Previous Occupation: Vice President at ICICI Venture
Present Occupation: Executive Director at Morgan Stanley Private Equity
Sector: Private Equity
Work Experience: 10 years
Professional Interests: Investing and discovering new investment opportunities, enabling entrepreneurs achieve their dreams
Personal Interest: Playing squash, reading and music

 

Tell us about yourself – your profile, recap your professional life after ISB including your career progression – Tell us about yourself – your profile, your professional life after ISB including your career progression.

I joined Morgan Stanley Private Equity in 2008 and am currently an Executive Director as part of the Asia core investment team. I focus on investing in unlisted Indian Companies across various sectors like education, logistics, infrastructure services, healthcare delivery to name a few. After graduating from the ISB in 2004, I joined ICICI Venture in their PE practice and focused on the pharma/ healthcare sector and also focused on international investing opportunities.

Any advice for the current class?

Stay focused, passionate, sincere and patient about what you do. The results will follow. And of course the friendships and tremendous network is for life. No learning is too trivial or unimportant.

How do you think the ISB has contributed to your career growth?

The ISB helped me hone my leadership skills, (I was the president of the Finance club), showed me that there is a world beyond classroom and enabled me to make a breakthrough in the investment buy side space. There were lots of other learning opportunities though formal interactions with corporates and many leading entrepreneurs/ CXOs, informal interactions through the AIKYA program network and also organising various activities for the school which helped develop management skills. Having three years of pre-ISB work experience also helped me to put class room discussions in context and contribute meaningfully in classroom discussions.

What is your vision for the School?

To be a top ten b-school globally, have its own fulltime faculty and also be known for original research in finance, marketing, leadership etc.

What are the strengths that the School can leverage upon and areas it can improve ?

The school has a very good alumni base now and an even more impressive corporate backing. However, finance placements still remain far from satisfactory and that is an area on which the school needs to work on. We need to work out a way to fit in summer internship (and I believe this year or next something is being done about this). The School also needs to build its research capabilities and a number of steps have been taken in this direction. It’s rare to see a school that has achieved so much in such less time and I am proud to be an ISBian.

One of the disadvantages of a one year course is not having overlap with the previous and next batch. This means that a batch loses out on a network of two classes. However, we do have orientation and other post course programs to ensure that happens bonding happens on campus.

What role do you think alums can play in building the School?

Alums can help by mentoring the current batch, helping in placements, and by contributing regularly to the school’s endowment fund to ensure that we are self-sufficient soon.

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