Samir Shah

Samir is the Executive Vice-Chair & Co-Founder of Dvara Holdings. He is responsible for the strategic direction of the Dvara Holdings’s mission of financial inclusion and portfolio management of group companies.

Prior to joining Dvara Holdings, he was the Managing Director & CEO of NCDEX, India’s largest agri focused commodities exchange. During his tenure, the exchange had transformational impact on India’s agri economy through various technology and digital initiatives including setting up NCDEX’s 1st public-private partnership that digitised all mandis in a JV with Government of Karnataka. He also worked closely with the warehouse regulator WDRA and the capital markets regulator SEBI to launch National E-Repository Limited (NeRL) to provide India’s first repository services for electronic negotiable warehouse receipts, which farmers can use to avail formal sector agri credit.

Before NCDEX, he was the Chief Business Officer of the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX). At DGCX he led the growth of the exchange to make it the one of fastest growing exchange in the world, winning several global awards, amongst them were Contract of the Year and the Best Commodity Exchange in 2012.

Prior to this, he worked at global information company Thomson Reuters for 17 years, where he held various capacities including being the Global Head of Business Planning and Operations for a new inside-Sales unit at Thomson Reuters called Direct; also led Reuters’ India operations as the Managing Director in South Asia.At Thomson Reuters, amongst several other strategic programs, he built and launched India’s largest interbank trading system for foreign exchange working closely with the Reserve Bank of India.

Samir began his career as an investment banker in Mumbai in 1993 helping companies unlock value through public offerings and buy-out deals. He is an MBA in Finance, a Mechanical Engineer and has completed an Advanced Management Program from Wharton.