Anshuman Prasad
Class of 2004


 

Can you tell us a little about your family background/ history?
My father was a geologist (a PhD from McMaster in Canada), but had studied a lot of management and finance. Later on in his career he had a few stints at the CEO-level in the oil exploration sector in private and public sector firms. In some ways his work-style still influences me. Even as a CEO my father was very hands-on in the technical aspects and was proud of his deep knowledge of oil exploration and geology.

Briefly describe your personal and professional achievements (including recent awards/ special projects).
Professionally, I have had the good fortune of being in entrepreneurial roles for the past 7-8 years in my current company, CRISIL Ltd. With CRISIL (and earlier Irevna), I have set-up 2 sizeable businesses. In 2011, I moved to London to build the Risk Modeling business and in the past 3 years we have built a truly world-class set-up and compete with the biggest names in this area. We now have a large world-class team of Quant PhDs, Statisticians and Econometricians that operate from centres across the globe. The first business that I had set up was the Derivatives vertical. I took over this vertical in 2006 when it was a very small and transformed it into a global business which still contributes a substantial amount to CRISIL revenues.
Another important achievement is being able to present our work at top Global Risk Conferences such as RISK USA and the GARP Annual Summit alongside famous academics such as Prof. John Hull and Prof. Rangarajan Sandaram. These were idols for us while we were studying in ISB.

Tell us about your profile pre-ISB, and recap your professional life after ISB, including your career progression.
My background prior to ISB was a little different in the sense that I had very little corporate work-ex. I had completed an MS in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and had worked for less than a year in internships and academic/research positions. After ISB, I joined a start-up called Irevna in a pure Finance role (Equity Research). The firm got acquired by CRISIL in 2005 but the start-up culture remained and I quickly progressed up the ranks to become the Global Head of a 100-strong business by 2008, i.e. within 4 years of passing out from B-School.

How do you think your time at ISB has contributed to your career and personal growth?
I think it has been one of the best decisions to go to ISB and I feel I got the timing absolutely right. I entered ISB with an open mind and wasn't fixated on any particular area. Through a process of natural selection and eliminations (read: rejections at campus interviews for marketing roles), I got into hardcore Finance. And somehow now when I look back - those were exactly the courses that I really liked the most at ISB. Being taught Finance from some of the leading lights in the academic world like Dr. Viral Acharya, Raghuram Rajan, Prof Rangarajan etc., has given me the confidence to pick up the most complex areas and do well in them.