About Us

Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, a retired Professor of IIM, Ahmedabad, has more than 38 years of experience in regional economic development, economic analysis and policy, international economics, and health economics. He holds a post-doctoral research fellowship from the University of Toronto and a PhD in Economics from M S University, Baroda. Earlier, he served as a consultant to State and Central governments, private sector institutions, and international organizations such as WHO, UNICEF, ADB, and World Bank. He has also been a member of various committees appointed by the Government and has more than 140 research papers and 22 books to his credit. Dr. Dholakia has served as an independent director on the Boards of many reputed companies from the public as well as private sectors. He is also serving on the Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India.

Associated with CareEdge since 2000, Mehul Pandya is the Managing Director & Group CEO of CareEdge. Over the years, Mehul Pandya has successfully incubated and nurtured the company’s business in India and abroad. He is a member of the Board of Directors for all subsidiaries of CareEdge while also being the Vice Chairman of the Association of Credit Rating Agencies in Asia (ACRAA). He also serves on the Board of the Association of Indian Rating Agencies (AIRA) and contributes towards US India Trade promotion by virtue of his position on the Board of USIIC.

A technocrat with a management background, Mehul Pandya is also a CFA charter holder from the CFA Institute, USA. Over the years, he has attended various leadership programmes at IIMA and the High Potentials Leadership Programme at Harvard Business School as well. Prior to joining CareEdge, he worked with a state-level financial institution in Gujarat for about four years and was instrumental in setting up an in-house credit rating cell for the screening of lending proposals. He has worked as a Consultant for the Asian Development Bank and conducted various training programmes on credit risk analysis in India and abroad.

An accomplished professional with over 20 years of experience in financial management, corporate accounting, IFRS, compliance and tax operations, Jinesh Shah currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer at CareEdge Ratings. Before this, he was the head of finance and accounts at India Ratings and Research Private Limited (Fitch Ratings). He has also worked with organisations such as Bramha Group of Companies (US-based investment fund), Hypo Real Estate Capital India Private Limited (German-based NBFC - Part of Hypo Real Estate Holding AG), ICICI Bank Limited, and Cornelius and Davar. Mr Shah, a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, holds a bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Mumbai University and IFRS certification from ICAI.

Nitesh Jain serves as the Chief Rating Officer at CareEdge Global IFSC Limited. With nearly two decades of experience in leadership positions across credit ratings, research, and advisory, Nitesh brings in-depth knowledge across various sectors. Before joining CareEdge Global, he held significant roles such as Senior Vice President at HDFC Bank Limited (the largest private sector bank in India) and Director at CRISIL (S&P Global's India-based subsidiary).

Nitesh's expertise includes establishing new businesses and processes, leading large teams and portfolios, and building relationships at the CXO level. He has also been a spokesperson at numerous industry forums and seminars and has authored several opinion pieces.

Nitesh is a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary. He also holds a Bachelor's degree in Commerce.

Rajani has nearly two decades of experience in the field of macro-economic research. Before joining CareEdge Ratings, she was the Chief Economist and Head of Research at Knight Frank. She has also worked with top institutions such as Aditya Birla Group, Kotak Bank, and J M Morgan Stanley. Actively devoted to demystifying the financial world, she regularly writes opinion pieces for business dailies on varied economic issues and occasionally delivers lectures at educational institutions. She is an alumna of the Delhi School of Economics and Lady Shri Ram College.

V Chandrasekaran is the Chairman of our Company. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant and retired Executive Director (Investment) LIC of India. He has more than 3 decades of experience in Life Insurance Finance, Housing Finance and Mutual Fund Investment, with adequate exposure to a gamut of Investments. Also involved in Investment decision making processes, Investment Monitoring & Accounting and Investment Research and Risk Management. He is a Board Member of Tata Asset Management Company Ltd., Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Paper Boards Ltd (TNPL), UTI Ventures Company Pvt Ltd, LIC HFL Asset Management Company Ltd and LEI India Ltd.

Dr. Sanjay Banerji has extensive experience in conducting research, teaching in academic institutions, and advising Governments and investment banks on the issues of finance and banking. He has held the position of Visiting Scholar for the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He has held positions such as Reader, Department of Finance and PhD Director at Essex Business School, served as Senior Lecturer (Finance) at University of Durham, and Assistant Professor at McGill University, Boston College, York University, and Jadavpur University. He was the Senior Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow, Institute of Development Economics at Boston University.

Dr. Dash currently serves as a Member of the Board, Compliance and Best Practice Committee on the African Private Capital Association, and held the position of Principal Credit Risk Officer for the African Development Bank Group, where he was responsible for assessing transaction risk and sovereign risk, along with profiling the borrowers. He possesses extensive global experience, having worked with several international organisations. His professional expertise includes sovereign and non-sovereign credit risk management, credit scoring, risk management policies and best practices, risk identification, risk governance, portfolio monitoring and management, among others.

Dr. Ajit Ranade has earlier served as Vice Chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics as well as Chief Economist of the Aditya Birla Group and ABN AMRO Bank. His professional career has spanned academic and corporate assignments, including teaching in universities in India and U.S. He has served as a member of several committees of the Reserve Bank of India. He was appointed a member of the Economic Task Force for post-Covid economic recovery by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Ranade is a trustee of Pune International Centre, Board member of MCCIA, and Chairs the Research Advisory Panel of the Indian Institute of Banking and Finance. He received his PhD in Economics from Brown University, US. Before that, he received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, after completing B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Arun Kumar Sharma is president of Grovepike Associates, a global strategic and financial advisory firm based in Washington D.C. He serves as a senior adviser to Mastercard, International Finance Corporation, and AXA insurance. He is a senior fellow at the Institute of International Finance in Washington D.C. Mr. Sharma serves on the Board of Yes Foundation, a leading non-profit organization driving transformative change in India through the creative use of social media and on the Board of Grass Roots Trading Network for Women, an Indian nonprofit organization linking women micro-entrepreneurs to markets on fair and equitable terms. Mr. Sharma served as a chief investment officer at the International Finance Corporation where we spent 28 years working in all emerging market regions. His work included the privatization of state-owned enterprises, the development of creative financing instruments, such as local currency guarantees and securitization and development of specialized lending entities to foster sustainable growth. His sectoral focus has included infrastructure, agri-business, affordable housing, renewable energy, and water and sanitation.

Paul has worked for 26 years for Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, working in all analytical segments of the business across Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He has extensive credit, analytical, and management expertise. Paul was the Executive Managing Director and Global Head of the Credit Ratings group at S&P based in New York. After the Financial Crisis, the Structured Finance group was placed under his supervision. He was globally responsible for all credit rating activities of S&P till 2015.

Ping has over 30 years of executive management, strategic planning, and research experience, with deep expertise in Food & Agribusiness and Sustainability in Asia. He spent 16 years at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services across Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, rising to Head of Greater China and CEO of S&P Ratings Services (Hong Kong and China), where he established a groundbreaking foreign-owned credit rating agency in China. He later served seven years as Asia Head of Food & Agribusiness Research & Advisory at Rabobank, leading thought-leading research, strategic frameworks, and advisory across multiple Asian jurisdictions. He served over eight years as a Major in the Singapore Armed Forces. He holds a BSc (Econ) in Econometrics from the London School of Economics and an MBA from the National University of Singapore.

A strong CXO level leader, Revati Kasture is Executive Director at CARE Ratings and has a total work experience of 25 years. She is responsible for business growth of the company in India, Africa and Nepal. In October 2024, she was appointed CEO of CareEdge Global IFSC Limited (CGIL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Care Ratings. CGIL is engaged in providing global scale and sovereign ratings. Prior to this she was heading the Criteria and Policy Department at CARE Ratings which entailed development of rating criteria, policy and rating models, process improvements as well as interacting with regulators. In the span of her career, she has managed multiple departments within CARE including the large corporate ratings, incubation and scale-up of industry research department making it a profit centre and Human Resources Department. Her ability to conceptualize and implement, combined with skills to lead cross functional teams has culminated into successful implementation of key projects in CareEdge Ratings.

Revati is an all-India merit rank holder Chartered Accountant and Cost Accountant and has been honoured with Professional Achiever- Woman award by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in December 2011. She is also awarded as one of India’s top 100 “Women in Finance” in Leading Category in March 2019. She is also on the Advisory Boards of Symbiosis Institute of Banking and Finance, Pune.