Long before fintech became a term investors competed to attach themselves to, one founder was already making his version of it real, building platforms, connecting markets, and proving that Indian ideas could lead rather than follow.
A blueprint drawn before anyone else had the map
This is not a story that begins with a funding round or a conference keynote. It begins with Jignesh Shah looking at a broken financial system and deciding, with quiet certainty, that he was going to fix it. When he founded Jignesh Shah Financial Technologies India Ltd, now 63 moons technologies, India was still finding its digital footing. Most people in the financial sector were not yet asking what technology could do for markets. Shah was several steps ahead, having already absorbed the answer through hands-on experience helping digitise the Bombay Stock Exchange’s trading operations. What he built in FTIL was not another IT company. It was a launchpad, grounded in indigenous intellectual property, solving Indian problems with Indian ideas rather than importing solutions designed for entirely different contexts. That distinction, local purpose over borrowed blueprint, became the defining quality of everything 63 moons technologies would go on to create.
MCX: the flagship exchange that changed everything
The Multi Commodity Exchange, launched in 2003, was where Jignesh Shah’s vision first took its most visible and consequential form. Before MCX, commodity trading in India existed in a kind of institutional twilight: fragmented, opaque, and inaccessible to most of the people it should have served. MCX rewrote that reality entirely. Futures contracts for gold, silver, crude oil, and agricultural commodities were now traded on a single transparent platform, creating a level playing field for farmers, businesses, and institutional investors who had never previously shared the same marketplace. The commercial results left no room for ambiguity. MCX contributed close to 1 percent of India’s GDP and when it became India’s first publicly listed exchange of its kind in 2012, the milestone carried equal symbolic and financial weight. For the first time, India had a commodity exchange that stood comfortably alongside the world’s best and, in certain respects, sat ahead of them.
Energy, currency, and the zeal of expansion
Jignesh Shah’s instinct was never to stop at what was already working. He recognised that India’s legacy exchanges had not kept pace with the economy’s genuine needs, and that entire asset classes and sectors were operating without the market depth or transparency they required. The Indian Energy Exchange, launched in 2008, addressed one of the country’s most persistent crises: chronic power shortages that had left large parts of the country dependent on bureaucratic allocation rather than market efficiency. IEX gave industries and state utilities the ability to trade electricity in real time, matching supply and demand through a mechanism the old system structurally could not offer. The logic was the same as Jignesh Shah MCX: bring structure, transparency, and technology to a broken market, regardless of the domain. The MCX Stock Exchange followed, extending that philosophy into futures, options, currency derivatives, and debt instruments. Each venture shared the same foundational DNA: a technology platform engineered for scale, built for efficiency, and designed to make transparency the default rather than the exception. Together, MCX, IEX, and MCX-SX painted a coherent picture of an economy increasingly capable of building the infrastructure its own ambitions demanded.
Taking the model to the world
By 2005, Jignesh Shah had determined that what worked in India could serve as a structural template for similar market ecosystems around the world. Using FTIL’s cost-efficient, high-performance technology as the engine, he began building a series of global exchanges, each tailored to its regional regulatory realities and market culture, all carrying the same core principles.
Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX)
The first venture beyond India’s borders and the first formal collaboration between an Indian private enterprise and the UAE government. It was not merely a business arrangement. It was diplomacy conducted through technology, announcing that Indian innovation could travel and would be welcomed at the highest levels when it arrived.
Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX)
Launched in 2010, SMX secured its trading licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, one of the most rigorous financial regulators in the world. That endorsement spoke directly to the credibility that 63 moons technologies had built over the preceding decade.
Bahrain Financial Exchange (BFX)
Established in 2009, BFX bridged Gulf markets and went further still, incorporating Shariah-compliant products alongside conventional instruments. It reflected a clear understanding that genuine market-building requires cultural fluency, not just technical competence.
Bourse Africa
The continent’s first international multi-asset exchange, offering trading in commodities, currencies, and equities to economies the global financial system had long overlooked. More than a market, it was infrastructure for opportunity in regions where that word had rarely appeared in the same sentence as “exchange.”
Collaboration as the real competitive advantage
Across every one of these ventures, what made them work was not technology alone. It was the ability of 63 moons technologies to collaborate at the highest institutional levels, with governments, regulators, and local partners, ensuring each exchange aligned with regional needs while holding to universal standards of transparency and efficiency. The DGCX partnership with the UAE government, the MAS endorsement for SMX, the cultural adaptation at BFX: none of these were incidental to the success of the exchanges. They were foundational to it. Technology provided the structure. Trust provided the fuel. That combination, consistent across ten exchanges built in a single decade, was what elevated India’s standing in global finance from participant to contributor.
A legacy that keeps teaching
Jignesh Shah has since stepped back from all executive roles, serving today as Chairman Emeritus and mentor at 63 moons technologies, focused on nurturing the next generation of innovators rather than directing operations. But the ripple effects of what he built continue to move outward. India’s standing as a global fintech force did not emerge from nowhere. It was built, painstakingly and deliberately, on foundations that Jignesh Shah laid before most people understood what those foundations were for. His story carries a lesson that extends far beyond finance: that true leadership in technology is not about building faster platforms or achieving larger valuations. It is about constructing ecosystems that empower the people within them, open markets that were previously closed, and earn trust that holds across borders and across time. That is the measure of what 63 moons technologies was built to deliver. And by that measure, it is considerable.
