Exchange is to Financial Technologies, what Search is to Google–Platform for Mass Disruptive Innovation,” says Jignesh Shah, Chairman of the $2.5 billion Financial Technologies Group in a press conference in Mumbai, his company’s headquarters. He is talking about how his company will leverage its leadership position in global technology markets to re-define ‘Brand India’ from a cost arbitrage value proposition to an Intellectual Property centric business model. He continues, “India 1.0 IT companies were about creating IP for others, India 2.0 companies are children of liberalization and are about creating and owning global IP themselves. Financial Technologies is first of the many to come out of India that will choose to become a Nike rather than a Nike sweat shop and Coke, than a Coke bottling plant in their respective industries. China did it in last decade; India will do it in this one.”

Meet the face of Brand India 2.0
Sounds too bold? You would not think that if you knew the man saying it. Meet Jignesh Shah, the youngest, first generation Indian billionaire who wears various epithets like the Exchange King, Transaction Czar and the Socialist Capitalist with ease and operates on 1000 day cycles to create wealth and billion dollar enterprises. The company he built a decade back has placed him on India’s billionaire pedestal in almost less than half the time his peers in the same industry took. Standing tall with $1 billion, Shah has risen to the likes of Narayana Murthys, Azim Premjis and Shiv Nadars in monies, but only that his is the first company to offer branded productized services targeted for financial markets and transactions.

A list of his employees who joined the millionaires’ club recently made it seem as if it had no significance. Over hundreds of them today own houses in plush colonies of Mumbai—the most expensive real estate city in world. In other words Shah at 39 is already wealth creator for the masses; a vision he’s had since his college days. Shah’s management mantra chips off from Bill Gates’ “read every mail and respond” philosophy. Since FT’s early days Shah has made sure that he responds to every mail addressed to him on ceo@ftindia.com

Recently, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, said: “No force in world can stop an idea whose time has come.” True indeed, India’s tryst with destiny and opportunity to take its rightful global place is here and now. And companies such as Financial Technologies and MCX are surely the ones leading India 2.0 by unlocking value at the middle and bottom of pyramid and bridging the urban-rural divide. This has in fact sowed the seeds of change in India’s brand perception from cost and labor arbitrage to Intellectual Property centric business model.

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