Speaking with TechGraph, Balkrishna Shankwalker, CTO at NCDEX, discussed how growing market complexity is changing the role of technology in commodity exchanges and outlined its approach to modernising its trading infrastructure through a risk-upfront model designed to identify potential disruptions before they affect market operations.
Shankwalker also discussed NCDEX’s efforts to make commodity markets more accessible through digital platforms that simplify participation for farmers and FPOs, as well as the growing role of AI and interconnected market infrastructure in improving price discovery and helping participants anticipate risks rather than respond after they emerge.
Read the interview in detail:
TechGraph: As technology reshapes market surveillance, risk management and price discovery, how is NCDEX leveraging digital infrastructure and emerging technologies while balancing innovation with regulatory governance, stability and transparency in India’s commodity markets?
Balkrishna Shankwalker: At NCDEX, our approach to technology is built around a “risk-upfront” model — one that is designed to detect anomalies before they can adversely impact live trading, rather than reacting to them after the fact. This philosophy underpins everything we do, from surveillance to system architecture.
We are currently undertaking a significant modernization of our technology landscape through our long-term partnership with , aimed at building a scalable, high-performance trading infrastructure capable of supporting growing transaction volumes and evolving market requirements.
On the surveillance front, we leverage automated monitoring systems that track market activity in real time. Our platforms monitor cross-market client position limits at the PAN level, detect unusual trading behaviour, and generate alerts that help preserve market fairness and transparency.
Technology has also played a pivotal role in strengthening trust across the commodity ecosystem. Through initiatives such as digitizing warehouse receipts via the National E-Repository Limited (NeRL) and standardizing digital assaying processes, we have improved transparency and reduced operational risk across the value chain.
Ultimately, NCDEX embraces innovation, but every technology decision is guided by three non-negotiable principles: market integrity, regulatory compliance and stakeholder trust. Innovation at an exchange cannot come at the cost of any of these.
TechGraph: India’s agricultural ecosystem is steadily becoming more digital, yet technology adoption still varies widely across different participants in the value chain. How is NCDEX shaping its technology roadmap for a market where digital maturity remains uneven?
Balkrishna Shankwalker: A key pillar of our roadmap is simplifying market participation for farmers and FPOs. We are investing in intuitive digital onboarding, streamlined user journeys, and technology platforms that abstract away the complexity of backend trading processes, so that participation doesn’t require deep technical fluency.
To bridge the digital divide, we follow an omni-channel approach — disseminating prices through local mandi display boards, mobile apps and SMS, to ensure that even grassroots stakeholders have access to crucial market data, regardless of their device or connectivity level.
A core part of our strategy is staying “phygital.” By combining digital platforms with a network of trusted physical touchpoints, we ensure that commodity market participants who lack easy tech access can still benefit from institutional-grade trading and price discovery.
Looking ahead, NCDEX is building a scalable and interoperable technology ecosystem that can accommodate participants at every stage of their digital journey, whether through mobile-first services, API-enabled integrations, digital warehousing, or AI-driven analytics. The goal is a system that meets people where they are, not one that expects everyone to arrive digitally ready.
TechGraph: Agricultural commodity markets generate information from multiple sources, including warehouses, assayers, logistics providers, and market participants. What has been the biggest technology challenge in bringing these fragmented data streams together while ensuring the market continues to trust the information it receives?
Balkrishna Shankwalker: One of the biggest technology challenges in commodity markets is not simply aggregating data from multiple sources — it is ensuring the authenticity, consistency, and traceability of that data throughout its lifecycle. Data can flow in from many disparate systems, but unless each data point can be trusted and traced back to its source, it has limited value for market participants.
A significant milestone in addressing this challenge was the digitization of commodity records through the National E-Repository Limited (NeRL). Historically, paper-based processes created operational inefficiencies and increased the risk of errors, duplication, or fraudulent activity. By transitioning to electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (eNWRs), we established a secure and transparent digital framework that participants can rely on.
Our RAINMUMBAI index implementation is another example — a greenfield project where interoperability between multiple agencies, including the IMD, financial institutions, FPOs, and the exchange, helped us build a trusted model that various stakeholders can now use for effective risk management. It showed us that solving fragmentation isn’t just a data-engineering problem; it is equally a problem of aligning incentives and standards across institutions.
TechGraph: Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to analyse market patterns, detect anomalies and improve operational efficiency. Where do you see AI creating the greatest long-term value for commodity exchanges and where should human oversight continue to remain central?
Balkrishna Shankwalker: Commodity markets are influenced by a wide and constantly shifting set of factors — weather, geopolitics, logistics, inventory levels and macroeconomic developments. This is precisely where AI creates the greatest value: it can correlate diverse data sources, predict stress scenarios, forecast liquidity pressures and identify concentration risks across members and products. In doing so, it enables exchanges to move from reactive monitoring to predictive supervision.
Predictive analytics is another key area where AI helps. We use machine learning algorithms to forecast crop yields, model price seasonality and automatically optimise lean-period margins — all of which strengthen risk management well before stress materialises.
AI also creates value by contextualising non-standard data. We recently launched India’s first weather derivative, RAINMUMBAI, and AI plays a central role in analysing 30 years of IMD benchmark data to make that product meaningful and reliable.
That said, the “black-box” nature of many AI models makes governance indispensable. AI can surface patterns and flag risk far faster than a human ever could, but human oversight remains central — particularly when it comes to taking final disciplinary actions. Judgement, context, and accountability are things we are not prepared to outsource entirely to a model.
TechGraph: Commodity markets increasingly depend on multiple digital systems working together rather than operating in isolation. How important has interoperability become in shaping the next phase of exchange infrastructure, and where do you see the biggest opportunities to improve ecosystem-wide connectivity?
Balkrishna Shankwalker: Historically, exchanges existed to connect buyers and sellers. Tomorrow’s exchanges will connect far more than market participants — they will connect banks, brokers, NBFCs, warehouses, logistics players, weather-data providers, insurers, fintechs and investors into a single, unified ecosystem. Interoperability isn’t a nice-to-have anymore; it is becoming the core design principle for exchange infrastructure.
Our ongoing focus on weather and rainfall-linked risk management products illustrates this well. The value of such products isn’t created by the exchange alone — it requires close collaboration between weather agencies, agricultural institutions, insurance companies, financial intermediaries and farmers. The exchange becomes the trusted infrastructure through which all of these participants can transfer and manage risk.
For an organisation like NCDEX, APIs open up entirely new possibilities. Our Mutual Fund platform is a good example of this in practice — its future success will not be determined only by the products available on it, but by how effectively it integrates with fintechs, distributors, wealth platforms, advisory applications and broader customer ecosystems.
In the digital economy, APIs are not just interfaces. APIs are a business model in themselves.
TechGraph: As data volumes continue to grow across commodity markets, exchanges have an opportunity to move beyond reporting market activity towards generating deeper market intelligence. How do you see data analytics changing the way market participants anticipate risks, understand market trends and make trading decisions?
Balkrishna Shankwalker: Historically, exchanges have been excellent at providing transparency — we published prices, volumes, open interest, and market activity, enabling participants to understand what had already happened. The next phase is about helping participants understand what is likely to happen next.
Today, commodity markets are influenced by a vast range of data sources, including weather patterns, rainfall forecasts, crop conditions, satellite imagery, logistics bottlenecks, and inventory levels. The challenge is no longer the availability of data — it is converting that data into actionable intelligence that participants can actually act on.
We already see this playing out on the ground: FPOs use historical heatmaps and margin trends to time their harvests more effectively, hedging risk instead of resorting to distress selling. Similarly, for our RAINMUMBAI index, we draw on deep historical data, allowing traders to manage weather risk based strictly on automated data rather than physical delivery.
In both cases, data-driven insight is what allows market participants to evaluate scenarios, quantify risk, and choose more effective hedging or trading strategies — shifting the exchange’s role from a market of record to a genuine decision-support system.
TechGraph: Looking ahead, what technological shifts do you believe will have the greatest impact on India’s commodity markets over the next five years, and how should exchanges prepare for an ecosystem that is becoming increasingly intelligent, connected, and data-driven?
Balkrishna Shankwalker: At NCDEX, we believe the biggest transformation in India’s commodity markets will come from the convergence of Artificial Intelligence, ecosystem interoperability, alternative data, and digital market infrastructure. Together, these technologies will fundamentally change how risks are identified, how prices are discovered, and how market participants make decisions.
Over the next five years, the winners in commodity markets will not be those with the most data, but those with the best ability to connect ecosystems, generate intelligence, and build trust at scale.
If I had to summarise the future in three words, they would be: Connectivity, Intelligence and Trust — connectivity through interoperable ecosystems, intelligence through AI and trust through robust market infrastructure. Exchanges that prepare around these three pillars will be the ones best positioned to serve India’s next phase of market growth.