Dr. Kshama Fernandes is the Executive Chairperson of Northern Arc Investments. She served as the Managing Director and CEO of Northern Arc Capital from 2012 to 2022. She has extensive experience in capital markets, and has been previously involved in financial advisory, consulting and academia. Prior to joining Northern Arc Capital Limited, she was a Professor and Head of Finance at the Goa Institute of Management. She has worked on consulting assignments for the World Bank, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Government of India (Ministry of Finance), and NSE.IT, and was a core committee member of the Percy Mistry Committee on ‘Making Mumbai an International Financial Centre’.

She has also developed the SEBI mandated certification programme for derivatives for the National Stock Exchange and NCDEX. She graduated with an MBA and holds a Ph.D in Finance from Goa University and has a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. She is also a certified Financial Risk Manager.

Ashish Mehrotra is the Non-Executive Director for Northern Arc Investments. He is presently the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Northern Arc Group. He also serves as the Non-Executive Chairperson of Pragati Finserv, the microfinance subsidiary of Northern Arc Group.

Ashish has over 25 years of experience across Retail & Commercial Banking, Wealth Management, and Insurance. In his last role, he was the MD & CEO of Niva Bupa Health Insurance (previously known as Max Bupa Health Insurance). Before that, Ashish spent over 20 years at Citibank. He was previously a Managing Director and also the Retail Bank Head for Citibank India.
Ashish holds a Master of Business Administration Degree.

Mr. Chaitanya Pande is the founder of Polymath Capital Advisors and has over 18 years of experience in Investment management with specialization in Fixed Income and Structured Products as well as valuation and portfolio risk management. He started his career with Jardine Fleming before joining ICICI Prudential AMC, where he had an award-winning stint of 10 years as CIO & Head of Fixed Income.

His efficiency in fund management won him the title of India’s Most Astute Bond Investor by Asset Magazine for the year 2007 and the coveted Business Standard Fund Manager of the Year (Debt) – 2011 in addition to several other fund awards.

Mr. Theo Brouwers is a Director at Actiam Impact Investing, the development investment arm of Vivat Insurance, investing in the areas of Microfinance, SMEs and Agriculture in developing countries across the world. With AUM of over EUR 800 million, Actiam is one of the largest microfinance investors globally, and one the very largest institutions working solely for institutional investors. Theo is also the chairman of the investment committee of three of Actiam’s microfinance funds with investments in over 100 microfinance institutions across 45 countries. Prior to Actiam, Theo has been associated with a number of other leading organisations such as SNS Asset Management (Director & Board Member) and ING Bank Netherlands (Director, Sustainable Investing).

Theo holds a Master’s degree in Business Economics and Financial Economics (University of Tilburg) and a Master’s degree in Financial Planning (Erasmus University of Rotterdam).

Nick leads investor relations, co-investments and strategic partnerships for LeapFrog globally. In more than 15 years of private equity and business-building experience, Nick has raised more than $2 billion of institutional capital across a series of successful funds. He was previously director of strategy and communications at the FW Group, the UK’s largest SME focused fund manager, where he was head of new business ventures and investor relations and also co-founded FW Capital, the Group’s growth private equity arm. Nick is an advisory board member for the World Bank Group’s Operating Principles for Impact Measurement and was a founding member of the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association’s (EMPEA) Investor Relations & Marketing Community. He has earned an Executive MBA from Imperial College London, where he specialised in private equity and advanced strategy, achieving distinction.