Rewind to the mid-1990s. India’s financial markets are slow, paper-bound, and largely inaccessible to the people they were supposed to serve. It took one sharp-minded engineer to look at that system and decide, with quiet determination, that all of it needed to change.
The lab where the revolution began
In 1995, Jignesh Shah founded Financial Technologies India Ltd, now known as 63 moons technologies, and set in motion a transformation that would redefine India’s exchange landscape from the ground up. His starting point was experience, not theory. Having been part of the Bombay Stock Exchange’s digitisation journey early in his career, Jignesh Shah had seen the dysfunction at close range: inefficient trading, limited access, opaque pricing, and infrastructure that concentrated opportunity in the hands of very few. Jignesh Shah FTIL became his laboratory for fixing all of it. The goal was not to make incremental improvements to what existed. It was to build something categorically different: IP-driven, technology-enabled platforms that made finance genuinely equitable. What emerged was a seamless, multi-asset ecosystem that brought millions of previously excluded participants into formal financial markets for the first time.
Revolutionising commodities: the MCX breakthrough
The first landmark achievement arrived in 2003 with the launch of the Multi Commodity Exchange. Before MCX, commodity trading in India was fragmented and informal, dominated by opaque networks, unpredictable pricing, and no real mechanism for fair participation. 63 moons technologies provided the proprietary platform that changed all of that, introducing standardised futures contracts for gold, silver, crude oil, and agricultural produce on a single, transparent exchange. The results were not subtle. Jignesh Shah MCX grew to contribute close to 1 percent of India’s GDP, turning commodities from a speculative gamble into a structured, reliable market that empowered farmers, traders, and institutional investors in equal measure. By 2012, it became the first Indian exchange to list publicly, with its IPO drawing overwhelming demand and marking the moment India stopped following global commodity benchmarks and began setting them. The genius behind MCX was not algorithmic complexity. It was scalable IP, designed for breadth, built to last.
Powering progress: the Indian Energy Exchange
Jignesh Shah did not stop at commodities. By 2008, his attention had turned to one of India’s most persistent and damaging infrastructure failures: chronic power shortages. Blackouts were routine across large parts of the country, and energy distribution was entangled in bureaucratic allocation that optimised for neither efficiency nor equity. The Indian Energy Exchange, built on 63 moons technologies’ low-cost, high-performance platforms, introduced a real-time marketplace for electricity. Utilities could now buy and sell power dynamically, matching supply to demand in ways the old system structurally could not. For power-starved states, IEX was not just a market mechanism. It was a meaningful improvement to daily life, and a demonstration of Jignesh Shah’s consistent instinct: find a broken system, identify the structural cause, and build the technology that fixes it properly.
Broadening horizons: MCX-SX and an interconnected ecosystem
The MCX Stock Exchange extended 63 moons technologies’ domestic model into futures, options, currencies, and debt instruments. Rather than adapting existing models, Jignesh Shah disrupted them. The technology stack was robust, accessible, and compliant, drawing in retail investors who had previously been priced or intimidated out of participation. Together, MCX, IEX, and MCX-SX transformed India’s exchange landscape from a set of siloed, underperforming operations into an interconnected, liquid, and transparent national marketplace. Trading volumes grew, liquidity deepened, and transparency became the expectation rather than the exception. The philosophy throughout was consistent: build once, engineer it well, design it to scale. These platforms were not adapted from off-the-shelf solutions. They were custom-built, anticipating the direction fintech would travel long before the term entered mainstream conversation.
Going global: ten exchanges in ten years
The domestic model proved itself. Then Jignesh Shah took it to the world. In just one decade, 63 moons technologies supported the founding of 10 exchanges across multiple continents, each tailored to different asset classes, regulatory frameworks, and cultural contexts, all carrying the same foundational standards of efficiency and transparency.
Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX)
Launched in 2005 as a joint venture with the UAE government, DGCX was the first collaboration of its kind between an Indian private enterprise and the Emirati government, positioning Dubai as a commodity trading hub for the Middle East and proving that Indian-built exchange infrastructure could earn the trust of foreign governments.
Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX)
Launched in 2008, with its opening bell rung by the then Deputy MD of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, SMX bridged Asian markets with real-time efficiency and earned the endorsement of one of the world’s most demanding financial regulators.
Bahrain Financial Exchange (BFX)
Established in 2009, BFX introduced electronic trading for Sukuk and cash instruments in the Gulf, combining global technology with Shariah-compliant product design in a way that demonstrated genuine cultural fluency alongside technical capability.
Bourse Africa
Based in Mauritius, Bourse Africa brought structured risk management tools to the continent’s fragmented economies, creating exchange infrastructure in a region the global financial system had consistently overlooked. It was not just a market. It was an invitation to participate.
The art of collaboration: trust as the real product
What connected every one of these international ventures was not just technology. It was the ability to collaborate at the highest levels, with governments, regulators, and local partners, ensuring each exchange aligned with regional needs without compromising universal standards. Most innovators struggle to launch a single exchange. Jignesh Shah launched ten, across continents and asset classes, each one making markets not just faster but genuinely smarter. That global expansion did not merely grow 63 moons technologies’ international footprint. It reflected back on India, drawing the country into deeper integration with global financial flows and confirming its standing as a serious fintech force on the world stage.
A legacy built to outlast its builder
Markets do evolve on their own, but Jignesh Shah accelerated that evolution by a generation. The ecosystems built through 63 moons technologies generated millions of jobs across technology, trading, logistics, and financial services, fostering entrepreneurship in an India that predated the startup era by a full decade. The World Economic Forum’s recognition of Shah as a Young Global Leader reflected the global significance of that contribution. Today, as Chairman Emeritus of 63 moons technologies, Shah’s focus is on mentoring and nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs within the organisation, passing on not a set of directives but a way of thinking. The exchanges he built continue to operate. The culture he cultivated continues to create. And the reminder his career leaves behind is a simple one: true genius does not chase disruption for its own sake. It builds systems that last, one exchange at a time.
