Leading with Purpose Meet Mahindra Finance’s Management Team

Dr. Anish Shah is the Managing Director and CEO of Mahindra & Mahindra Limited. He joined Mahindra Group in 2014, as Group President (Strategy), and worked closely with all businesses on key strategic initiatives, built capabilities such as digitization & data sciences and enabled synergies across group companies. In 2019, he was appointed Deputy Managing Director and Group CFO, with responsibility for the Group Corporate Office and full oversight of all businesses other than the Auto and Farm sectors, as a part of the transition plan to the CEO role.

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. As Director, Global Mortgage, he worked across 33 countries to drive growth and manage risk. As Senior Vice President (Marketing and Product Development) at GE Mortgage Insurance, he led various growth initiatives and played a key role in preparing the business for an IPO, as a spinoff from GE. In his initial years with GE, Anish also led Strategy, eCommerce and Sales Force Effectiveness and had the unique experience of running a dot- com business within GE. Anish also received GE’s prestigious Lewis Latimer Award for outstanding utilisation of Six Sigma in developing a “Digital Cockpit.”

He has diverse experience with global businesses beyond GE. He led Bank of America’s US Debit Products business, where he launched an innovative rewards program, led numerous initiatives in payment technology and worked closely with various teams across the Bank to enhance value for the customer.

As a strategy consultant at Bain & Company in Boston, he worked across multiple industries, including banking, oil rigs, paper, paint, steam boilers and medical equipment. His first role was with Citibank in Mumbai, where he issued bank guarantees and letters of credit as Assistant Manager, Trade Services.

Anish holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business where his doctoral thesis was in the field of Corporate Governance. He also received a Masters degree from Carnegie Mellon and has a post-graduate diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has received various scholarships, including the William Latimer Mellon Scholarship, Industry Scholarship at IIMA, National Talent Search and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust.

Mr. Ramesh Iyer’s key mandate at Mahindra Group is to drive inclusive growth, aligned to our guiding belief of driving rural prosperity. He has been instrumental in building Mahindra Finance since 1994 into one of India’s leading rural finance companies.

Mr. Iyer manages the Financial Services Sector of the Mahindra Group which includes Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Limited, Mahindra Insurance Brokers Limited, Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Limited, Mahindra Manulife Investment Management Private Limited and Mahindra Manulife Trustee Private Limited. He also oversees the operations of Mahindra Finance USA, LLC., a U.S. joint venture with De Lage Landen Financial Services Inc., (DLLFS) a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Rabobank Group. The total Assets Under Management (AUM) of the Sector is more than Rs. 81,000 Crores (around 11 billion US$).

Mr. Iyer has been closely involved in the development of the Country’s dynamic Financial Services Sector. Mr. Iyer is the Chairman of Finance Industry Development Council (FIDC) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) WR Task Force Committee on Human Resources and also co-chairs the NBFC Committee of IMC Chamber of Commerce & Industry. He is an active member on various committees like CII National Committee on Financial Inclusion and Digitisation, CII National Committee on Leadership & HR, Banking & Finance Committee of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) and the Taskforce of NBFCs of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). He also serves on the boards of several Mahindra Group Companies.

Apart from being on the various bodies of the Financial Services Sector, Mr. Iyer is also on the Advisory Boards of various Educational Institutions like IITB-Washington University, Vidyalankar Institute Of Technology – School Of Management, WeSchools’ PGDM-Rural Management Committee and on the College Development Committee of Vivek College of Commerce.

Mr. Dhananjay Mungale is a seasoned banker and finance professional with extensive global experience of investment banking, corporate banking and private banking across Europe and India. Over 25 years he served at leadership positions in Europe and India at Bank of America and DSP Merrill Lynch. Since 1999 Dhananjay serves on the Boards of eminent companies in India as an independent director. Over the period these have included Mahindra Finance, JP Morgan Asset Management, L&T Infra Finance, LIC Housing Finance, Mahindra CIE Automotive, TN Petro Products, DSP Blackrock, Kalpataru Ltd., NOCIL Ltd., Chowgule Steamship etc. He also serves on Advisory Boards of select private equity organizations and investment committees of family office in India and London.

Dhananjay also regularly mentors young talent in the Fintech start-up sector, across India and abroad.

Besides his business and professional achievements, Dhananjay also finds time to work with eminent institutions in educational and not-for-profit domains as a member of their Governing Councils. These have included Mahindra United World Colleges and Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.

Dhananjay is an undergraduate in Commerce and Law from University of Mumbai, and an Associate Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Mr. Chandrashekhar Bhave started his career in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1975 after completing his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. He worked in different positions in the Central and State Governments and also won awards from the Government of Maharashtra for his outstanding work in the area of family welfare and excellence in administration. He then worked in Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) as a Senior Executive Director from 1992–1996, helping create the regulatory infrastructure for Indian capital markets.

Mr. Bhave then took voluntary retirement from the IAS to set up the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) in 1996 and was its Chairman and Managing Director from 1996 to 2008. Mr. Bhave was the Chairman of SEBI, India’s capital markets regulator, from 2008 to 2011. He was also the Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Regional Committee and a member of the Technical and the Executive Committees of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), over this period.

Mr. Bhave had several professional affiliations that include:

• Member of the Board of the Public Interest Oversight Board (PIOB), Madrid which supervises the work of the standard-setting bodies of the International Federation of Accountants from the perspective of public interest.(2011-2017)
• Trustee of the IFRS Foundation, London that oversees the International Accounting Standards Board. (2012-2017)

Mr. Bhave is the Non-Executive Chairman of Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) a non-profit organisation established for the purpose of creating and disseminating knowledge related to human settlements in the context of urban areas.

Mrs. Rama Bijapurkar is a respected thought leader on business-market strategy and on India’s consumer economy, and has four decades of experience in market research and marketing and business strategy consulting.

She is a very experienced independent director having served on the boards of several blue chip corporates including in the financial services sector, and social organisations and is professor of management practice at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and author of acclaimed books on India’s consumer market and consumer based business strategy.

Mrs. Bijapurkar holds a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in physics from the University of Delhi and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Past employment includes McKinsey & Company, MARG Marketing and Research Group (now AC Nielsen India) and full time consulting with Hindustan Lever Limited (now Hindustan Unilever Limited).

Mr. Milind Sarwate, Founder & CEO of Increate (https://increate.in), 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).

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.

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.

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 Post Graduate in Management from the Goa Institute of Management.

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, Fullerton India Credit Company (FICC) 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. Amarjyoti Barua holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Business Administration.

Mr. Barua is the Executive Vice President, Group Strategy, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (“M&M”) since May 2023. He is a member of Group Executive Board. In his current role, he is leading the Group Strategy Office and works with Group’s overall portfolio of businesses for growth over the short and long-term.

Prior to joining M&M, Mr. Barua was the Finance Leader for Oilfield Services & Equipment (OFSE) segment of Baker Hughes. 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 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.,

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 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.