About Us

NICR is headed by Aleen Mukherjee as Chief Operating Officer of NICR and EVP of Business Strategy at the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), having donned multiple leadership roles within the exchange over the past 11 years. Here, he led the creation of a first-of-its-kind national-level Electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (e-NWRs) system hailed as a path-breaking step in the area of financing agricultural commodities. Presently focusing on research and consultancy Agri domain focusing on Agri produce market, risk mitigation and impact of smallholders. Additionally, creating awareness amongst Farmer Producer Organizations on risk mitigation tools; lead CSR activity for the exchange and education and awareness-building through NICR. In a career spanning 25 years across countries including India, West, and East Africa, he has donned multiple hats including farmers, as a development professional, and as an entrepreneur. He has had significant leadership roles with organizations such as Winrock International, Tata Farms, and USAID and has consulted for projects funded by World Bank, FAO, UNCTAD, and other international agencies. Part of the USAID India mission team as Agribusiness Specialist oversaw implementation and coordination on resource conservation technologies implemented by the Rice Wheat Consortium (RWC) under the leadership of CIMMYT. Aleen specializes in developing implementation plans for large-scale projects on building agricultural supply chains, back-end integration, and connecting farmers to export and forward markets, agriculture production planning, etc. He holds a Master’s Degree in Horticulture from GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in India, advanced certificates in Food Safety and Trade from the World Bank, and in Strategic Thinking and Leadership for Growth from the Wharton School.

A post-graduate in Agricultural Economics from leading institution GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, Mr. Niraj Shukla works as Senior Agri-economist at NICR with over 16 years of experience in Agriculture and allied fields including leading the research teams at NCDEX in addition to a few top commodity brokerage houses of the country. He has vast experience in conducting in-depth research, training, education, and consultancy in commodity derivatives, hedging commodity price risks, and warehouse receipt financing Ecosystem and training and awareness programmes on the institutional level. He has been instrumental in advocacy to the government regarding the use of commodity derivatives and provided inputs to the Commission of Agriculture Cost and Prices (CACP) under the Ministry of Agriculture. He served as a core researcher in various consultancy projects to World Bank, central and state government agencies, and corporates. He also has developed a system to generate commercial intelligence reports in various agri-commodities, knowledge series on commodities and also managed multiple research collaborations with NCDEX. He has conducted economic surveys of multiple commodities, crops, livestock, Agri-warehouses, and agricultural wholesale produce markets on the field. His work in the Agri ecosystem has been acknowledged by leading media channels in the country through frequent participation in TV and print media programmes on the subject. In India, he is well versed in market analytics applications viz., Reuters, Cogencis, Metastock, Telequote, Telerate, AdvancedGet, and Nextview.

Working as Sr. Editor & Corporate Communications Lead at NICR since Oct 2020 Mr. Shrikant has over 16 years of experience in a real-time newsroom environment and has headed a team of 16 plus reporters to drive the coverage of the Commodity Market with greater emphasis on Agricultural commodities.

In addition to normal journalistic engagements in writing and editing, Shrikant has spearheaded a number of analytical articles on subjects spread across the Agri commodity value chain from farm to plate. Experienced in commodity market training programmes for over 5 years covering important topics such as derivatives markets, e-Spot platforms and their role in the economy, Food Corp of India and its role in procurement, food security, warehousing and public distribution system (PDS); warehousing regulation and e-NWR ecosystem and their role in Agri lending. Besides, Mr Shrikant has been also involved in coordinating spot market price polling processes to ensure accuracy in the data collection.

Prior to this, Mr Kuwalekar has over 20 years of experience in banking, accounts, and payroll accounting, which includes over 3 years in India’s largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India.

An MBA in Agribusiness from College of Agribusiness Management, GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar. Ms. Nikileswari is an Agriculture graduate from Sri Venkateswara Agricultural College, Tirupati - ANGRAU, Lam, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.

Ms. Nikileswari has vast experience of participating in a number of field programmes and projects on agriculture having direct interaction with the farming community in various states.

Ms. Anuradha Singh works at NICR as a Senior Executive for the last seven years. Prior to that, she has worked with a capital market brokerage for over a year.

A Delhi University commerce graduate, Anuradha has rich experience in the areas of exchange operations and derivatives markets in equities and commodities from the perspective of trading and risk management for various stakeholders.

Besides, she is also involved in management reporting, administration, and associated functions with respect to the linkage of FPOs with modern market infrastructure.

A post graduate in Economics from Madras School of Economics, Priya Arora works as Deputy Manager at NICR. With experience of over 9 years in economic consulting and research, she specializes in primary and secondary research, data management and visualization, and statistical and economic analysis using various tools such as Python, SQL and Tableau. Prior to joining NICR, she has worked for two years with BRIEF, a New Delhi based think tank, focusing on international trade, trade facilitation and socio-economic impact assessment of trade policies in South Asia. She has worked for 6 years with an economic consulting firm, EconOne Research, where she performed extensive research and econometric analysis on antitrust litigation matters. Her work covers a wide range of industries including auto parts, payment cards, cement, fertilizers, and retail in the European Union, India and the United States. She has co-authored a study on analyzing the strength and direction of informal trade between India and Pakistan via the UAE, contributed in two books and written several analytical articles.