Dr. Bala Dharan, Ph.D., CPA, is Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Professor and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Law School and Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan School of Management.  He is also a Managing Director at Berkeley Research Group. He has provided consulting and expert testimony on corporate finance, accounting and auditing, business valuation, and corporate governance issues. He has been invited three times to the United States Congress to testify on financial reporting issues and has been a frequent invited speaker at various corporations and industry conferences. He has provided valuation and strategic consulting for several start-up businesses and helped co-found a software technology business serving the banking industry.

Professor Dharan is an award-winning teacher and has designed and taught dozens of corporate executive education offerings at Wharton School, Rice University, Indian School of Business, and other institutions. He has been a professor or visiting professor at leading global business schools, including MIT Sloan School of Management, University of California at Berkeley, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Indian School of Business, and Jones School of Management at Rice University. His research centers on the strategic use of financial information by managers and investors. He is a co-author of four textbooks.

Professor Dharan is a Certified Public Accountant (USA) with ABV (Accredited in Business Valuation) and CFF (Certified in Financial Forensics) credentials. He has a B.Tech degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, PGDM (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and MS and Ph.D. degrees in accounting from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Sridhar has over 24 years post qualification experience in tax and regulatory matters. A significant part of his career was spent in Delhi where he gained expertise in dealing with complex and varied tax and regulatory matters of multinational corporations. He shifted to Chennai in 2006 and prior to joining the Firm, ran a boutique consulting firm which specialized in tax, regulatory and M&A functions.

Sridhar is a tax partner in Grant Thornton LLP where he is responsible for the tax practice of Chennai and Kochi offices. He also responsible for the Transaction Tax practice of the firm for South India. Some of his key experiences include:

• Assistance in planning and execution of very large investments in India in the Special Economic Zones/ Free Trade Zone Models.
• Assistance in structuring foreign direct investments in various sectors including Special Economic Zones, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trading, e-commerce, financial services, infrastructure, real estate etc. in a tax efficient and regulatory compliant manner.
• Assistance in setting up business entities in India for various businesses in Company, partnership and LLP forms, including in Special Economic Zones (sector specific, free trade zones or multi product/ service units) or domestic units.
• Assistance in setting up offices abroad, making overseas investments and structuring acquisitions

Sridhar is a regular speaker at forums across India, including the ICAI, ICSI and various trade/professional bodies where he speaks on foreign direct investment policy, exchange control law, special economic zones and income-tax law. He has contributed to Policy making on the Special Economic Zone laws across state and central government agencies.

He is the author of a book on Exchange Control Law in India published by Bloomsbury.

Anil is a Partner with Deloitte India and is a part of the M&A Tax group. He has over 28 years of experience in handling matters pertaining to Indian tax and regulatory.  He is a Chief Growth Officer for Tax in Deloitte South Asia region. Anil has been seconded to the London office of Deloitte where he has obtained international work experience. He has worked with the Deloitte UK M&A Tax team. He specialises in matters under the direct tax laws which have been in force in India, including international taxation.

Anil has also been involved in conducting tax due diligence and tax structuring assignments of various clients including listed companies in India. He has been providing tax structuring advise to several upstream companies in India with regard to their outbound investments.

Anil has been speaking on various public forums on taxation. He has been writing articles published in various newspapers and technical magazines.