Mr. Jignesh Shah is a self-made entrepreneur who defied convention and competition to create institutions such as MCX, Singapore Mercantile Exchange, Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange, Indian Energy Exchange. These have been bought by global investors such as the NYSE Group and the Government of UAE.

Talking about his future plans, Jignesh Shah has announced that this time round he wants to focus on the start-up ecosystem, since he believes that it wouldn’t be restricted to any exchange or marketplace at all. He aims to focus more on nurturing and inspiring entrepreneurs on varied scales including agriculture, genetics and robotics in which he would play the role of a mentor because he believes that it would be a diverse structure with an understanding of entrepreneurship.

Shah is known for his innovative zeal, entrepreneurial aggression, and a distinct vision which can scale up markets, be it start-ups or any other industry with the target of creating huge employment and value for all stakeholders.

“We created 10 lakh jobs through our exchanges during a period of ten years (2003-2013). But entrepreneurship is a 100-times bigger opportunity than what I had in the exchange space and it won't be wrong to say that we can create, immediately, a minimum of 1 crore jobs and up to 10 crore jobs in the next 10 years through this start-up ecosystem," he revealed.

When asked to explain what kind of 'ecosystem' he wishes to create and what areas those start-ups would work in, 52-year-old Shah, who hails from Gujarat and started his career as an engineer before setting up Financial Technologies in his early 20s, said it would not be limited to the areas of technology and financial markets. "It can be in agriculture, which attracts me the most today, it can be in genetics, and it can be in robotics also. There won't be any constraints," he said.