Ashishkumar Chauhan The Game-changer!

Ashishkumar Chauhan, MD & CEO of BSE, is a man with two different facets to his personality. When it comes to his professional life, he is hardworking, innovative, challenge-driven, tech-savvy, gritty, single-minded, fearless risk-taker who has a never-say-die attitude. He is not daunted by any adversity as he smells an opportunity to deliver out-of-the-box solution that has at times even changed the rules of the game. He is a team player who encourages his team members to take up responsibility with accountability to deliver results against all odds.

Early days

Ashish’s childhood days were like the days of any other boy hailing from a middle-class family. Both his father and mother were educated and employed, so although education was a given requirement, there was no pressure on him to perform in his academics.

But his education in Gujarati medium throughout his schooling days would pose a major challenge when he got admitted to the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. Reminiscing about those difficult days, Ashish says: “The biggest hurdle I faced at IIT was of language. Though there were quite a few students from vernacular medium schools, they had been taught in English in their 11th and 12th standards. For me, it had been Gujarati throughout. English perplexed me. It used to take me 3 to 4 hours to understand one page! I had to keep referring to my dictionary for almost every word...Lectures were difficult to comprehend. During viva, I remained tongue-tied, I knew the answer but speaking the language and its grammar, too with my vernacular accent, was a major limitation. I used to feel ashamed because even peons there spoke in English.” But Ashish was not one to give up so easily and run away from the challenge. He took up English speaking classes, with emphasis on pronunciations, to overcome his vernacular intonation