India Sustainable Investment Leadership Summit 2024

David Atkin is the CEO of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). The PRI is a UN-supported organisation, with more than 5,000 signatories who collectively represent over US $121 trillion in AUM. He is responsible for the PRI’s global operations. David previously served as the Deputy CEO for AMP Capital and prior to that spent almost 13 years as the CEO for Cbus Superannuation Fund, where he saw membership grow from 500,000 to over 750,000 and AUM rise to AUD $55 billion. David has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from La Trobe University for his work in the sustainable finance field, was awarded the Fund Executives Association Ltd (FEAL) Fund Executive of the Year in 2017 and was presented with an Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) Life Membership in 2020.

Navneet Munot is the MD & CEO of HDFC Asset Management Company Limited (HDFC AMC). He joined the firm in February 2021. HDFC AMC manages over Rs.7.5 lakh crore across Equity and Fixed Income Mutual Funds for over 1 crore investors across the country. Navneet is also the Chairman of the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI). A veteran of financial markets, Navneet has 3 decades of rich experience in the industry. Prior to joining HDFC AMC, he was the Executive director and Chief Investment officer of SBI Funds management Private Limited and was responsible for overseeing AUM over USD 150 billion across mutual funds and segregated accounts. Navneet was also a Director on the board of SBI Pension Funds (P) Limited. In prior assignments, he was the Executive Director & Head – multi-strategy boutique with Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Chief Investment Officer – Fixed Income and Hybrid Funds at Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund.

Tirthankar Patnaik is Chief Economist at the National Stock Exchange of India. He has over two decades of experience in the Indian capital markets, academic research, credit research in macro and sector strategy, quantitative finance, and consumer banking. At the National Stock Exchange, he leads research efforts in macroeconomics, financial markets, corporate governance & ESG and market microstructure. Dr. Patnaik started his career as a researcher at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) and worked on a number of academic and corporate projects in econometrics and quantitative finance, followed by a stint in consumer banking analytics as an analyst with the Global Consumer Group of Citibank in India and Europe. His next focus area was equity strategy for institutional clients, initially with Citigroup Global Markets as India equity strategist, and then with Religare Capital Markets Ltd, as the India Strategist and Chief Economist. In his last assignment prior to joining NSE, he was the Chief Strategist and Head of Research for India, at Japan-based Mizuho Bank. Tirthankar has a PhD from the IGIDR, Mumbai, where his area of research was high-frequency finance and market microstructure. He also has an MSc in Statistics, and a BSc in Mathematics, both from the University of Madras. He considers himself fortunate to have had a ring-side view of the growth story of the Indian economy and markets over the past two decades.

Rajesh is a long-term investor with tremendous breadth and depth of experience managing early stage investments, private equity and public equity funds for over 2 decades. He has on-the-ground experience across emerging market countries, analysing various industries and businesses spanning different stages of their lifecycle. Rajesh has the distinction of being the Founding Chair of the India chapter of CRUF, a global body set up for learning about and responding to the many accounting and regulatory changes that affect corporate reporting. He is a Board Member of the CFA Society India and of the Mumbai chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur), a global non-profit community that works to help entrepreneurs in all ways. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Apar Industries Limited. Rajesh started his career as Deputy Manager - Corporate Finance at SBI Capital Markets Limited in 1996 and swiftly moved into the Treasury & Investments Group where he was involved with investing in equity and fixed income securities. In 1999, he was hired by Dr. Mark Mobius to join the Emerging Markets Group (EMG) at Franklin Templeton in their Mumbai office. He spent the next 17 years working with Dr. Mobius, helping the EMG invest in equity markets across Asia, Africa, East Europe and Latin America. Rajesh managed investments in equities and equity related instruments of companies, large and small, listed and unlisted, across emerging market countries through public and private equity funds. His investment experience ranges all across the deal spectrum from deal sourcing, screening, financial modelling, evaluation, diligence, closing, post- investment monitoring including board representations, providing value-add to the investee company, working on exit and ensuring exits from such investments. He has also been instrumental in fund raising for all Franklin Templeton Private Equity funds and completely involved in related LP (Limited Partner) interactions globally. Rajesh has been active in the Indian startup ecosystem since 2007 when he made his first startup investment. Since then he has been a prolific angel investor having invested in over 20 startups, worked closely with the management teams in most cases and successfully secured exits in a handful of these startup investments. Rajesh is a Wharton alumnus in addition to being an XLRI management graduate specialising in finance and marketing. He is a CFA charter holder and has earned a post- graduate diploma in Securities Law from Mumbai University

Vidhu Shekhar is a member of the Research and Advocacy Committee of CFA Society India. Previously, he was the Senior Country Head, India for CFA Institute. Mr. Shekhar had a career spanning more than three decades in India and abroad, including the National Stock Exchange of India, IDBI Capital Markets, and as Managing Director of E*Trade Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd. He is a CFA charter holder and a founding member of CFA Society India. He was also the Vice President and a member of the Board of CFA Society India for several years. Mr. Shekhar has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a degree in Physics from Delhi University. He has contributed extensively to policy advocacy and research throughout his career and has been a member of several industry and regulatory committees during his career. He is currently a visiting professor at several business schools and teaches courses related to corporate governance, sustainability, and ethics

Dhruba Purkayastha is the Director at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), one of Asia’s leading not-for-profit policy research institutions and among the world’s top climate think tanks. Presently, Dhruba is also a visiting faculty at IIM-Calcutta and a Guest Faculty at IIM Ranchi where he teaches in the course on Climate Finance and Economics, and Management Consulting. Dhruba has over 30 years of experience in International Development Management Consulting, Financial Advisory, in areas of Financing Infrastructure & Energy sectors, Public Policy and Public-Private Partnerships, Climate Finance, and Energy Transition. His current research interests are in Financing Climate Investments, Greening Industrial Growth, Financing Adaptation & Resilience and Managing Climate Risk. Dhruba has worked in individual and leadership roles across global institutions at The World Bank Group and International Finance Corporation. He earlier worked in a leading Credit Rating Agency in India in Credit Ratings, Advisory, and then with a Management Consulting subsidiary of ICRA Ltd. Prior to joining CEEW recently, Dhruba was the India Director for Climate Policy Initiative (CPI). Dhruba is an Engineering graduate from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, a postgraduate in Management from IIM-Calcutta and a PhD from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi in Financing Infrastructure. Dhruba speaks at many sustainability and sustainable finance events nationally and globally and contributes to India’s submissions to the UNFCCC, and his views on climate issues are often quoted by domestic and international. He has many refereed journal publications, including some landmark contributes such as India’s Green Growth Imperative in The Project Syndicate, and is a contributor to the Handbook of Green Finance, Jeff Sachs Springer.

Nisha Poddar is a business journalist for over 20 years. She is the Managing Editor for Times Experiences and building YouTube channels for The Times Group. She has worked as an Anchor and Editor in various news channels like CNBC-TV18, ET Now, NDTV. In her 2 decades of journalism career she has built expertise in Conglomerates & Mergers & Acquisitions and cracked many impactful news stories. She was born and brought up in Kolkata.

Upendra Bhatt is the CEO of cKinetics, a specialist sustainability advisory and investment firm. He has over 25 years of experience focused on policy, regulation, and investment aspects of Climate financing in emerging economies besides the design and implementation rollout of financial instruments and facilities to drive investment into the climate positive /low carbon sectors.  Upendra led the team which developed the first India specific Green Taxonomy and subsequently anchored the formation of the market collective, Green Finance Leadership Collaborative. In the past, he has successfully helped establish investor led working groups such as India Initiative on DRE Financing etc. He has also served on India’s Ministry of Finance Task Force on Sustainable Finance and contributed as a sub-committee member working on developing a ‘Regulatory Framework for Sustainable Finance’. He has also been a Member of the Working group set up by NIIF, India’s sovereign fund, to further the Green finance uptake. Upendra has been a recent past Chair of Alliance for Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE). In addition, he has conceptualized cKers Finance, a Sustainability financier and serves as a board member /advisor to several start-ups in the Climate tech space.

Vibhuti Garg is Director, South Asia with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Vibhuti’s focus is on promoting sustainable development through influencing policy intervention on energy pricing, adoption of new technologies, subsidy reforms, enhancing clean energy access, access to capital and private participation in various areas of the energy sector. Vibhuti has over 19 years of experience. Her work includes enhancing national and international understanding of India’s progress; and helping inform governments, regulators, policy makers and financial institutions globally about the pace and opportunities of reforms in India; accelerating more finance into clean energy solutions to achieve decarbonisation of the energy sector in a more social and equitable manner and to help achieve the goals of energy security, self-reliant India. Vibhuti holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Hansraj College, Delhi University and Masters in Economics from Delhi School of Economics. She is currently the member with the U20 Climate Finance Task Force. She also attended DFAT’s Canberra Fellowships Program this year, an initiative that brings leaders from the Indo-Pacific to Australia to foster connections especially focusing on Climate Change, sustainability, the circular economy and renewable energy.

Dr. Arvind Ananthanarayanan, hold a Ph. D. in Physics with a specialization in Glass Science. He has moved into the field of equity research in September 2023, and focusses on ideas in the broad areas of energy transition, defense and technology. A firm believer in the mantra that the business makes the numbers, he looks for the winning edge in technical capability, which then translates to superior unit economics, profits and cash flows. He also serves on the board of Waaree Energies Ltd. as an independent director since August 2022.
Prior to ValueQuest, he has worked for over a decade at the Bhabha Atomics Research Centre, Department of Atomic Energy in the areas of nuclear waste immobilization and reprocessing. He has extensive research experience in the areas of nuclear energy, glass matrices and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and has authored over 45 papers in peer reviewed journals and nine patents covering areas of glass science, waste immobilization, radio nuclide sequestration and thermos-physical properties of functional glasses for energy, and biomedical applications.

Shamit joined ICICI Prudential AMC in February 2016, and oversees ~USD 4.4billion of assets advised for international investors. 
He brings 17+ years of asset management experience across investing, manager selection, products, global asset raising, and strategy. He has set up and advised several India equity and FI funds across Asia (incl Japan) and Europe, selected international  manager strategies, and is also helping implement ESG frameworks at the firm. Previously he worked with Nippon Life India Asset Management in Mumbai and Nippon Life Insurance in Tokyo, with past experience across firms in New York, Boston, Tokyo and Mumbai. He holds a MBA from Boston College, M.Com and B.Com degrees from University of Mumbai. He is a CFA Charterholder,  Board Member and Chairperson for Professional Learning at the CFA Society India

Brief Profile – Abhishek Loonker Abhishek Loonker is a Managing Director at South Asia Advisors, a sub-advisor to GEF Capital Partners. Mr. Loonker joined the firm in 2020 and is based in Mumbai, India. He focuses on mid-market growth opportunities in South Asia and is responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and managing investments at the firm. Mr. Loonker has over 17 years of professional experience in the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry. Prior to joining GEF Capital, Mr. Loonker spent 16 years at Ascent Capital, a leading Indian mid-market private equity firm and was part of the founding team. While there, he was involved in raising and managing three funds and worked on a number of investments across multiple sectors, including BigBasket.com, National Stock Exchange, RBL Bank, Cure Fit and GMR Energy. Previously, he worked as a Project manager with JGI Ventures where he consulted with several start-ups firms. Mr. Loonker serves on the board of Concord Enviro Systems, a Global Environment Fund portfolio company. He also serves as a Director on the board of the CFA Society – India. Mr. Loonker received an MBA from MATS School of Business where he was a gold medalist and a Bachelor in Business Administration from HL College, Gujarat University. He has also completed an executive education program in Corporate restructuring and M&A from Harvard Business School. Mr. Loonker is a CFA charterholder and has been recognized as a ’40 under 40’ in the Alternative Investment industry by AIWMI & IAAIF in 2018.

Hardik is a sustainability-focused leader with over 15 years of experience spread across Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) research & investing, Climate Change and Carbon Credits advisory, and Business Intelligence domains. Hardik focuses on strengthening DSP’s ESG and sustainable investment efforts and collaborating with the investment teams to provide integrated solutions to clients in India and globally. At GMO, Hardik was responsible for building its global ESG capability across investment product areas and asset classes. His efforts included creation of GMO’s proprietary country ESG model as well as the company-level GMO ESG Score, helping various investment teams with their ESG integration and engagement efforts, and designing Fund level ESG reports for GMO strategies. Prior to joining GMO in 2017, he led a global team of analysts focused on ESG ratings and thematic research at Sustainalytics. Previously, he was an ESG Ratings associate at MSCI and, as a senior climate change consultant with Ernst & Young, has helped register a wide variety of carbon credit projects with the UNFCCC under the Clean Development Mechanism defined in the Kyoto Protocol. An engineering graduate, Hardik also holds a post-graduate diploma in management (Finance), the Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting (FSA) credential issued by the SASB, Sustainability, the Climate Risk (SCR) credential by the GARP, and the CFA charter.

Labanya Prakash Jena is working as a sustainable finance specialist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and consultant (sustainable finance) at CEEW. He earlier led the Centre for Sustainable Finance, Climate Policy Initiative (cpi). Before this, he was working as the Regional Climate Finance Adviser Indo-Pacific Region at the Commonwealth Secretariat. Prior to this, he was a sustainable finance consultant for UNDP – leading the drafting of India's sustainable finance roadmap in association with the Ministry of Finance. He holds a Master's in Economics from Utkal University. He is also a CFA Charter holder. Besides, he is a Doctoral Scholar at XLRI, Jamshedpur. He is a prolific writer on climate change, sustainability, and finance.

Mohan Kumar Prabhu, CFA, currently serves as the Director, Investment Consulting at Aon Consulting India and heads their Investment Consulting Strategic Client Delivery Solutions business responsible for delivering digital client solutions and reporting capabilities for the wealth solutions verticals of Aon globally. As part of this role, he also leads a team of ESG product specialists and technology professionals, responsible for creating market leading ESG analytics and reporting solutions for Aon’s clients. He is also the Business Lead for Aon’s offshore investment manager research and portfolio analytics team, wherein he is responsible for business strategy and growth, client engagement and new transitions, people management, technology engagement and overall day-to-day operational service delivery of the business. He has over 18 years’ experience in the financial services space with expertise in investment consulting, ESG, investment banking, corporate finance, equity research, corporate governance research and offshore delivery management. Prior to Aon India, he has worked with InGovern Research Services, Bank of America Merrill Mynch and WNS Global Services in various financial services roles. Mohan holds an MBA in Finance from Welingkar Institute of Management, India and an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, India. He is also a CFA charter holder and FRM charter holder and is an active volunteer member for the CFA Society of India. He sits on CFA Society’s Research and Advocacy committee for its ESG and GIPS advocacy initiatives and co-chairs the CFA Society’s ESG Working Group. He is also a Certified Ethics Trainer with CFA Institute India

Ankur Gupta is Vice President, Sustainable Investing for Northern Trust Asset Management In the current role, he is responsible for ESG integration across asset classes, managing proprietary in house ESG rating covering 12 k+ listed entities, research, idea generation and product development for the Sustainable Investing strategy suite Ankur works closely with the global investment teams, sales, products other global partners to integrate sustainability across asset classes, create new investment strategies, external client engagements, industry advocacy and thought leadership. Ankur has 16 years of industry experience in product management, research and sustainable investing He is based in India and have worked/travelled across various global locations in APAC, EMEA and NA region In previous roles, Ankur has headed the global ESG data analytics team in Invesco for 6 years and lead the client engagements industry advocacy initiatives globally He has also worked as a product manager at Broadridge Financial Solutions and CGI for 8 years doing market research, product management, creating strategic roadmap for wealth management and trade processing solutions. Ankur holds a Bachelor of Technology degree specialized in Electronics and communications from the ICFAI University, a CFA charter holder and a certified ESG professional having completed “Certificate in ESG investing” by CFA Institute He is also an active volunteer in CFA Society India, ESG Research and Advocacy group leading various industry advocacy and policy efforts in the region.

Priyanka is an ESG professional with 12+ years of experience in sustainable finance, environment, climate change and related fields. She is currently handling ESG integration and stewardship initiatives at SBI Funds Management Limited, across all asset classes and represents the AMC on all global and domestic ESG related forums. She has also been a member of the SEBI and AMFI ESG Committees. She has previously worked on ESG ratings and AI tools to automate ESG analysis at MSCI, on environmental and climate change policy frameworks, outreach and knowledge creation at FICCI, on environmental impact assessments at Ramky Enviro Engineers and has also taught environmental studies to University Graduates in Delhi and Mumbai. She is a postgraduate in Environmental Studies from TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi, and a sustainability enthusiast who contributes to various sustainable finance and ESG related institutional publications. She has completed the CFA Institute's certificate course in ESG Investing.

Ojaswa Anand is a member of the Sustainable Finance team at cKinetics. He has been involved in developing a climate risk assessment framework for the capital markets. He has hands-on experience in different facets of ESG consulting. He holds a master's in renewable and an undergrad in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.