Dr. Anish Shah is the Group CEO and Managing Director of the Mahindra Group. His role as Group CEO includes oversight of all Group businesses, which employ 260,000+ associates across 20 industries and 100+ countries. His primary focus is on nurturing a purpose-driven organization, establishing tech leadership in each industry and driving value creation across businesses.

Under Anish’s leadership, the Group is reigniting value creation with exponential growth across multiple businesses and prudent capital allocation. Anish believes that “purpose drives profits”. He is the custodian of Mahindra’s Rise philosophy, of driving positive change in the lives of our communities to enable them to Rise. And he is championing the Mahindra Group’s efforts to play a leadership role in Women Empowerment and Sustainability.

Prior to joining the Mahindra Group, Anish was President and CEO of GE Capital India from 2009-14, where he led the transformation of the business, including a turnaround of its SBI Card joint venture. His career at GE spanned 14 years, during which he held several leadership positions at GE Capital’s US and global units. He has also led Bank of America’s US Debit Products business and worked with Bain & Company in Boston and Citibank in Mumbai.

Anish was appointed as President of FICCI in 2024, leading one of India’s oldest and largest industry bodies. Currently, he co-Chairs the India-Australia CEO Forum and the India Alliance of CEOs for Climate Change. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Business Council at the World Economic Forum, the India-Singapore Business Roundtable and the NITI Frontier Tech Hub Expert Council for AI. He was the Chair of the Automotive Governors Council at the World Economic Forum from 2022-24 and a member of UK Investment Council from 2021-24.

Under his leadership, the Mahindra Group received the prestigious ‘Company of the Year’ award from Economic Times in 2024. In the same year, Anish was honoured as the Entrepreneurial CEO at EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Awards and celebrated as Fortune India’s Best CEO in 2023.

Anish holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. His interests include sports (particularly Cricket and American Football), reading and travel.

Directorship and Full-Time Positions in Body Corporates

Raul is a career banker with extensive experience in the domain of Rural Banking and Financial Inclusion. He joined Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Limited (MMFSL) on 1st September 2021 as the Chief Operating Officer of the Company. Over the past 19 months, he has capably led the growth and transformation journey in MMFSL, demonstrating strong leadership. Prior to joining Mahindra Finance, he was with Axis Bank as EVP & Head – Rural Lending & Financial Inclusion.

In his 19 years stint with Axis Bank, he led key businesses including Rural Lending, Farmer Funding, Gold Loans, MSME lending, Commodity Loans, Tractor & Farm Equipment Lending, Agri-Value chain Deposits, Payments & Insurance. He also led the Business correspondent channel including 15,000+ partner outlets and the Micro-ATM channel of the Bank. He played a pivotal role to increase the Banks Distribution in Rural and Semi –Urban areas through light format Banking outlets, Micro-ATMs and Rural ecosystem partnerships.

He is credited with several transformational interventions viz. introducing various end-to-end digital initiatives and paperless loan journeys for low-income households, besides launching suitable phygital tools and customer journeys including Aadhar Pay. Under his leadership, Axis Bank has won the prestigious Financial Inclusion Award at the Asian Banking and Finance Awards in 2019 and 2021.

He represents a strong combination of business leadership and social commitment, which aligns with the Mahindra Group’s core purpose of Rise. He is personally passionate about impacting livelihoods of the low-income community and agrarian households.

Raul is a member of CII National Council on Agriculture since FY19, and also serves as an Advisory Board Member on the Expert Committee for Agriculture & Food Processing of Bombay Chambers of Commerce and Industry since 2017.

He is a Postgraduate in Management from the Goa Institute of Management.

Mr. Milind Sarwate, Founder & CEO of Increate, is an Advisor, Mentor, Independent Director, & ESG Contributor. Increate means “Uncreated” or “Undiscovered”. The firm works towards business and social value creation, with focus on capability-building, and the governance & social aspects of ESG.

Mr. Sarwate’s independent directorships include Asian Paints, FSN E-Commerce (Nykaa), Matrimony.com, and Hexaware. He specializes in audit committee roles. He has been on listed company boards since 2005. His previous board memberships include Mindtree and International Paper.

His 39-year experience includes long stints as CFO and CHRO in Marico & Godrej.

He is a Chartered Accountant (1983), Cost Accountant (1983), Company Secretary (1984), and a CII-Fulbright Fellow (Carnegie Mellon University, USA, 1996).

He has been awarded ICAI CFO Award (2011), CNBC TV-18 CFO Award (2012) & CFO India Hall of Fame induction (2013).

Mr. Diwakar Gupta aged 69 years, is a post-graduate in Physics from University of Delhi and graduate with Honours in Physics from St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi.

Mr. Gupta is a seasoned Banker having over 48 years of experience in banking and financial services sector. He was associated with State Bank of India (SBI) for 39 years where he held several top executive/senior management positions and demitted office as its Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer in 2013. During his tenure with SBI, he had among various diverse assignments, partnered with Unique Identification Authority of India Limited for rollout of the biometric based unique identification program of Government of India (Aadhaar).”

Mr. Gupta was also the Chief Executive Officer of SBI Cards, and Chief Operating Officer of State Bank of Patiala, a subsidiary of SBI. After his stint in SBI, he worked as a Senior Advisor (Banking Project) in Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd. and as an Advisor in India Value Fund Advisors, a leading India-focused PE fund (since rebranded as True North). Mr. Gupta has also worked with Asian Development Bank, Manila (ADB), where he oversaw the private sector and PPP operations of the Bank and participated in the Bank’s broader corporate initiatives like launching and operationalizing the biometric based National ID system of Philippines (akin to Aadhaar), and creating ADB Ventures, a donor-funded hybrid venture trust fund. He has chaired the Digital Innovation Sandbox and has been a member of the steering committee supervising ADB’s digital agenda.

Mr. Gupta was a Member of the Expert Committee for Resolution Framework for COVID-19-related Stress, constituted by RBI in 2020. He was Chairman of the Task Force created by Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, to review consortium / multiple lending, and suggest measures to make it more efficient. He was also a member of the High-Level Steering Committee to review Supervisory Processes of Banks, chaired by Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India.

Currently, Mr. Gupta is the Independent Director on the board of companies i.e., CRISIL Ratings Limited, Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Limited (“MHRIL’), Holiday Club Resorts Oy (Finland, Subsidiary of MHRIL), Mahindra Susten, SMFG India Credit Company Limited and Non-Executive Chairman of India Debt Resolution Company Limited. He is also the Senior Advisor (Research) at Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (an RBI promoted institution) and Senior Advisor with True North

Mr. Vijay Kumar Sharma is a post-graduate (M.Sc.) in Botany from Patna University with over four decades of experience in corporate world.

Mr. Sharma joined Life Insurance Corporation of India (“LIC”) as Direct Recruit Officer in 1981 and grew up with the Corporation since then. During his association with LIC, Mr. Sharma held various challenging assignments pan India and in all operational streams including in-charge positions at different levels. Working across length and breadth of the country he has added immensely to his experience and honed his understanding of demographics of the country, socioeconomic needs of different regions and multi-cultural challenges in implementation of LIC’s objectives. Mr. Vijay Kumar Sharma superannuated as Chairman of LIC on 31st December 2018.

Prior to his taking over as Chairman of LIC, Mr. Sharma served as Managing Director of LIC. He also served as Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, LIC Housing Finance Limited (LIC HFL). As MD & CEO of LIC HFL, he stabilized the operations under most challenging circumstances of negative media glare, intense scrutiny by Regulator & others and turned it around to be the best Housing Finance Company in 2011.

He has been an inspirational leader who utilizes negotiation skills gained over four decades of experience in insurance and financial sectors and strongly connects to the grass root levels, believes in bottom-up approach and has the ability to see the Big Picture and translate it to reality. He is known as Growth Leader, leading the Organisation to surge ahead and turnaround on its growth path in all the segments of performance.

Dr. Rebecca Nugent is the Stephen E. and Joyce Fienberg Professor of Statistics & Data Science and Department Head for the Carnegie Mellon Statistics & Data Science Department, and an affiliated faculty member of the Block Centre for Technology and Society. She has over 15 years of experience in university-level academia in statistics & data science consulting, research, applications, education, and administration. Dr. Nugent is the co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study on Improving Defense Acquisition Workforce Capability in Data Use and recently served on the NASEM study Envisioning the Data Science Discipline . The Undergraduate Perspective.

She is the Founding Director of the Statistics & Data Science Corporate Capstone program, an experiential learning initiative that partners with industry and government organization on developing and deploying data science solutions to current business challenges and regularly consults with global enterprises in finance, marketing, health care, and educational technology . Dr. Nugent has worked extensively in clustering and classification methodology with an emphasis on high-dimensional, big data problems and record linkage applications and has served in related leadership positions including President of the International Federation of Classification Societies (slated for 2022 ). Her current research focus is the development and deployment of interactive data analytics platforms that promote data-informed decision making and allow for adaptive instruction and study of data science as a science.

She has won several national and university teaching awards including the American Statistical Association Waller Award for Innovation in Statistics Education and serves as one of the coeditors of the Springer Texts in Statistics.

She received her PhD in Statistics from the University of Washington, her M.S in Statistics from Stanford University, and B.A. in Mathematics, Statistics and Spanish from Rice University.

Mr. Barua is the Chief Financial Officer for the Mahindra Group. He was Group Strategy Head until May 2024. He is a member of Group Executive Board. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Business Administration.

Prior to joining M&M, Mr. Barua was the Finance Leader for Oilfield Services & Equipment (OFSE) segment of Baker Hughes for 6 years. As the finance leader for OFSE, he was responsible for partnering with operations to deliver growth & profitability at the $14 billion, 35000+ employee segment of Baker Hughes. Prior to Baker Hughes, Mr. Barua held multiple roles at General Electric Co. (GE) over the course of 18 years. He was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for GE’s Power Conversion business. He was also the CFO for GE Mining, Financial Planning & Analysis Leader for GE in India and Executive Audit Manager at GE’s Corporate Audit Staff. In his early years with GE, Mr. Barua completed the Financial Management Program and served as the finance manager for GE Aircraft Engines in India before joining the Corporate Audit Staff.

Mr. Ashwani Ghai is a post graduate in Economics, PGEP from IIM Ahmedabad and Fellow of Insurance Institute of India (FIII). Mr. Ghai has a long and diverse work experience, across functions and geographies, in LIC of India and Board level experience in LIC Housing Finance Ltd and LICHFL Financial Services Ltd.

In his more than 35 years of work experience in LIC of India and in LIC Housing Finance, he has worked across multiple functions viz., Marketing, Human Resource, Investments, Fund Management, Enterprise Risk Management, Organisational restructuring, Compliance, IPO launching of LIC, Business Strategy formulation, its implementation etc.

Prior to joining as Additional Director, Management Development Centre of LIC of India, he has held variety of positions, in LIC of India and LIC Housing Finance Ltd, including Chief Operating Officer and Whole-time Director of LIC Housing Finance Ltd., Non-Executive Director on Board of LICHFL Financial Services Ltd., Executive Director (IPO Cell) of LIC where he handled the job of steering the preparatory work & successful listing of shares of Life Insurance Corporation of India, Chief (Investment Operations) of LIC of India and Executive Director (Strategy Implementation) in LIC of India

Ms. Padmaja Chunduru is a seasoned financial services executive with over 37 years of banking and capital markets experience in India and USA. She has led iconic institutions, NSDL (National Securities Depository Ltd.) and Indian Bank as the MD & CEO. As Dy. Managing Director of State Bank of India, she led digital banking services and was the Country Head, SBI – US Operations, for 3 years, 2014 – 2017.

She serves as an Independent Director on the Boards of Bajaj Life and General Insurance Companies, Atul Ltd, Brigade Enterprises Ltd., Clearing Corporation India Ltd., SBI Ventures Ltd., Sify Technologies Ltd. and Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd.

She is also a member of the Insurance Advisory Committee of IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India) and the CCGS Advisory Council, IIMB (Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability, IIM Bangalore).

She has been awarded Best CEO (BFSI) for 2021 by Business Today and Best CEO 2021 for Women Leadership by Economic Times. She has been acknowledged as one of the Most Powerful Women (MPW) in Business by Fortune India and Business Today, for 2022 and 2023.

Mr. Parag Rao has over 30 years of diverse experience in Banking / FMCG. Since 2002, Mr. Parag Rao has been associated with HDFC Bank, for whom he has run multiple P&Ls and large Pan-India teams. He has played a leadership role in transforming and maintaining HDFC Bank as a market leader in the payments and acquiring space since 2010. He has also headed the Technology & Digital Transformation function of the Bank to conceptualize, run & deliver the technology and digital transformation agenda of the Bank. In the last few years, he has also headed the liability product management group of the Bank.

He has played stellar growth roles sitting on the Boards of HBL Global (HDFC Banks Sales Subsidiary) since merged with HDB Financial Services, HDFC Ergo (Non-Life Insurance subsidiary of HDFC Bank) and National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI). He has also played a pivotal role on the Asia Pacific Client Council of VISA Inc and Global Advisory Board of Diners International Inc.

His experience spanning across FMCG & Retail Banking sectors includes stints with Crompton Greaves, Cadburys, Hindustan Unilever, Pepsico India, IBM Global Services.

Mr. Parag Rao has completed B. Tech from Regional Engineering College (REC), Jamshedpur and MMS from S.P. Jain Institute of Management.