Former Executive Director for India
International Monetary Fund
Surjit. S Bhalla is the Former member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council and Chairman of Oxus Research & Investments in New Delhi. He was the Former Executive Director for India at the International Monetary Fund. Dr Bhalla has worked as a research economist at the Rand Corporation, the Brookings Institution, in the Research and Treasury departments of the World Bank, and as a consultant to Warburg Pincus.
He is the author of Imagine There’s no Country (2002), Second Among Equals – The Middle Class Kingdoms of India and China (2007), Devaluing to Prosperity (2012), and most recently (2017) The New Wealth of Nations
He holds a PhD in Economics from Princeton University, a Master in Public and International Affairs from Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.
Professor (Cornell University)
Director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition
Ithaca, New York
Prabhu Pingali is a professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, with a joint appointment in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and Department of Global Development. Professor Pingali is the founding director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI). Prior to joining Cornell, he was the deputy director of the Agricultural Development Division of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, from 2008 to May 2013. He was director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Agriculture and Development Economics Division from 2002-2007.
Director
Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi
Chetan Ghate is the Director of the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi. He is also a Professor of Economics in the Economics and Planning Unit, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) – Delhi, since 2003. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Claremont Graduate University, California, in 1999. In 2014, he was awarded the Mahalanobis Memorial Gold Medal given to the best research economist in India under the age of 45. He was a member of the Reserve Bank of India’s first Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) until October 2020. Chetan is a member of the advisory committee of the National Accounts System (ACNAS) in the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation. He is also an external affiliate of the Centre for Research in Macroeconomics and Macro-Finance at Swansea University (Wales, UK).
Associate Professor
School of Public Administration
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada
Prof. Stephane Mechoulan is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Public Administration, Dalhousie University, Canada. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Northwestern University. He was a visiting researcher at Center for the Study of Law and Society, UC Berkeley and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
Ajay Mahajan is an experienced banker and financial services professional with over three decades with the financial sector in India. Ajay worked last as the MD & CEO of CARE Ratings Limited. He joined CARE Ratings in 2020 to drive a deep transformation at the company focusing on growth in both the ratings & non-ratings business as well as on re-engineering business processes with a deep penetration of technology including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Ajay started his career with Bank of America in 1990, went on to become the Head of Financial Markets in 1999. Under his leadership the bank also built a 100% NBFC in the country to do primary dealership and credit fixed income businesses.
In 2004, Ajay joined YES BANK as a founding member of the top management team and built this greenfield bank from scratch in three critical business areas – Financial Markets, Financial Institutions Group & International Banking and Retail Product Management including tying up with leading insurance players and various wealth management platforms. In 2008, Ajay was chosen to lead UBS’s foray into Indian banking. This was his second greenfield establishment of a new bank licence in the country. Ajay built the business from scratch to a reasonably profitable one with strong presence in corporate lending, financial markets and credit investments.
Prior to joining CARE, Ajay was with IDFC First Bank where he led a massive transformation of an Infrastructure sector focused NBFC into a universal bank with direct responsibility of building the wholesale bank across – SME to large corporate lending in working capital, term loans, Treasury, Transaction Banking & Government Banking. Besides, he led the challenging task of managing the legacy stressed assets book. Ajay spent 7 years at IDFC Bank, building teams, systems, processes and cuttingedge technologies to support the wholesale bank’s growth.
Padeep Kumar, PhD, CFA, is a Principal and Portfolio Manager for PGIM Fixed Income's Emerging Markets Debt Team. Mr. Kumar is responsible for developing EM local markets strategy. Prior to joining the Firm in 2019, Mr. Kumar was a Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of Emerging Markets at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) in Toronto. At OTPP he managed local market portfolios across emerging markets, which included a GBIEM index portfolio and an Absolute Return portfolio. Prior to OTPP, Mr. Kumar spent 13 years as a Portfolio Manager in the hedge fund industry. From 2005 through 2017 he was employed at several firms including Balyasny Asset Management, Woodbine Capital Advisors and Drake Management. During his time working in the hedge fund industry, he managed a fundamentally driven, discretionally global, macro portfolio with a focus on emerging markets. Prior to his experience in investment management, Mr. Kumar was a director in the emerging markets fixed income quantitative group at Citigroup. He joined Citigroup in 1997 as a research analyst in emerging markets where he worked on currency and interest rates models and developed quantitative trading strategies. He received a PhD in Economics from University of Alabama and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.
Prakash Singh is a Professor in the Finance and Accounting Area at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow since January 2006. He teaches courses in Financial Reporting and Analysis, Risk Management of Financial Institutions, Financing and Valuation of Start-ups in the MBA Program. Primarily, a Mechanical Engineer from HBTI, Kanpur (1993), Prof Singh has done his Master’s in Business Administration (1998) with specialization in Finance from Department of Management Studies, Lucknow University. Later, he did his PhD in Performance Evaluation of Indian Banking Sector Reforms from BITS, Pilani in 2004. Besides academics, he has also worked with Escorts Yamaha Motors Ltd and Kotak Mahindra Primus Ltd. Put together; he has close to 20+ years of work experience in industry and teaching.
During his stint at IIM, Lucknow, he has taken up various training and consulting assignments with organizations of repute; both private and government and has advised them on financial restructuring, valuation etc. He is on the Board of various government committees (both central and state) and also serves as Independent Director on the Board of some Non-Banking Finance Companies. At IIM, Lucknow, he is also the Co-Convener of SCIFI, (SIDBI Centre for Innovation in Financial Inclusion), an IIM, Lucknow - SIDBI/ DFID sponsored Incubation centre promoting Start-ups in the space of Fintech, Agritech, Rural livelihood and Women empowerment.
Arun Kumar Vaish is a banker turned academician turned entrepreneur. He is a chemical engineering graduate of 1984 batch from BITS-Pilani. Arun started his banking career as a specialist officer and served public and private sector banks in the areas of credit, retail and treasury. In 2006, he came back to the institute to pursue his academic interest and completed his PhD in 2013. He served the institute as a faculty for more than 16 years, including a term as a Head – Department of Economics and Finance. He was instrumental in the development of courses like- Derivatives & Risk Management, Financial Engineering and Financial Risk Analytics and Management. At present, Dr. Vaish is involved in running his two ventures- P2P Microfinance & Allied Services (founded in 2009) and Finquant Technologies Private Limited (incubated in 2019). He is passionate about financial inclusion, fin-tech and agri-tech.
ICAEF invites conference participants, students, and research scholars for the panel discussion, which will be held on 03.11.2023 (Friday) from 05.00 p.m. to 06.00 p.m.
Venue and Time
Venue: J C Chaudhry NAB Auditorium BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Date: 3 November, 2023
Time: 5:00 p.m.
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