As a seven-year-old second-grader, Jignesh Shah made up his mind about, roughly, four things: One, he would become an engineer; two, he would go to work in the us; three, he would some day set up his own business and, four, marry Rupal, whom he first met in class two at Adukia Girls' School just opposite to his own Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel School in Mumbai. Thirty-two years on, Shah's report card sports only one F (for fail) against the four items. He did get an engineering degree (in electronics and telecoms from Bombay University), he did set up his own venture (actually, quite a few of them as we'll tell you in a bit), and he also-incredibly-did go on to win Rupal's hand in marriage. The only thing that Shah didn't get to do was to work in the US.

So, is the 39-year-old Shah sad about it? Not a bit. For two reasons. One, he did get an opportunity to work in America, but he turned it down. Two, and more importantly, had Shah accepted it, he wouldn't have become the entrepreneurial phenomenon that he is today. Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL), the software company that he set up in 1995, has beaten bigger rivals like TIBCO Software, IBM and TCS to become the biggest player in the market for online trading software, with more than 90 per cent share. Investors, in turn, have boosted FTIL's stock price from Rs 20 in January 2002 to Rs 1,847 on April 28, 2006, creating Rs 7,500 crore in value for its shareholders, including Shah, whose holdings in it are worth Rs 1,500 crore.

Similarly, the commodity futures exchange, Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), he launched barely 30 months ago, is already the second largest after the National Commodities Exchange (NCDX), with a daily average turnover of Rs 4,000 crore. The exchange is growing so fast that Shah plans to raise Rs 400-450 crore from an IPO, due anytime now, to fund its infrastructure build up. While mcx's income for the nine months of 2005-06 was a modest Rs 64.92 crore, it has been valued at Rs 2,500 crore on the stock market.

DGCX, an equally-owned joint venture between FTIL and Dubai Metal and Commodity Centre (DMCC), set up in November 2005 to facilitate trade in bullion futures, has upped volumes in six months from Rs 1,151 crore to Rs 20,693 crore. That apart, Shah has set up about half-a-dozen other ventures to do everything from bringing buyers and sellers of agricultural produce together to sell risk management solutions to banks (see Shah's Growing Empire). The man who has created Rs 10,000 crore in shareholder wealth believes that he can do so with each of his new ventures. To put it differently, Shah sees online transactions of all sorts happening all around him, and he wants to be the one who facilitates them one way or another. In a word, he wants to be a transactions czar. "The real value for a technology company is not on selling licensed products. The technology can be very well monetised by linking it to every transaction that takes place through the product. That value is infinite," says Shah.

"Bolt" From The Blue

But just who is Jignesh Shah, and where does he come from? Jignesh Prakash Shah was born in Mumbai to a trader family. His father, Prakash Shah, who was an iron and steel trader, moved to Mumbai from Gujarat in 1963 to build on his fortunes. Shah, who drives around in a Mercedes, but still lives in a modest apartment in Mumbai's far-off suburb of Kandivali, would have been just another electronics engineer from Bombay University, but for a fateful decision that he took in 1990. That year, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) was looking for young engineers to launch its ambitious, Rs 100-crore trade automation project, called bolt. The National Stock Exchange was yet to be born then and BSE still had the outcry system, but Shah realised that the opportunity was momentous enough for him to try to be part of it. So, he applied for the job and was one of the 14 who got picked from among 800 applicants.

Shah (forefront) and his men: (L to R) Shreekant Javalgekar, Director (Finance), MCX; Manjay Shah, Director (Sales and Marketing), FTIL; V. Hariharan, CTO, FTIL; Paras Ajmera, Director (Technology Production), FTIL; Miten Mehta, Chief Communication Officer, FTIL; and Anjani Sinha, Director, MCX

For the young Shah, it was love at first sight. The stock market was on a roll, thanks to Big Bull Harshad Mehta pulling investors to Dalal Street like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Shah had little idea of the stock market mechanics, but he was enthusiastic and bright enough to learn the ropes in a few weeks. Soon, as part of his training, Shah was visiting global stock exchanges in New York, London, Tokyo, Singapore and half-a-dozen other countries to learn how online trading worked on these exchanges. (While in the US, he got an offer from Merrill Lynch, but Shah didn't want to be "just another number on the h1b visa list" and turned down the offer.) Watching online trading on these exchanges, Shah was convinced that technology would profoundly impact stock trading in India too.

But there was a surprise waiting for Shah and his colleagues when they returned to Mumbai. The stock exchange had in their absence decided to hand over the bolt project to CMC, meaning that the engineers hired for the automation would no longer be in charge of the project. Disappointed, Shah decided to leave BSE, although the three-year employment bond that he had signed at the time of joining meant he would have to cough up a few lakh of rupees in penalty. "I told myself, 'If I stay back, I'll just rust here'," says Shah.

So convinced was the 28-year-old about the future of online trading that he chose not to look for an alternative job, but to set up his own shop. Roping in his colleague Dewang Neralla, who was also one of the 14 engineers hired by BSE, and raising Rs 5 lakh by mortgaging his flat, Shah launched Financial Technologies India Ltd. Their first office was a 250-sq. ft loft in Mumbai's Fort Area that for close to two years became second home to about a dozen employees. Initially, the team developed front-end software for stock exchanges, but subsequently switched to online trading platforms. "We always wanted to be the Microsoft of online trading," says Shah. It took three years for their first product, odin, to roll out. Says Neralla, FTIL's director and still the man who drives technology development at the company, which logged Rs 76 crore in revenues in the first three quarters of 2004-05: "Jignesh was always clear in his thoughts."

There was a bit of a problem, though. The market for online trading software was dominated by large companies such as TIBCO Software, IBM and TCS. To get its foot in the door, FTIL had to offer a compelling proposition. Shah quickly figured what that would need to be: Price. Compared to vendors like TIBCO, which was selling its software at $1 million (Rs 4.13 crore at 1998 exchange rate), FTIL decided to price itself cheap. Its first customer, a Gujarat-based stockbroker, paid Rs 45 lakh to buy the software. Thereafter, orders started pouring in and FTIL never looked back. "Jignesh is very business savvy and very passionate about what he does," says Motilal Oswal, Chairman of the eponymous Mumbai-based securities firm.

The Transactions Opportunity

Thanks to a series of new product launches, by 2001, FTIL was dominating the online trading software space with a market share of 90 per cent. Even at lower rates, the start-up's profit margins were at over 60 per cent, but Shah realised that growth would be limited if the company solely depended on product licence fee. That's when Shah came up with an audacious proposal: FTIL would set up an online commodity exchange. There were more than a few who laughed at Shah's gumption, since BSE and NCDEX (promoted by ICICI Bank, NSE and CRISIL) were also vying for the licence from the Forward Markets Commission.

Once again, Shah proved his sceptics wrong. Not only did he win the licence for the online commodity futures exchange, but he got it up and running in a record nine months. Mukesh Ambani, a man Shah admires, himself came to inaugurate MCX, and now would probably be pleased at the way the exchange has performed since. It turned profitable in the first year, and today trades in 58 commodities (more than NCDX), covers 500 cities, and boasts of 1,050 broker-members. "Nobody believed that commodity trading could be so big," says Shah, referring to the Rs 5,58,369 crore in turnover it did in April-December last year.

Neralla: He co-founded FTIL with Shah and continues to be the man behind all technology development at the firm	V. Hariharan: FTIL CTO, he is also Director, MCX, and has worked with BSE and NSE, developing technology for them

Just like FTIL, MCX played the price card. While rivals like NCDX were charging Rs 33.75 lakh for a membership card, MCX only asked for Rs 5 lakh (Rs 2.5 lakh of deposit fee and Rs 2.5 lakh of admission fee). The idea was simple: If brokers had to come to MCX, they had to be confident about making money on it. MCX no longer has to under-price itself. The admission fee has now shot up from Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh as the new membership card comes for Rs 25 lakh in MCX (Rs 15 lakh deposit and Rs 10 lakh admission fee). Says Shah: "I believe in creating wealth for everybody." Adds Miten Mehta, who worked in the us for 11 years before joining Shah's team at FTIL: "He is a capitalist with the heart of a socialist."

But that's not why Shah has lined up plans for agri-commodities. His NSEAP is creating a parallel electronic market for spot trading in agricultural commodities. Agencies like the Food Corporation of India and NAFED will be able to buy and sell agri-products online, making the process more transparent and efficient. "Price discovery in a spot market will attract many players into this segment," says Anjani Sinha, Director, NSEAP. Shah has also set up an agri-logistics company, NBHC, which will employ a franchise model to network warehouses in the country.

Foreign exchange is Shah's next big bet. His three-year-old IBX Forex, said to be India's first indigenously developed forex trading platform for the inter-bank market, is currently doing transactions worth $100 million (Rs 450 crore) a day, but has taken bigger players like Reuters head-on. Once again, smart pricing did the trick for him. At a time when Reuters was charging a monthly fee of $2,400 (Rs 1,08,000) per month, Shah came in with a $500 (Rs 22,500) offer, forcing the information giant to mark down its own price to $600 (Rs 27,000). "Jignesh is very good at spotting new opportunities," says Uday Kotak, a friend and Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Ask the man what attracts him to online trading businesses, and he'll give you a simple answer: "Commodity markets are 10 times of the equity markets and forex markets are 10 times the commodity markets". Translated, that means every time a trader executes a deal on any of Shah's virtual exchanges, a penny drops into his kitty.

It's broadly the eBay story, except that the five-feet four-inches tall Shah is vastly more ambitious.