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).

Raja leads the Private Equity Advisory Initiative for the Firm and covers sectors like Technology, Media and Financial Services Sector within Corporate Finance. Raja focuses on various aspects of deal making starting from deal origination and ideation, preliminary deal analysis, due diligence (financial and commercial), valuation, deal negotiation and advise on deal agreements. He also advises clients on post deal integration matters and ideation of exits for Private Equity Funds. Raja has advised and led more than 240+ deals over the past decade of transaction advisory experience and has worked with corporates (India and multinational) as well as leading Private Equity Funds.

Raja spent close to 20 years in one of the large accounting and advisory firms and had co-founded the transaction advisory practice.

• Association of International Wealth Management of India “India’s Top 100 Women in Finance 2020”.
• RSG Emerging Leaders 2019 ‘Top 20 Emerging Legal Leaders: India’
• Legal 500 APAC 2020 & 2019 ‘Leading Lawyer’
• AsiaLaw Leading Lawyers 2020 & 2019 ‘Distinguished Practitioner’
• Legal 500 2019 ‘Tier 1’ for Investment Funds
• Asialaw 2020 & 2019 ‘Outstanding’

Shagoofa has 22 years of post-qualification experience across structuring funds, managed accounts, fund documentation, private equity, acquisitions / exits / restructuring / joint ventures and strategic initiatives, international taxation and planning, corporate and commercial laws, business advisory, compliance and ethics advisory, audit and finance. She was in-house counsel, for 10 years, with leading Indian corporate houses.

She was Senior Vice President & Head – Legal at Kotak Investment Advisors Limited (KIAL), a subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank and its alternate assets management platform. As in-house counsel, she led due diligence, negotiation and documentation for several investments and exits as well as developing litigation strategy for execution and recovery of investments through enforcement of contracts against promoters and portfolio companies. At Kotak, she was also member of the core team that structured, negotiated and implemented the strategic infrastructure fund management joint venture between Kotak, SMBC Japan and Brookfield Asset Managers, Canada. Further, she was also responsible for compliance and regulatory matters on account of which she oversaw compliance and administration of funds and investment vehicles set up in Mauritius, Singapore and Cyprus and led negotiations with all institutional LPs in the funds.

Prior to joining Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Shagoofa was Senior Director and Head of Legal & Compliance with IDFC Alternatives Limited, the alternate assets manager of IDFC group. Prior to IDFC, she was Vice President (Group Legal Team) and reported into the Group General Counsel of Tata Sons Limited. Prior to Kotak, she was Head - Real Estate Funds practice and advised several offshore and domestic funds as well as Head - International Tax Policy practice at Nishith Desai Associates.

Anil is a Partner with the Deloitte Tax group. He has over twenty years of experience in the taxation department and has been seconded to the London office of Deloitte where he has obtained international work experience.

Anil has worked with the Deloitte M&A Tax and Global Oil and Gas Tax team whilst on secondment in London. He specialises in matters under the direct tax laws which have been in force in India, including international taxation. He has also been involved in conducting tax due diligence and tax structuring assignments of various clients including listed companies in India and has been providing tax structuring advise to several upstream companies in India with regard to their outbound investments.

Vaibhav Kakkar is a Partner in the Corporate and Regulatory Practices Team of Luthra & Luthra Law Offices, New Delhi and has over eleven years of experience. He has a unique mix of extensive regulatory and transactional expertise, and specializes in structuring transactions (especially cross-border), and advising on foreign investment/exchange laws, company law, securities laws, TMT laws and gaming laws.

As part of his profile, he has advised several global corporations on appropriate strategies in relation to investments in India and domestic and multinational clients on significant and complex corporate matters including cross border mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity transactions.

He has also taken the lead in drafting and negotiating the entire spectrum of definitive agreements and commercial contracts in relation to the same. He has in-depth experience with industry-specific legal and regulatory issues in sectors including (retail, real estate, telecommunications, gaming, hospitals, pharma, education mutual funds, education and the financial sector (banking and non-banking). He regularly advises and works with the Government on policy issues relating to company law, exchange control, and is key member of the Firm’s advocacy and policy development team.

On the transactional side, he has advised on many notable joint ventures including Tata Boeing, Tata-Starbucks, DLF-Pramerica Mutual Fund and Khazanah-IDFC road venture. He has advised clients including DLF, Moser Baer Group and Devyani International in raising capital totalling nearly USD 600 million from top-flight PE and financial investors.

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.

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