The Enigma that is Jignesh Shah

Battling through hardships and obstacles, Jignesh Shah has reached to the absolute top which is something only a few people can do. Even fewer can boast of achievements like creating 10 new generation regulated multi-asset financial markets in just 10 years across India, Singapore, Dubai and Africa. Jignesh Shah’s resilience towards all the difficulties he has faced shows level headedness and an innate calmness that can come only from years of experience and hard work.

Journalist Shantanu Guha Ray analyses the enigma that is Jignesh Shah in his book ‘The Target’. “Jignesh Shah’s companies were original IP-based innovations that did not involve any subsidy from the government or the banks for land, labour or taxes. For Shah, “excellence” was the only currency.”

Jignesh Shah’s rise to success was resented by many and all his achievements and accomplishments were maligned, but all the investigations against him are baseless even though the envious are trying really hard to make it look otherwise.

In these trying times, Jignesh Shah has kept his cool and has waited so that justice prevails. Ray talks about his unique genius and his unswerving rationality. He even compares Shah with the lead character of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ John Galt because both of them “had to fight against the system to make it understand the benefits of modernization and the advantages of growth” and just like Galt, “Shah, too, was at odds with the inadequacies of a system that did not allow freedom for innovation and instead placed hurdles in the way of the enterprising few.”

With all the recent developments that have been occurring, anyone in Shah’s shoes would have given up and resigned to their fate. But, as Ray put it in his book, his dedication and professionalism towards his work along with his extreme perseverance and coolness the workings of a genius and enigma. One of the biggest exponents of the ‘Make in India’ programme by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah is truly the Czar of Exchanges.