Imran Jafar

Imran Jafar is a Managing Partner at Gaja Capital.  Imran has 21 years of experience in Private Equity, Pharmaceuticals and Technology services. Prior to Gaja, Imran worked in a variety of roles of increasing responsibility at Dr Reddy’s and Wipro Technologies.

At Gaja, Imran leads investments in the Education and Consumer clusters. He has been closely involved with Gaja’s investments in Educational initiatives (Ed-Tech). Kangaroo kids (Pre-K and K-12), KOOH Sports (Performance Sports), Sportzvillage (Youth Sports), Eurokids (Pre-K and K-12), John Distilleries (AlcoBev), CL Educate (Supplemental Education) and Indus World Schools (K12).

Imran has post graduate degree in software engineering from BITS-Pilani and an MBA from IIM-Bangalore.

Alok Verma

Alok is a Senior Strategy Leader with over 20 years of experience in consulting across growth strategy, corporate strategy, mergers & acquisitions, market entry strategy, innovation & performance improvement advisory. He has led several commercial diligence engagements across Auto, IT, Pharma & Healthcare, Retail etc. He has had extensive international consulting experience being based out of US, India, Europe, and APAC. He works with Global Corporate Boards, Promoters, CEO’s, PE players as part of his Strategic Advisory efforts. Alok focuses on cross-industry solutions, leverages cutting edge thinking on Right to Win, Hypotheses Driven Approach and Design Thinking.

Alok works actively with Industry forums like CII, IDG, IACC, Assocham, FICCI, ET, ACMA and other trade forums/ academia interfaces. Alok is part of CII Future Business Council and is also part of its select committee on Artificial Intelligence.

Prior to Grant Thornton, Alok was Automotive Sector leader at a leading strategy firm. Some of Alok’s recent publications which captures his perspective on Innovation and disruption across Industry segments:

• Indian Auto Industry 2.0: Innovation, NPD and Globalization imperatives
• NextGen Automotive Technologies: Imperative India
• Innovation driven growth in India- Assocham Study
• Indo-US Trade: $500 Bn Roadmap- IACC Study

Alok is a Mechanical Engineer from IIT Delhi and an MBA from IIM Bangalore.

Shanthi Vijetha

Shanthi is a MBA Finance with 16 years experience in deal advisory and consulting. He started his career in management consulting with AF Ferguson/ Deloitte and moved to Grant Thornton to focus on deal advisory. His experience includes fund raising, M&A and AIM listing. He spent two years in the UK and gained deal experience in European context. His experience has been in the Technology, Retail and Media sectors with primary focus on PE/VC fund raising and cross border deals.

Kunal Shah

Kunal Shah is a Partner in PwC’s Tax & Regulatory – Financial Services team and has over 15 years’ experience in the field of Indian tax and regulations.  

He advises clients in the private equity and venture capital space (domestic and foreign), including real estate, infrastructure and debt funds, onshore and offshore fund structures, distribution waterfall, structuring of earned interest and tax due diligence. He has wide experience in the area of laws including Income tax, Corporate law, Foreign Exchange laws, FDI Policy, SEBI regulations, NBFC regulations, etc.

Kunal helps clients obtain regulatory approvals and tax certificates for investments or exits, and advises them on tax due diligence, and restructuring of their Indian businesses, profit repatriation strategies and capital structures, including waterfall sharing and transaction-related tax negotiation, at the time of exits, etc. He also advises NBFCs, portfolio managers, stock broking organisations, mutual funds, merchant banks, asset management companies, etc., on tax and regulatory matters. In addition, he works closely with leading financial services players and industry bodies in  their representations to policy-makers and tax authorities.

Kunal has a postgraduate degree  in Law and is also a Chartered Accountant.

Montek Mayal

Montek Mayal is a Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting. He is a member of the Economic Consulting practice and is based in New Delhi. He joined the firm in November 2009 as a Research Analyst and subsequently went on to lead the Economic Consulting and International Arbitration practice in India.

Montek specializes in the assessment of quantum, financial, economic and valuation issues in contentious and non-contentious matters. He also has a broad range of experience on issues including valuation of businesses and shares, calculation of lost profits, spectrum auctions, bid strategy development, market and economic analysis, and research.

Montek has developed and designed several of quantitative models to value and forecast different aspects of businesses such as: real estate, hospitality, telecommunications, oil & gas, mining, financial services, travel and hospitality, consumer and branded goods, media and aviation.

Montek acts as an expert for domestic and international arbitrations. Between 2017 to 2020 he has testified before numerous tribunals. For this work he has been recognised as a global leading expert witness by The International Who’s Who of Commercial Arbitration.

From 2016 to 2020 Montek was listed in Who’s Who Legal in the field of ‘Quantum of Damages’. They also recognized him as a Thought Leader in 2019 and again in 2020. He was also awarded the Achiever's Awards by Legal League Consulting for his contribution to Dispute Advisory and Expert Witness Services.

Montek is currently a Vice Chairman of the Society of Construction Law (SCL) in India, Co-chairman for SCL Young Leaders Group in India, and a guest faculty on Damages and Valuation for CIArb and ICAI. He also serves on the board of a joint venture with Intel Capital in the field of robotic surgeries.

Montek graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in mathematics and computer science from Colgate University in 2009. He is a CFA and CVA Charterholder.

Prasad Shetty

Prasad Shetty is a Managing Director in the Global Risk & Investigations practice at FTI Consulting and is based in Mumbai, India. His areas of expertise include forensic accounting, bribery and corruption reviews, employee misconduct investigations, internal audit and management reviews. Prasad has multi-geographic work experience including India, Africa, Middle East, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Prasad has over 15 years of forensics and risk consulting experience. Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Prasad was an Associate Partner with Ernst & Young for over six years and was the lead on multiple forensics investigations in the Indian sub-continent and Africa. Before Ernst & Young, Prasad worked with KPMG in India for over six years in risk consulting and revenue assurance. Before joining the “Big Four”, Prasad worked with Hutchison Essar Limited (now Vodafone) and AF Ferguson & Co. (now a member of Deloitte).

Prasad has been a speaker at several events and seminars on corporate governance, compliance, bribery and corruption, commercial disputes and arbitrations. He has also conducted various trainings for multinational corporations on managing fraud risks, employee code of conduct violations and improving corporate governance.

Prasad is a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and he has a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Mumbai University, India. He has also cleared the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) examination.

Raakhee Kulkarni

Raakhee Kulkarni currently heads the Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) Practice at GEF Capital Partners and is based in Mumbai. Prior to GEF, she was employed with ERM India for a span of 13 years and was leading the Transaction Services Practice.

She has a Master’s degree in Urban Environmental Management from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and a Diploma in Environmental Law from National Law School, Bangalore, India.

Raakhee has close to 20 years of combined experience largely within the consulting sphere and for the past two years in the private equity industry. Her experience involves projects in the sustainability domain covering environmental, health and safety. Her core competencies include transaction associated due diligence, liability assessment, compliance auditing and environmental risk assessment.

At GEF, she is primarily responsible for driving ESG implementation across the organization and the portfolio companies through:

• Undertaking a detailed ESG due diligence (using internationally recognized diligence frameworks)
• Tracking the company for progress achieved on ESG action plan and other impact metrics
• Incorporating Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and using key indicators to create a step change

Akila Agrawal

Karan Kalra

Karan is the founder of Bombay Law Chambers and has over 15 years of experience in the legal industry, having worked in house as well as with one of Indian most prestigious law firm Nishith Desai Associates, where along with being a leader of the M&A and PE practices, he also led the banking and financial services vertical.

His practice focuses largely on domestic and cross border venture capital and private equity transactions, M&As, JVs and structured finance along with providing regulatory and general corporate advice. Karan works across sectors and has domain expertise in financial services, technology, e-commerce, healthcare, renewables and core manufacturing. Further, Karan also has the experience working with one of the largest private banks in India, working across various verticals.

Karan completed his B.SL. LL.B. from Symbiosis Law School, Pune and has also pursued a masters from Northwestern University – Pritzer School of Law and Kellogg School of Management. He is eligible to practice law both in India and New York, USA.

Karan has regularly been recognised by various legal directories such as IFLR 1000, Legal 500 and the Financial Times - RSG Consulting Survey.