ABOUT US
Management Team
Puneet Nanda is Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Venture with responsibility and oversight of all verticals across its diversified alternative asset management platform. Mr. Nanda joined ICICI Venture in June 2020. Prior to joining ICICI Venture, Mr. Nanda served as Deputy Managing Director of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, one of India’s largest life insurance companies in the private sector with an AUM of over USD 20 billion as of March 31, 2020. Mr. Nanda was closely involved in the IPO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance which became the first insurance company to be publicly listed in India in 2016 at a valuation of USD 7 billion. Mr. Nanda served on the Board of Directors of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance from August 2010 until June 2020. He joined the company at its start-up stage in January 2001 as Head of the Investments function. During his 19+ years at the company, he was responsible for initially building and thereafter nurturing the high quality investments program of the company across asset classes including public and private equity, public and private debt, real estate and strategic investments. Subsequently, since 2010, his role was expanded to include oversight of other business functions of the company involving over 14,000 personnel across 500+ offices pan India as of March 2020. He has also served on the Board of Directors of ICICI Prudential Pension Funds Management Company as its Non-Executive Director between 2009 and June 2020. Prior to ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Mr. Nanda has worked at ICICI Securities and J.P. Morgan. Mr. Nanda received a B.E. from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur and PGDM (Finance and Marketing) from IIM Lucknow.
Beena has been associated with ICICI Venture for over two decades in various capacities and is currently the Chief Financial Officer of the organization. She has been involved in setting up and structuring exits of several domestic and cross border funds and is also credited with the restructuring of a cross border fund having investments in various countries, an assignment that was a first of its kind.
Currently, she is overseeing the accounting, audit, taxation and treasury function and is actively involved in the designing of internal controls and monitoring process for some of the portfolio companies. She has extensively worked on devising cross border tax efficient structure for deals.
She has played an active role in defining and shaping the regulatory environment of the industry and is credited for a number of measures introduced by the regulators to encourage the industry. She has participated in the Dr. Lahiri committee set up by SEBI to recommend changes to the regulatory environment of the industry and has made representations to several regulatory authorities including SEBI, RBI & CBDT.
She is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has completed an Executive Development Program at Harvard University, USA & has attended various programmes organised by the European Venture Capital Association, UK .
Gagandeep joined ICICI Venture in May 2008. He has lead successful investments and exits and represented the firm on boards of portfolio companies in financial services, consumer, pharma , business services e.g. Star Health, Team lease, Go Fashions. Previously, he was part of the investing team at WL Ross & Co LLC, managing buyouts/turnaround opportunities across financial services, consumer, pharma and manufacturing sectors. Gagandeep earlier worked in advisory division of CRISIL Limited (S&P company), providing strategy and financial consulting to clients in infrastructure space including Oil/Gas, power, coal and petrochemicals. He began his career as an Engineer with Engineers India Limited, where he worked from 1999 to 2002.
Gagandeep holds a M.B.A (PGDM) from Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta) and graduated as an engineer – B.E. (Mechanical Engineering)- from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh.
Kundan joined ICICI Venture in 2008. Since then, he has been involved with new business development and strategic fund-raising initiatives of the company across its different verticals, resulting in AUM/AUA expansion of over USD 4 billion for the company sourced from Indian and foreign investors through 9 different products. His focus areas include private fund formation, fund raising and investor relations with an experience straddling strategy formulation, fund structuring and formation, marketing strategy formulation, distribution, fund raising including investor negotiations and documentation, fund operations, investor relations, investor servicing and other organizational matters including corporate communications. He works closely with the MD and CEO and the various investment and corporate teams across various verticals at ICICI Venture.
Prior to joining ICICI Venture, he has previously worked at Aditya Birla Group (a leading Indian business conglomerate) in their Corporate Strategy and Business Development Group, Business Consulting Group (a leading Indian strategy consulting firm now called Avalon Consulting) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in their Corporate Finance and Investment Banking team. During his professional career spanning over 26 years, he has worked extensively both in India and overseas.
He completed his B.E with Honours and MMS with Honours from the Bombay University
Nikhil joined ICICI Venture in November 2017 as Director – Private Equity. Prior to joining ICICI Venture, Nikhil was Director – Asia Growth Capital at The Carlyle Group in their Mumbai office. Nikhil joined Carlyle in 2005 and during his tenure of twelve years, successfully made investments in businesses across financial services, pharma-healthcare, technology and manufacturing sectors. Nikhil was also actively involved in the post-investment portfolio management role serving as Director / observer on various portfolio company Boards and working with the respective managements on issues such as growth, international expansion, strategy, organization, fund-raising and corporate governance. With nine full and partial exits, he has experience across IPO, strategic & trade sale and share buybacks.
Nikhil had started his career with McKinsey & Company where he spent 4 years working on consulting engagements with senior managements of leading companies across consumer, banking, chemicals, oil and gas, and telecom. He has worked across multiple functions such as strategy, operations, business building and organization.
Nikhil is a graduate from Sri Ram College of Commerce and received his M.B.A. (PGDM) from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Pradeep has been with the ICICI group for more than 22 years including over 9 years in ICICI Venture. At ICICI Venture, Pradeep has jointly led the creation of the high-quality portfolio of India Real Estate Investment Fund (iREIF), India Advantage Fund Real Estate Series 2 (IAF RE S2) and also its exits besides leading exits from the residual portfolio of India Advantage Fund Real Estate Series 1 (IAF RE S1).
Prior to joining ICICI Venture, Pradeep was instrumental in the establishment and scale-up of ICICI Home Finance Company (a subsidiary of ICICI Bank) which became a key player in the affordable housing market across 300+ cities on a pan India basis.
Prior to this, Pradeep led the retail mortgages and real estate transaction & advisory business of ICICI Bank. He was a member of the core team that started the mortgage business of ICICI Bank and also led this business in various geographies across the country.
Pradeep brings with him significant experience and client relationships in the Indian real estate industry. Pradeep holds a Bachelor’s degree in BSc (Honours) – Electronics from Delhi University and MBA in Marketing
Rushank joined ICICI Venture in April 2007. He has led successful investments and exits in pharma, healthcare services and logistics sectors. With eight full exits, he has experience across IPO, strategic, exit to other financial sponsors and promoter buybacks. He began his career as an Article Trainee (part of the Chartered Accountant’s training program) with M/S Anil A. Mehta & Co from 1998-2000. He later worked as an Analyst with ANZ Investment Bank, before joining Pfizer’s Strategic Planning and Business Development division in 2002. In 2003, Rushank joined the Corporate Finance Department of Aditya Birla Group, where he worked as an internal group level investment banker and was involved in organic and inorganic growth proposals totaling USD 3.5 bn in 7 countries.
Rushank holds a Bachelors and Masters in Commerce from Mumbai University. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
Pooja joined ICICI Venture Funds Management Company Limited in 2012. She is responsible for the legal and compliance functions of ICICI Venture. She started her career as a litigator before moving to an in-house role. She has varied legal experience having worked in various sectors such as pharmaceuticals, FMCG, real estate and financial services. Since joining ICICI Venture, she has been actively involved in several investments and divestments made by funds managed by ICICI Venture (both in the private equity and real estate space). She has also been instrumental in structuring the infrastructure platform. Prior to joining ICICI Venture, she was with the Piramal Group, a well known and reputed diversified group in India. During her tenure with Piramal, she was part of the group’s merger & acquisition transactions including Piramal’s acquisition of a stake in Vodafone India. She was also actively involved in the private equity, real estate and financial services activities of the Piramal Group.
She is an alumna of ILS College, Pune.
Santanu has ~19 years experience in Indian financing space, particularly Infrastructure, covering both debt and equity. Since joining ICICI Venture in October 2014, Santanu has been part of the team that set up a Platform focused on buy-out of power projects in India. Prior to joining ICICI Venture, Santanu had spent ~9 years in ICICI Bank (Project Finance Group, focusing on Power sector and International Syndications Group) and ~4 years in Citigroup Global Markets India (Capital Markets team focusing on providing debt solution to Indian corporates).
Santanu is a Chartered Accountant and a Post Graduate Diploma holder in Business Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Sharad joined ICICI Venture’s Private Equity team in 2016. He has over 23 years of experience with ICICI Group, spanning across operating businesses, strategy, advisory & investments. He has spent last 14 years in Private Equity investment business and has managed transactions at multiple stages of the business with smaller to larger ticket sizes. Sharad has worked on transactions across sectors which include Consumer / Consumertech, BFSI / fintech, Agri, Manufacturing etc. He was founding member of team for early-stage growth private equity investment fund & has managed full life cycle of the fund. He also heads the ESG responsibilities for private equity business at ICICI Venture.
In his earlier role with SME Group of ICICI Bank, Sharad has seen larger set of companies across multiple industries across economic cycles. Sharad has also spent time with International Banking Group earlier with assignments in various countries.
Sharad holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering and MMS degree from University of Mumbai.
Tej Kapoor has 17 years of investing experience largely in the Venture Capital space. Prior to joining ICICI Venture in May 2024 he was Managing Partner at IvyCap Ventures, where he worked on investments across e-commerce, logistics, content, media, internet, and B2B information sectors. His work experience spans various geographies including the United States of America, India, China, and the United Kingdom.
Prior to IvyCap Ventures, Tej was the Global Partner at Fosun and Head of Fosun RZ Capital India and South-East Asia and was responsible for the overall fund performance for India and South-East Asia across Travel, Fin-Tech, Logistics, E- commerce and mobility Sectors. Prior to Fosun, Tej was the Country Head for Daily Mail Group (DMG) of London where he was responsible for overall growth of its India portfolio via investments, acquisitions and organic growth strategy and had also established the Daily Mail India office. Tej has worked with Naspers India as their Strategy head. He held several key positions at AOL in the US and was Sr Manager for AOL’s e-commerce division.
Tej holds a Master’s degree in Business Management from Johnson & Wales University and Bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Bangalore University. He also did Executive Education at Wharton Business School.
Rohan Pai joined ICICI Venture in July 2024. Rohan has over 15 years of corporate experience and been with ICICI Bank for 12 years prior to joining ICICI Venture. At ICICI Bank he has handled various roles including employee relations, capability building & employee service delivery across business groups for the HR function. He has played a pivotal role in setting up the Digitisation initiatives across all employees of the Bank as part of the employee service delivery architecture.
Rohan has also contributed in setting up the Digital Academy at the Bank for building Technology & Data skills in the workforce. He was also briefly deputed to New Development Bank (BRICS), Shanghai in its initial phase to establish the employee related systems and processes there.
Prior to ICICI Bank, Rohan has worked at 3i-Infotech Ltd. (erstwhile ICICI Infotech Ltd.) where he has handled the Banking products for their Asia-pacific geography clients.
Rohan is a gold medalist from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon and holds a Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Mumbai University.