Board of Directors

Mr. Ashish Bahuguna

• Chairman and Public Interest Director of the Exchange
• He was appointed to the Indian Administrative Service in July, 1978 and retired in February, 2015 on superannuation. He has worked in the State Governments of West Bengal and Rajasthan, as well as in the Government of India in various capacities in the fields of agriculture, rural development, education, textiles, tourism and financial management. He has about 20 years of experience of working in the food and agriculture sector in, both, the Central Government and the State Government. He has held the posts of Joint Secretary, Additional Secretary, Special Secretary and Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture in the Government of India. Post retirement, he was appointed for a period of three years as Chairman, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India till July, 2018. He is now a member of the Board of Consumer Voice, an NGO dedicated to protecting the rights of consumers, and also a Trustee of the Mobius Foundation, an NGO dedicated to promoting education for sustainable development. He has been intimately involved in the development and implementation of policies, programmes and schemes in all the sectors, he has worked in with the active collaboration of other stakeholders viz industry, NGO’s and other departments of the Government. He also had the opportunity of working with several international multilateral organisations such as FAO, UNDP, WTO, ESCAP and IJO and has served in the Board of ICRISAT, an international agricultural research institute. He also has experience in negotiating bilateral and multilateral trade and other pacts on behalf of the Indian Government.

Mr. Hemant Adarkar

• Public Interest Director of the Exchange Advisor to Financial Institutions.
• He holds a doctoral degree in experimental physics from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. He was a member of the Technology Advisory Committee of the exchange and of NeRL as well as NSDL.
• He has held key positions in Infosys (Head, Software Concept Laboratory), Datamatics (Chief Architect), JP Morgan (Vice President, Technology), Digital Bank within the Bank of Baroda group (Head – Technology).

Dr. Mukulita Vijayawargiya

She was appointed to the Indian Legal Service (ILS) in March

2003 and retired as an Additional Secretary to the Government of

India,

M/ O Law and Justice in April 2017. Post retirement, she was

appointed for a period of five years as aWhole Time Member in the

Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI). She was a Member

of the Executive Committee of the International Association of  Insolvency

Regulators.

She has about 44 years of experience of working in the field of law

in various capacities, as an Advocate, Professor of Law in Indore

University, Research Officer in the Law Commission of India, ILS

officer in the Legislative Department of the M/O Law and Justice and

Whole Time Member in the IBBI. As an ILS officer, she was

associated with drafting of more than 100 principal legislations and had

been Course Director in the Institute of Legislative Draft & Research of the

M/O Law & Justice. She was a visiting scholar in the National Yokohama

University (Japan) and Sydney University (Australia). On the Academic

front, she has published articles, supervised Ph.D research work, delivered

lectures in various institutions as well as Co -Author of two books.

Mr. R. Amalorpavanathan

Mr. Amalorpavanathan is currently an Independent Director on a Private Bank and advisor to several other institutions. He is an expert Member of Commodity Advisory Committee of SEBI since 2016. He has 35 years of experience in various fields relating to Agriculture finance, Credit, Projects and financial Management. He represented as Chairman or Director of state level Banks, Gramin Banks as also was a Nominee Director of MCX Board. He was the Chairmen or Member of many National Level committees and Working Groups set up by Govt of India, RBI, SEBI and NABARD. Notably he was a member of NITI Aayog committee on Integration of Spot and Derivative Markets, RBI Working Group on Agriculture Credit, Chairman of Committee on Listing of Gramin Banks and Risk Based supervision of Rural Banking Institutions. He specialized in investments and treasury and managed the market operations of NABARD apart from helping many banks set up treasury function. In NABARD he founded Venture Fund (NABVENTURES) and a Foundation (NAB Foundation). He retired as Deputy Managing Director of NABARD. Apart from persuading Government of India to scale up FPOs, under his Chairmanship NABKISSAN emerged as a major lender to FPO including warehouse receipt financing in collaboration with subsidiary of NCDEX and won Several Awards and Recognition.

Mr. Sanjeev Rohilla

A brief Profile of Shri Sanjeev Rohilla

Shri Sanjeev Rohilla joined NABARD in 1992 with a Master’s degree in economics from Punjab University, Chandigarh.

In a career spanning over 30 years, Shri Rohilla has handled key assignments in key departments in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Meghalaya. He has been part of multiple teams within NABARD covering fund raising, HR, credit operations, financial inclusion technology, credit planning, corporate communications and IT. He was a key member of the team which launched the first ever Aadhar enabled Kisan Credit Cards to Cooperative Banks and RRBs. Micro finance, credit planning, designing of innovative convergence models and organizational communication continue to be his areas of deep interest. He has worked with multilateral organizations like KFW, GIZ and UNDP.

He was part of the team which established micro finance and off-farm livelihoods in Gujarat. He undertook independent studies to analyze Panchayati Raj Institutions and oil cooperatives in the state. He was also the first officer to introduce contract farming in Gujarat with a multinational. His contribution in establishing farmer collectives in each of the 365 odd villages of Anand was the first ever such effort across the country.

During his stint in Meghalaya, Shri Rohilla worked closely with Shri Conrad Sangma, CM, Meghalaya and his team to give a pronounced push to micro finance through Self Help Groups and Joint Liability Groups approach. He leveraged his board position in Meghalaya Rural Bank to make a dent on the low CD ratio and help improve recovery position.

His position as the founding CEO of NABFOUNDATION, a Section 8 company of NABARD saw him raising resources from CSR units and establishing over 50 development projects across the country. In particular, he designed and launched the largest project in the area of female hygiene titled “My PAD My RIGHT”, which has been appreciated by both Ms. Smriti Irani and Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman at field level.

Shri Sanjeev Rohilla has held Board level positions in Meghalaya Rural Bank and NABFOUNDATION  in the past. He is currently a Nominee Director on the Board of NCDEX, NABFOUNDATION and NABCONS. 

Mr. Arun Raste

• Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer.
• He holds an M.A. in Economics with Post-Graduate Diplomas in Marketing, Communications & Journalism
• He has over 30 years of experience across diverse sectors – BFSI, corporate and social development. In his prior assignment he was associated with the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) as an Executive Director. He has also served as a Director on the Board of Indian Immunological Limited(Hyderabad), Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Private Limited (Delhi) and IRMA, Anand. In his banking career he has worked with lending majors in the private sector like IDFC First Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and financial inclusion behemoth NABARD handling commercial lending, product development, distribution network, branding, communication and CSR.His previous stints also include working with ACC cement and an NGO IRFT (International Resources for Fairer Trade). As an NGO delegate, he participated in the UNCTAD summit in Brazil, WTO Ministerial in Mexico, and Hong Kong.He had been invited to speak at prestigious events and presented papers in conferences held at countrieslike Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Holland, Japan, Senegal and the UK. He was also invited by the US State Department for International Visitors Leadership Programme. Apart from representing Asia at the International Fair-Trade Forum he also chaired the think tank of the Asian forum for CSR in SMEs. He has over a dozen publications in national and international journals to his credit.