P.H. Ravikumar is a commercial banker with over 39 years of experience in the financial services sector. He was part of the core team which set up and built ICICI Bank Limited from inception. In banking, his experience spans the areas of retail, corporate and treasury banking in India and abroad. At ICICI Bank, his responsibilities included business strategy as also risk management and he helped this unit become an industry leader in a short span of time. As the Head of SME & Agri Business in the merged ICICI Bank, his role included building and growing the bank’s portfolio in these sectors both on liabilities as well as on assets side, apart from services to these sectors. In its first full year of functioning, the bank emerged as the second largest lender to the agri business sector in India, with disbursements of over INR 200 crores (USD 42 million). He was also the founder Managing Director and CEO of National Commodities & Derivatives Exchange Ltd. He and his team conceptualized and set up the Exchange.
Ravikumar is a Commerce graduate with professional qualifications as an associate of Indian Institute of Bankers and the Chartered Institute of Bankers London. He is also a Fellow of Securities Investments Institute, London.
He is on the boards of several other companies including Bharat Forge Ltd and Eveready Industries India Ltd.
Geoff Woolley is the Founder and Managing Director of Huntsman Gay Capital Impact Partners, a platform launching socially oriented investment funds. He is the Chair of Unitus Equity Fund and Unitus Capital, both leaders in microfinance investing and investment banking along with being a Board member of Unitus, the largest microfinance network in India. Geoff is currently launching the Sorenson Housing Opportunity Fund aimed at providing affordable housing to India’s masses. Geoff has worked in venture capital for 25 years founding and chairing Dominion Ventures, Inc. and European Venture Partners (now Kreos) funding more than 700 emerging growth companies, including Ceina, Coinstar, and Hotmail. His non-profit experience includes being the founding chairman of the NAMES Project Foundation, (the AIDS Memorial Quilt) and chairing the University Venture Fund at the University of Utah, the nation’s largest and most successful student led venture fund. His years of venture investing combined with his social focus has created a life devoted to solving major issues through solid investment skills. He holds a B.S. in Business Management from Brigham Young University and an M.B.A from the University of Utah. Geoff Woolley has been on the SKS Board since its inception and is an independent director.
M.R.’s expertise lies in managing operations in a large business environment, formulating business strategies and identifying new markets. An alumni of BITS Pilani, he has over 20 years of experience in Profit Centre Management, setting up distribution in Insurance, Retail Banking and Consumer Finance. Prior to SKS, he was associated with ING Vysya Life Insurance, American Express, Esanda Finanz & Leasing Ltd., Instyle Consumer Leasing and DCL Finance Ltd. At SKS, MR has been in the forefront driving it’s amazing growth story.
“We are today the largest microfinance institution in India reaching millions of poor households. As we race towards being the largest in the world, we look at creating a sustainable model of for-profit microfinance that the world can emulate. We look forward to a time when more and more MFIs use our model in order to scale up and reach the millions in need of an opportunity to get themselves out of poverty.”
MR Rao
Paresh Patel is the CEO of Sandstone Capital, an India-focused hedge fund. Sandstone is a value-oriented investment partnership focused on long-term opportunities in India, with a preference for deep value, special situations, midcaps and complex opportunities. Sandstone Capital has an office in Boston. Prior to Sandstone Capital LLC, Paresh Patel was the Managing Director of Sparta Group, the private investment office of Gururaj Deshpande, founder of Sycamore Networks. At Sparta, Paresh invested with Desh in early-stage ventures in the US and India - including A123 Systems, Indian Lotus, Relicore and Tejas Networks. Paresh is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Boston College.
“At SKS there is a unique opportunity to build one of India’s next great companies, such as Bharti, Infosys or L&T. SKS has the right pedigree of leadership, an enormous market where they possess a superior operating model, a desire to incorporate best practices in corporate governance and a passionate set of employees that are driven by the singular mission of enabling the poor, profitably. Our investment will give some of India’s poorest communities the opportunity to improve their lives while simultaneously providing investors returns that are uncorrelated to traditional finance businesses.”
Paresh Patel
Sumir Chadha is the Managing Director with WestBridge formerly Sequoia Capital. WestBridge formerly Sequoia Capital was formed by merging Sequoia Capital and WestBridge Capital Partners, India's leading venture capital fund, which Sumir co-founded in 2000. Sumir has been investing in the Indian venture capital industry for the past ten years in several industries including offshore services, consumer internet and financial services. Prior to co-founding WestBridge, Sumir was a member of the Principal Investment Area at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he led a number of successful software and services investments. Prior to that, Sumir worked at McKinsey & Co. in New York and New Delhi. Sumir received an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a BSE in Computer Science from Princeton University. Sumir is the co-founder and Chairman of the Global India Venture Capital Association (GIVCA) and also a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).
“SKS is a fantastic organisation because it is transforming India by improving the lives of millions of poor people. No other Indian institution is having such a powerful impact on poverty reduction in the country. Sequoia Capital is very proud to be associated with such a wonderful institution.”
Sumir Chadha
Dr. Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, has been a member of the faculty since 1993, where he studies, and works with, multinational and indigenous companies and investors in emerging markets worldwide. He has headed several MBA and executive education programmes at Harvard, focused on strategy, leadership and governance, and currently teaches in Harvard’s comprehensive general management executive education programmes. Additionally, he serves as Faculty Chair of Harvard Business School’s efforts in India. Outside Harvard, he serves on the boards of a number of publicly traded and privately held companies, volunteers time with nonprofits in the US and India, and mentors entrepreneurs in Asia. He earned a Bachelors of Science in Engineering degree from Princeton University in 1988, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1993. His best-selling book, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours South Asia : Harvard Business Press; Penguin Press.was published in 2008 and has been translated into numerous languages. In 2007, he was nominated to be a Young Global Leader (under 40) by the World Economic Forum. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of International Business.
“I am very proud of my association with SKS Microfinance which is doing good work in often difficult circumstances and making an extraordinary difference to millions of lives. My own professional activities take me to developing countries in all continents, thus I can offer the global view that good organisations are built, as is SKS, through a credible commitment to values and relentless focus on innovating and realising efficiencies. SKS is right amongst the top few in a list of great organisations. Its effect is already being felt worldwide.”
Dr Tarun Khanna
Chandrasekaran is a veteran in the banking industry with an extensive stint at the apex banking institution SIDBI. He has extensive exposure to understanding the needs and potential of the under-developed regions of the country, creating not only income generating avenues for the poor but also rural employment and overall rural economic growth, by virtue of his work at SIDBI. He retired recently as head of credit at SIDBI. He is an independent director on the board.
