Board of Directors

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Steve Hardgrave, Executive Director

Prior to launching Varthana Finance Private Limited, Steve was a Senior Managing Director at Gray Ghost Ventures, which invests in early-stage social purpose businesses. There, he conceptualized and incubated the Indian School Finance Company. Steve began his career working with ‘at-risk youth’ and ‘marginalized communities’ in Los Angeles while in university. He later worked with a community foundation in Mexico, where he launched his own successful microfinance institution. After seven years in Mexico, he pursued an MBA at the prestigious Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley, to strengthen his entrepreneurial and investment skills. He then joined the nascent impact investment community as one of the first Investment Managers at Omidyar Network’s “Financial Inclusion” initiative, before joining Gray Ghost Ventures. In 2012, Steve left Gray Ghost and moved from the US to India to set up Varthana.

Brajesh Mishra, Executive Director

Brajesh has nearly two decades of experience in financial services with one of the largest banks in India – ICICI Bank – in retail banking, automotive finance, rural and agri-lending. Brajesh left ICICI to join ISFC, India’s only other specialist school finance company, where he held COO and CEO roles and was instrumental in implementing credit processes, product diversification, and fundraising.

Anand Sudarshan, Independent Director

Anand Sudarshan is the Founder and Director of Sylvant Advisors Private Limited and an independent director at NIIT. Until June 2012, he served as Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of MaGE, where he had a distinguished career since May 2006. He currently advises companies and organizations in the education sector and is a fund advisor with TVS Capital Funds. He actively supports the Government of India in policy formulation and is a member of select committees and task forces of the Planning Commission of India and the Ministry of Human Resource Development. Before his tenure at MaGE, he was President of Adea International, a fully owned subsidiary of Adea Solutions, Inc., Dallas, TX, where he oversaw global business operations for the IT services and solutions company. In 1989, Anand co-founded the Microland Group and spent nearly 14 years helping build it into one of India's leading privately held technology companies. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, and a PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India.

Kumar Ramnathan, Independent Director

Kumar Ramanathan has held leadership roles at Britannia, Pepsi, and served as the Chief Marketing Officer of Vodafone India. He is the founder of Positive Integers, a company that designs customer value management solutions. He also served as an Independent Director on the boards of two Tata Group subsidiaries. With over 25 years of experience in consumer marketing across Britannia, Tetra Pak, Pepsi, and Vodafone, Kumar believes in the “confluence of the power of 'I' and the consumer’s power to know, unlocking the value of enterprise data.”

Nandita Ganapathy, Nominee Director

Nandita has 20 years of experience in financial services, working with global and Indian financial institutions such as ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and Northern Arc Capital. She also served on the Board of Northern Arc Investments – a leading impact alternate investment fund that facilitates debt investments in the financial inclusion sector. Nandita joined Kaizenvest as a Partner in 2021. Before that, she spent nine years at Northern Arc Capital, India's leading financial inclusion-focused lender and debt capital market platform. At Northern Arc, she held various leadership roles, including Head of Capital Markets, Chief Officer of Strategic Alliances, and Chief Financial Officer. Under her leadership, the placements and debt syndication business grew by over 10 times in six years. She successfully built and scaled partnerships with over 150 investors, including large multilateral agencies, development finance institutions (DFIs), and domestic investors such as public and private sector banks, mutual funds, and insurance companies. Through her work with regulators, intermediaries, and investors, she has contributed to deepening the market and improving access to capital for financially excluded borrowers in sectors such as microfinance, affordable housing, small business finance, vehicle finance, and agri finance. Nandita is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Mumbai University.

Ankit Singhal, Nominee Director

Ankit has nearly 13 years of experience working with distinguished organizations (such as Royal Dutch Shell, KPMG, GIC – Sovereign wealth fund of Singapore and currently ChrysCapital). He specializes in private equity investing, with a focus on financial services and fintech. At GIC, he led financial services coverage for the Private Equity team in India and helped deploy over $1.5 billion in equity capital across nine deals, achieving a strong track record. At ChrysCapital, Ankit leads the financial services sector investment vertical. He graduated with a B-Tech degree(Hons.) in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 2007 with a strong academic track record of 9.0 GPA, out of 10.0 placing him within the top 20 rank out of 335 students of the B-tech batch. He received an MBA from IIM Bangalore in 2011 with an excellent GPA of 3.54 out of 4, placing him with a 12th rank out of 353 students. He has cleared all levels of the CFA and CAIA (US affiliated) degree examinations.

Brahmanand Hegde, Independent Director

Brahmanand Hegde co-founded Vistaar Finance, an NBFC focused on micro, small, and medium (MSME) business financing, in 2010. He led the company and built a Rs.3000+ crore portfolio size. With a career spanning over 30 years before Vistaar, he worked with Bank of Maharashtra, ICICI Group, and Fullerton India Ltd. At ICICI, he established the agri and rural business financing vertical from scratch, growing the rural portfolio to ₹8,000+ crore within seven years, covering microfinance (MFIs), farmer finance, warehouse receipt finance, and more. During his short stint of 2.5 years with Fullerton India, he was responsible for piloting an innovative rural finance model including Microfinance, livelihood finance, MSMEs, and rural housing.