna was part of a hand-picked leadership team created to set up the NSE to provide a fully automated, screen-based trading system.[4][5]

Ramkrishna has been associated with matters pertaining to market regulation and policy making even before the NSE was set up. In the late 1980s, Ramkrishna was involved in the drafting of the legislative framework of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the country's capital market regulator. She continues to be a part of several SEBI committees on different policy issues such as the Secondary Market Advisory Committee and the Committee on Disclosures and Accounting Standards.

Ramkrishnais engaged in industry-body committees such as the CII's National Council on Financial Sector Development, FICCI's National Executive Committee and Capital Markets Committee.[6] A chartered accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, she is the third woman to head an Exchange in the Asia-Pacific region after Sri Lanka's Colombo Stock Exchange and China's Shenzen Stock Exchange.[7]

She was selected as the woman of the year in the Business Leadership Awards by the Forbes magazine recently and was also ranked 17th in the list of top global women business leaders by Fortune magazine, USA. She is the second most powerful businesswoman in India in this list. She has been featured in the list of top 30 women achievers by the Business Today group for the last four successive years.[8][9]

Ramkrishna has undertaken several key initiatives at the NSE that has had far-reaching impact and ensured the exchange remained India's most premier bourse. She was instrumental in setting up a pan-India VSAT network and building the infrastructure and legislative framework for India's first depositor. She is also credited with facilitating screen-based trading, providing trading access to retail investors even in remote corners of the country, ensuring continuous cost leadership and creating a technological backbone that is scalable and unassailable. Under her watch, NSE has launched products to suit all classes of investors, including futures and options, exchange traded funds, global indices like S&P 500. Recently, NSE introduced a dedicated debt platform to encourage retail investors and institutions to trade in corporate bonds.[10]

Ramkrishna has been asked by SEBI to disgorge 25 percent of the salary drawn for FY 2013-14, to the IPEF. The regulator has also found Chitra Ramkrishna as a former managing director of NSE guilty in the case. Ramkrishna have been prohibited from associating with a listed company or a market Infrastructure Institution or any other market intermediary for a period of five years.[11]

Ramkrisha, one of the four Indians on the Fortune list of 50 most powerful business women in the world, has been part of NSE ever since its inception.[12] Under her, the NSE has become a transparent market ecosystem that reaches out to more than 1,500 locations in the country. Now the board is banking on her twenty years of experience to oversee India's largest exchange—7th largest in the world—with a total listed market capitalisation of some $1 trillion.[13]

Ramakrishnan was named Forbes' Women Leader of the year in 2013 for her work as CEO of the National Stock Exchange of India. [3]