| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JUNE 14, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INTERNATIONAL -- ASIAN COVER STORY
Ravi Narain, Deputy Managing Director, National Stock Exchange, India (int'l edition) TWO DECADES AGO, RAVI NARAIN LEFT A PROMISING POSITION in Washington as an economic and policy consultant to return home to India and work at a state-run development bank. After 13 years there, Narain was tapped in 1994 to create the National Stock Exchange of India. Now, as India's only electronic, national bourse, the NSE has modernized the industry, making trading widely available. Through electronic terminals in the tiniest towns of India, millions of Indians are now stock owners. The NSE claims credit for adding $250 million a day to total trading volumes in India. Narain, 44, a Cambridge University-trained economist and Wharton MBA, attracted the attention of a reform-minded government. After an impressive job at the development bank helping set up India's first market regulatory agency, the Securities & Exchange Board of India, he looked like just the bright young public servant to create the NSE. ''I knew nothing about stock exchanges,'' admits the shy, bespectacled Narain. But he was determined to learn. So, with a team of five bankers, he embarked on a crash course. They talked to experts, read voraciously, and spent six intense weeks visiting a dozen exchanges around the world and borrowing the best from all. ''I was struck by how technology-driven they were,'' remembers Narain. Narain's team abandoned any thoughts of the old open-outcry system and instead set up a NASDAQ-style, satellite-based electronic exchange. Despite initial skepticism from the market that a government-sponsored body could establish a modern, credible system, Narain had the new exchange up and running in 14 months, nearly a year ahead of schedule. ''We made it our personal battle,'' says Narain. The NSE, which he runs along with senior bureaucrat Ramachandra Patil, is given a good deal of the credit for the fast growth of stock trading in India. With quick trading and wide shareholder participation, companies have become more responsive to investors and the markets. Competition from the NSE has forced India's 22 existing exchanges, especially the stodgy 120-year-old Bombay Stock Exchange, to modernize. Investors are ecstatic. ''The NSE has completely changed the thinking of how a stock should be traded,'' says Mahesh Gandhi of Millennium Capital Management. ''Narain was a pioneer.'' Five years into his effort, Narain says his job has only just begun. He's working to complete a computerized depository that makes it mandatory for shareholders to hold computerized share certificates rather than easily lost paper. Next, he plans mandatory certification for brokers through training and exams, the introduction of derivatives, Internet-based trading, and the revival of India's comatose debt market through retailing of government bonds. A native of New Delhi, Narain spends nights worrying about being vigilant enough, and daily yogic meditation helps. His parents were economists at government universities and imbued in him a sense of public service. The most difficult part of working in India, he explains, ''is being able to create an institution that can withstand the forces around that will try and corrode it.'' Narain means endemic corruption, of course, but he won't say it. Then he smiles: ''But the Ganges never stops flowing, and the NSE never stops working.'' To the great benefit of the Indian investor. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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