Mr. AKT Chari was Chief Operations Officer and later Advisor at IDFC Limited. A keen Project Finance Specialist, he has ~45 years of experience.
Prior to joining IDFC, he worked with the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) for 25 years where he held the position of Chief General Manager/Adviser - Project and Infrastructure Finance. In this role, his responsibilities included appraisal of projects - infrastructure and industrial, project monitoring and portfolio management. In addition, during his tenure in IDBI he handled portfolios in the SME and venture capital sectors. He served as an Independent Director on various boards including HDFC Pension Management Company Limited and HDFC Life Insurance Company Limited.
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Mr. Ashwani Kumar is a seasoned banker having an experience of around 37 years. He was the Chairman and Managing Director of Dena Bank for a term of 5 years w.e.f. 1.1.13 to 31.12.17
Before being elevated to the post of CMD Dena Bank he was an Executive Director in Corporation Bank. He was appointed by the Government of India as a Director on the Board
of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) where he was a Director for a little more than 5 years. He was also the Chairman Audit Committee and Risk Management Committee, Member of Investment
Committee, Executive Committee of LIC. As the Chairman of Indian Banking Association (Sept 2015- Oct 2016), Mr. Kumar effectively liaisoned with the Reserve Bank of India, Government of India
and other Statutory bodies to promote sound and progressive banking practices. He was the President of Indian Institute of Banking & Finance (IIBF), Chairman of Institute of Banking Personnel
Selection (IBPS). He was also a member of Board of Supervision NABARD.
Mr. Ashwani Kumar is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. He holds a master’s degree in science from Lucknow University. He has attended number of training programmes notably
at Kellogg School of Management Chicago, NIBM and other reputed institutions. He has also attended on the job training in Bullion at Nova Scotia London and Societe Generale Paris.
Ms. Rosemary Sebastian is a former career central banker with 38 years of professional track record. She was the Executive Director of the Reserve Bank of India in charge of its financial supervision function (NBFCs and Cooperative Banks). During her career she has handled various responsibilities in central banking, regulation and supervision of banking and non-banking entities, financial inclusion, consumer protection, public debt management and internal audit among others.
She has been associated with the work and recommendations of important Committees of the Reserve Bank. She has served as the Reserve Bank’s Nominee Director on the Board of a large public sector bank. Ms Rosemary Sebastian is post graduate from Osmania University and has a law degree from Mumbai University. She is currently on the Boards of two reputed Companies, as an Independent Director.
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Mr. Prashant Kumar Ghose has nearly five decades of experience in finance and industry having worked across sectors including steel, cement, fertilisers, chemicals and consumer. He worked at Tata Steel, where he became Chief Financial Controller (Corporate) and then Chief of Strategic Finance, before moving to Tata Chemicals as Chief Financial Officer.
In Tata Chemicals he was elevated to the Board as Executive Director & CFO. He has worked on multiple M&A and fund-raising transactions, domestically and internationally, and he was
recognised as CFO of the Year 3 times, twice by IMA and once by CNBC TV18. Mr. Ghose has held multiple board positions including for Tata Chemicals across Europe, North America and Africa,
Infinity Retail, Tata Consulting Engineers, Air Asia India and Tata Services.
He has also been on international boards - IMACID Morocco and JOil Singapore. Prior to his joining Tata Chemicals
he had been in the boards of TAYO ( erstwhile Tata Yodogawa) , Tata Pigments , Stewart’s & Lloyd and others. Mr Ghose also was the advisor to the Group Chairman , Tata Group for over 2 years.
He currently sits on three Indian National Committees of CII, and is a member and trustee of the CFO Board.
He is a BCOM (Hons) graduate, a member of the Institute of Cost & Works Accountants and the Institute of Company Secretaries, India, and an alumnus of the Advanced International General
Management Program of CEDEP, INSEAD. He has attended the Financial Management programme at Wharton School and Strategy at Harvard Business School
Padmanabh (Paddy) is a veteran of the Indian investing ecosystem with a proven track record of building out leading institutions and businesses in India. He has over 28 years of work experience, primarily in private equity investments since 2002, and also as an early tech entrepreneur in India.
His investment experience spans across several sectors, including industrial, technology, consumer, business services, infrastructure and financial services. He joined
NIIF in 2021 as an Executive Director and CIO - Private Equity and is based in Mumbai.
Prior to joining NIIF, he was with Tata Group's flagship private equity fund, the Tata Opportunities Fund, as its Managing Partner and co-founder He was instrumental in raising the then
largest India focussed private equity fund in 20·13 with investments from marquee global investors. Padmanabh was the Managing Director - India for Temasek where he cofounded and co-led
the India office during its successful build-out phase in India. In his stint with Temasek from 2004 onwards Paddy consummated several investments in India and also successfully exited
many of these He additionally led large international projects, including Temasek's entry into life insurance investments globally.
Padmanabh was an early tech entrepreneur in India and was one of the founding members of eGurucool.com, an Ed-tech business focused on online and hybrid Test prep for Grade 9-12. Paddy
started his professional career journey with a JP Morgan-ICICI investment banking joint venture in 1995.
Padmanabh holds a Bachelor in Engineering degree in Computer Science from BITS. Pilani, and is an MBA from IIM, Calcutta He completed an Executive Development Course in Late Stage Private
Equity from Harvard Business School in 2003.
Nilesh has over two decades of experience across private equity, debt investments, banking and portfolio management. During his career, he has worked on several investments across South Asia as well as East Asia and Africa.
He joined NIIF in December 2019 and is currently the Partner of Strategic Opportunities Fund at the firm. In this role, he is responsible for working across investments,
portfolio and fund raising.
Prior to NIIF, Nilesh spent 14 years with International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investing arm of World Bank Group. As part of the financial institutions investing group,
he led investments in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He then moved to be the Portfolio Manager for IFC where he was responsible for leading the financial sector investments portfolio of over
USD 4 billion across equity and debt in the South Asia market. Some of the key assignments with IFC included working on large scale transformations of microfinance companies into small finance
banks and universal banks, early investments in affordable housing finance and working with multiple infrastructure finance companies. He has worked on investments across early stage and mature
banks, NBFCs and other financial institutions during his tenure at IFC.
Prior to joining IFC in 2005, Nilesh worked with HSBC, India in multiple roles including in corporate, operations and retail banking. He started his career with Tata Consultancy Services in 1996.
Nilesh holds a bachelor’s in computer engineering degree from Lucknow University and has done his MBA from IIM, Kolkata. He is also a Chartered Associate with Indian Institute of Bankers (CAIIB).