The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has announced the appointment of Chitra Ramkrishna as its new chief executive officer and managing director.

Chitra will step into shoes of long-serving head Ravi Narain from April 1, 2013, for the next five years. Narain will keep on serving on the Board of the World Federation of Exchanges as well as the chairman of its working committee.

Chitra will become the Indian women to head the national stock exchange and the second woman to head a stock exchange. The first woman to head an Indian stock exchange was Deena Mehta, who became the chief executive of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for two months in 2001.

Forty-nine-year-old Chitra has been serving the NSE since its inception in the year of 1991. Chitra was one of the five members of a team that was selected by the government to build a pan-Indian stock exchange.

RH Patil, the NSE's first managing director, had picked Narain and Chitra from IDBI to build the stock exchange.

With Chitra's appointment, the NSE will become only the third exchange among sixteen Asia-Pacific exchanges headed by a woman. The NSE is India's biggest and Asia's sixth biggest stock exchange by market capitalisation. The companies listed with the NSE are worth more than Rs 55 lakh crore.

The other two Asian exchanges that are headed by women are China's Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Colombo Stock Exchange, which are headed by Liping Song and Surekha Sellahewa, respectively.