ABans Enterprises is India’s self-styled “Commodity Intelligence House” - a trading firm that makes money by spotting price gaps between physical commodity markets and financial derivatives, then capturing the spread with a zero-default discipline. It began in 1985 as a modest trading entity and was reimagined in 2015 under promoter Abhishek Bansal, who turned it into a technology-driven house that now trades everything from coriander and gold to aluminium futures across India, the UAE and Mauritius. The recurring approach is simple: use on-ground sourcing networks and in-house technology to find arbitrage opportunities, then hedge every position so tightly that the company has never recorded a single counterparty default.
Business segments
Three engines built on a single trading backbone - a proprietary commodities desk that generates the bulk of activity, a jewellery manufacturer that converts bullion access into premium products, and a derivatives intelligence layer that hedges and informs every move.
1. Proprietary commodity trading: the group’s core engine
The company buys and sells physical agricultural goods, gold, silver and base metals, capturing the spread between spot prices and futures markets - high volumes, thin margins, every position hedged.
- Arbitrage is the profit model - futures contracts typically trade at a premium to physical spot prices, so the company buys the physical commodity and simultaneously sells the futures contract, locking in the difference as revenue.
- Sourced from India’s farm belts and global bullion routes - agricultural commodities like coriander, guar seed, jeera and castor seed are procured directly from mandi networks and long-standing farmer relationships across India’s commodity belts, while gold is imported through established overseas supply lines from leading gold-producing nations.
- Three commodity baskets under one roof - the desk trades agricultural goods (5,541 MT of physical and derivatives volume in FY25), bullion (1,728 MT of derivatives volume, with every gold and silver transaction fully physically backed), and base metals like aluminium, copper, lead and zinc (91,188 MT of derivatives volume).
- Exchange memberships lower the cost of doing business - the company is a recognised participant at the India International Bullion Exchange in GIFT City, which lets it import gold at a concessional tariff, and it maintains direct connectivity with domestic exchanges MCX and NCDEX as well as global platforms COMEX and DGCX for hedging.
- Risk is engineered out daily - all positions are reconciled at the end of every trading day, strict limits cap maximum exposure and deal size, precious metals stock sits in insured third-party vaults, and the company works only with long-standing, reputed counterparties.
2. Jewellery manufacturing: converting bullion access into premium products
A wholly owned subsidiary makes handcrafted gold and diamond jewellery for high-net-worth clients through India’s leading jewellery stores, while also trading precious metals in its own right.
- Bespoke, not mass-market - the subsidiary Abans Jewels Limited focuses on premium handcrafted and customised designs, including rings, earrings, pendants, neck sets and coloured stone pieces, aimed at high-net-worth individuals rather than volume retail.
- B2B distribution through established stores - the jewellery is supplied to leading jewellery retailers across India who serve the bespoke end-customer, so the company manufactures and wholesales rather than operating its own showrooms.
- A trader-manufacturer hybrid - beyond manufacturing, the subsidiary actively trades precious metals, base metals, debentures and securities, and enters into derivative contracts on recognised exchanges, which means its own bullion desk feeds raw material to the jewellery bench.
- A merger was planned, then unwound - a scheme to amalgamate the jewellery subsidiary into the parent company was approved in November 2024 to simplify the group structure, but was withdrawn in February 2026 when evolving market conditions made the expected synergies less demonstrable, so the subsidiary continues to operate independently.
3. Derivatives intelligence: the hedge that became a profit centre
Futures and options trading across agricultural, bullion and base metal contracts serves as both a protective hedge for physical positions and a standalone lens for reading market sentiment.
- Hedging first, insight second - exchange-traded futures and options on NCDEX, MCX and global platforms are the primary tool for hedging physical commodity exposure, but the company also treats derivatives as a strategic lens to read market sentiment and identify trading opportunities.
- A maturing hedging culture - as recently as FY20 and FY21, none of the commodity exposure was hedged through derivatives; by FY23, key agricultural positions such as Cottonseed Oil Cake, Coriander, Guar Seeds, and Guargum were fully hedged on domestic exchanges; by FY25, the model had matured to fully hedged and physically backed bullion transactions.
- Scale across 14 commodities - in FY24 alone, exchange volumes reached 27,443 MT on MCX and 72,930 MT on NCDEX, spanning 14 different commodities, making the company one of the largest participants on NCDEX by volume.
- Beyond commodities - the desk has expanded into performance-linked debentures backed by Nifty and gold, extending the same arbitrage and hedging mindset from physical goods into financial instruments.
Technology and trading infrastructure
An in-house technology team runs proprietary systems that automate the entire trade lifecycle - from execution to clearing, broking and custody - so the company never depends on external vendors for its core operations.
- Vertical integration of the trade stack - the company’s infrastructure spans every step of a trade, including execution, clearing, broking and custody across all major exchanges, which compresses settlement cycles and keeps control in-house.
- Built, not bought - an internal technology team maintains proprietary trading systems, risk monitoring dashboards, internal deal-flow automation for bullion and base metals, and system-level checks for automated hedging reconciliation, avoiding dependency on third-party software.
- Centralised command - the trading operation aligns supplies from multiple extraction points with customer demand across different markets, selling products at the optimal delivery point to maximise returns, all managed from a single centralised desk.
Group structure and partners
A lean three-country structure with a single operating decision-maker, after years of shedding non-core subsidiaries to focus entirely on commodity trading and its allied activities.
- Three subsidiaries, one activity - the group now consists of the Indian jewellery manufacturer Abans Jewels Limited, its Dubai-based trading step-down subsidiary Abans Gems & Jewels Trading FZC, and a Mauritius entity Splendid International Limited that was still acquiring licences as of FY24, with management determining the entire group operates as a single trading activity under one chief operating decision-maker.
- Simplification through divestment - four non-core subsidiaries in pharmaceuticals, IT, precious metal products manufacturing and general trading were fully divested effective January 2022, collapsing what had been a multi-segment conglomerate into a focused commodities house.
- Promoter ecosystem provides leverage - the group has related-party relationships with entities under common control spanning broking, securities, commodities, warehousing, finance and real estate, and uses intra-group lending to optimise working capital and seize opportunities; bank working-capital loans are secured against promoter personal property and related-party corporate guarantees.
- GIFT City access - the company has commenced operations through India’s GIFT City and is a recognised participant at the India International Bullion Exchange, positioning it to benefit from the concessional tariff and regulatory framework of the international financial services centre.