IIBX-India International Bullion Exchange (IFSC) Limited, GIFT City, SEZ

Ph.D. (University of Texas Austin), P.G.D.M. (IIM Ahmedabad), B.Tech. (IIT Kanpur)
Professor of Marketing and International Business
MN Vora Chair Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Chairperson - India Gold Policy Center @IIMA
Chairperson – NSE Center for Behavioral Science in Economics, Finance and Marketing

Professor Sahay joined IIMA in June 2004 from London Business School where he had been teaching since his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an alumnus of IIMA (where he did his PGP) and IIT Kanpur (from where he did his B.Tech.).

Prof. Sahay is currently the MN Vora Chair Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Chairperson - India Gold Policy Center @IIMA and Chairperson - NSE Center for Behavioral Science, IIMA.

His primary areas of interest include marketing strategy, pricing, neuroscience and consumer behavior, brand management, high tech marketing, international trade and investment. Sectorally, he has worked extensively in pharmaceuticals, cement, building materials, telecom, broadcast, automotive, FMCG, education and financial services sectors among others. At the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, he has taught the basic marketing courses on the PGP, PGPX and PGP-PMP programs. In addition, he offers elective courses on pricing, brand management, neuroscience and consumer behavior, tracking organizational performance and brand management and valuation, innovation and fintech. His executive education and consulting clients come primarily from the financial services, pharmaceutical, building materials conglomerates, automotive, FMCG, retail and media sectors. His teaching ratings are consistently in the 9/10 range. He leads the IIMA executive education programs on pricing, neuroscience in marketing, enhancing salesforce performance and fintech.

His corporate experience includes stints as a management trainee in the manufacturing sector and as a customer service and then account manager in the financial services industry. He has consulted and done corporate training for more than 50 clients in India and abroad. He has written 30 international peer reviewed articles, 65 cases and more than 50 articles for business magazines and newspapers.

Professor Sahay is the recipient of the University Wide Outstanding Dissertation Award from the University of Texas at Austin (for his Ph.D thesis), the Innovation in Teaching Award at London Business School and of the Dewang Mehta Best Teacher Award in Marketing Management and the UTV Bloomberg Best Marketing Professor in India. He was also nominated to the Thinkers50 India list by the Institute of Competitiveness, Harvard Business School. He is also the winner of the Philip Morris Best Case Award at IIMA.

Professor Sahay is currently an independent director on the board of Brandscapes Consultancy Pvt. Ltd, HIL Ltd. (a CK Birla Group firm) and Director on the board of IFCI Limited and HIL International Gmbh. He is a member of the working group on Gold established by the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India and of the NITI Aayog Committee to Transform Gold Markets. As Dean (AER), he has led the fund-raising effort at IIMA and has helped raise more than INR 130 crores over 36 months. His strong international orientation had also resulted in an increase in student exchange numbers from 120 to 180 over three years. As Chairperson (SBU Head) of Executive Education at IIMA he stewarded an increase in revenues from 67 crore to 92 crores over two years.

Professor Sahay can be contacted at arvin.sahay@gmail.com.

Mr. Ashok Kumar Gautam is the first Managing Director & CEO of India International Bullion Exchange IFSC Ltd. (IIBX) at GIFT City. He joined IIBX in his present leadership role in February 2022.

Mr. Gautam is a finance professional with over 36 years of experience in various tenets of banking and financial management; such as Treasury, Bullion, Financial Institutions, Transaction Banking, Cash Management Services, Relationship Management, Credit, International Banking, Trade Finance etc.

Mr. Gautam was most recently Executive Director & Head Treasury with IDBI Bank Ltd., with added responsibilities of Cash Management Services, Government Business Group & Financial Institutions. Before that during his 11 and a half year stint at Axis Bank he was Executive Vice President and Head Financial Institutions Group (FIG) and held leadership positions of Head Global Markets, Treasury and Head Transaction Banking - Corporate & Financial Institutions. During his tenure at Axis Bank he spearheaded the Bullion business for more than 8 years.

During his over 22 years’ experience in State Bank of India, Mr. Gautam was Head of the first Central Treasury of the Bank at Hong Kong covering all branches from Sydney to Male, Treasury at Singapore office and the Regional Dealing Room at Overseas Branch New Delhi, among other leadership roles.

Mr. Gautam has earlier represented Banks at various industry bodies:

On the Board of Fixed Income, Money Market & Derivatives Association, i.e., FIMMDA as Director.
On the Board as Additional Vice Chairman and member Managing Committee of Foreign Exchange Dealers Association of India, i.e., FEDAI.
Secretary, Forex Association of India, i.e., FAI.
Invitee to the RBI committee on Financial Benchmarks.
Member of the RBI Working Group on Interest Rate Options.
Member, India Customer Advisory Board of Thomson Reuters.
Member, Finance & Banking Committee, Indian Merchants’ Chamber.

Educational & Professional Qualifications:
B.Sc. (Mathematics & Statistics); MBA (Finance);
CAIIB; Diploma in Bank Management; Diploma in Treasury, Investment & Risk Management from Indian Institute of Banking & Finance (IIBF);
Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM) from Global Association of Risk Professionals, USA (GARP);
Axis Executive Leadership Program conducted by Duke Corporate Education;
Strategic Innovation and Leadership Program by Tuck Executive Education at Dartmouth.

Speaker
Mr. Gautam is frequently invited by Institutes, Trade bodies, Colleges and Associations as a speaker and has addressed various National and International seminars and conferences.

Mr. Shivanshu Mehta holds the key portfolio of the precious metals business as Head-Bullion at India’s largest commodity Exchange, MCX which commands the lion’s share of the bullion derivatives market.
He has over 21 years of experience in both physical and financial commodity markets, specifically in non-ferrous and precious metals.
He started his career, being hand-picked to the Aditya Birla Group’s Group Management Trainee Scheme (batch of 2000). In this commodity conglomerate, he spent six years including cross-functional exposure in cement, sponge iron, viscose staple fibre, carbon black and base metals industry. He has worked with world leader Grasim Industries Ltd. as Product Manager in Viscose Staple Fibre division of the company.
His journey with base metals started with Hindalco-which is a global name in non-ferrous metals; where he worked with both Copper and Aluminium divisions in product management and strategic roles. His classified work on the secondary Copper market of India (2002) proved to be a benchmark for strategy formulation. He launched Hindalco’s foray into branded Aluminium roofing sheets across India in 2003.
Over the years, he has enriched market space with new and innovative products. To the recent credit is the successful launch of the world’s first-ever deliverable one-gram gold contract- Gold Petal futures in 2019, which has proven to be a record success and has helped strengthen gold as an asset class.
The MCX bullion team is credited with the product design and launch of India’s first-ever Gold and Silver Options contracts in 2017 and 2018 respectively, that have since been running successfully.
Under his leadership, MCX Bullion team has designed the good delivery norms and running the system of audits to enable locally refined gold to be delivered at MCX for the first time in 2020-21. This initiative for the benefit of industry at large has seen significant successful deliveries of gold.
Before MCX, he has also led the Base Metals team at NCDEX in the year 2006.
He is recognized for his avid oratory skills and his strong relationships with the metals, bullion and jewellery industry as also with the financial fraternity.
He has been part of various Govt. and Regulatory working groups that have dealt with the development of the Gold Industry, including groups set-up by the Ministry of Finance, Niti Aayog and SEBI.
He is currently on the Boards of the India International Bullion Holding IFSC Ltd. (IIBH) and the India International Bullion Exchange IFSC Ltd. (IIBX).

Over 36 years of experience in formulation, development and implementation of policies, strategies and programmes at senior decision making levels in the central and state governments. 1983 batch of IAS, Rajasthan Cadre, Superannuated in Sept 2019.

Educational Qualifications

MA History, Delhi University
MSC Development Studies, University of Bath, UK

Professional Experience/Notable Achievements

She has been associated with the commerce and industry sector for around 9 years at senior decision-making levels. As Special Secretary and Director Industries from 1997 to 2000, she was instrumental in formulation of Rajasthan Govt’s New Industrial Policy of 1998 wherein a single window approval was introduced to facilitate ease of doing business for industry.
As MD Bureau of Industrial Promotion, they created many customized packages to attract industries and this resulted in substantial investment of international companies like Mico Bosch, Gillette etc to the state.
As MD of the first Rural Non-Farm Development Agency in the country, they worked towards promoting the rural non-farm sector in a focused manner in three sectors, leather, wool and stone and the programme was globally appreciated by the implementation partner UNDP.
During her tenure as Additional Director Policy, in the Directorate General Foreign Trade they were pioneers in Govt of India in digitising and simplifying the process of issue of licences and export incentives. There was a paradigm shift in the approach to foreign trade during this period. The first Foreign Trade Policy, (as against earlier Exim Policy)was launched in 2004. Apart from introducing many novel schemes, it marked a major shift from a regulatory regime to an environment of trade promotion.
As Secretary DPE from 2016 to 2019, she played a crucial role in facilitating a paradigm shift in the policies for Central Public Sector enterprises to enable them to face the challenges of a modern competitive global environment. Many new initiatives were taken to make their performance appraisal systems through the MOU mechanism more result oriented and dynamic by introducing profitability and efficiency parameters for the first time. Measures were taken to enhance the performance of Board level and below Board level employees through customized capacity building programmes in Institutes of Excellence. There was a comprehensive review of corporate governance guidelines and fresh guidelines were issued to align HR strategies with company goals, defining critical roles, mapping competency framework of incumbents etc. During this period, many new initiatives were also taken in the area of CSR by systematically documenting and disseminating best practices, undertaking capacity building of stakeholders and intensive monitoring of identified activities.
These systemic improvements enabled DPE as the nodal dept for public sector enterprises to truly become a facilitator for improving the efficiency and performance of CPSEs. Her stint as Secy DPE gave her a unique insight into the working of crucial sectors of the economy ranging from Petroleum, Steel, Coal and Mines, Fertiliser, Power to Defence Production. It also gave her an opportunity to understand in depth the specific issues being faced by public sector companies and to analyse their comparative performance vis a vis their peers in the private sector.

Her experience in the Banks Board Bureau gave her valuable insights into the working of the banking sector in the country. It also gave her an opportunity to participate in the selection of top management of public sector banks and insurance companies like LIC. This was a unique opportunity where her experience of public sector companies provided valuable insights/inputs in analysing the problems of the public sector banks in India. International Experience-As Assistant Secretary General of Afro Asian Rural Development Organisation from 2001 to 2005, she was responsible for formulation and implementation of capacity building initiatives and agriculture and rural development programmes in thirty member countries of Africa and Asia.

Publications & Trainings

Publications - A paper titled Women’s Empowerment-Myth or Reality, a critique of the Women’s Development Program of the Govt of Rajasthan.
Trainings - As an Associate of the Leadership and Development Programme (initially funded and implemented under the aegis of Rockefeller Foundation), She has attended intensive trainings of around two months over a period of three years from 1993 to 1995, in the field of environment and sustainable development
Short-duration trainings:
- Management of Rural Development, IIM Lucknow, 1987
- WTO Issues, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), 2002
- Advanced Leadership Programme of ANZOG (Govt of Australia and New Zealand), 2014
- Ethics and Governance Programme of University of California, Berkeley, 2015
- Leadership and Strategic Thinking Programme of University of Cambridge, 2018

Gopalaraman Padmanabhan is a post graduate in Economics from Kerala University and a Masters in Business Administration from the Birmingham Business School. He holds extensive experience and expertise in bank regulation and supervision, development of foreign exchange/securities markets in India, information technology and payment systems, with more than 35 years of experience with the RBI in various capacities i.e. recommending and implementing policies, systems, guidelines and regulations relating to the banking, financial services and securities sector of the country.

Padmanabhan was the Chairman of the Committee to implement GIRO in the country and has been involved in the implementation of new e-Treasury system in the Reserve Bank. He was also involved in the operationalisation of the first of its kind ISO 20022 standards based RTGS System and the digitisation of payment transactions.

Padmanabhan was also the Chairman of the Technical Committee on Services/ Facilities for Exporters and a part of the think tank to manage market volatility, as well as a member of the Governing Council of the Institute for Development & Research in Banking Technology, a banking research institute established by RBI. He represented RBI in the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems, Basel and was also inducted into the Steering Group of the CPSS-IOSCO for Review of Standards.

As a member of the Working Group of the CPSS, Basel, Padmanabhan worked on the report on Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures and also chaired the International Working Group set up by CPSS (now CPMI) on Non-banks. He was one of the persons responsible for drafting the Sodhani Committee’s report in 1995 on the foreign exchange market and measures for widening and deepening the market, and has supervised the revision of the Internal Control Guidelines for Foreign Exchange Business in 1996. Padmanabhan was also a member of the internal group that prepared and submitted a Technical Paper on Asset -Liability Management for Indian banks which was accepted by the Bank and formed the basis for Reserve Bank of India's initiative.

On superannuating while holding position of Executive Director from the RBI, Padmanabhan was appointed as Non-Executive Chairman of Bank of India in Aug 2015. He held this position for 5 years till Aug 2020. Padmanabhan advises several firms on banking/ foreign exchange and payment system and other regulatory issues. He also holds Board positions in Axis Bank.