Ruchi is a Venture Partner at Elevar. She is a core part of the India Investment team. Given her passion for the Elevar customer segment and deep interest in immersing herself in their lives, she is focussed on providing unbiased customer context for Elevar’s portfolio management, new investment underwriting and impact reporting processes.
Ruchi has been a career banker with over 25 years of experience. She has worked with leading financial institutions including HSBC, Standard Chartered and ANZ Grindlays in India, UK and Australia. During her banking career, she was exposed to multiple business verticals including Corporate and Institutional Banking, Commercial Banking and Private Banking across a variety of roles in sales, risk and project management. Her last role was as Country COO for HSBC Commercial Banking in India.
A few years back, Ruchi made a conscious decision to move out of banking and focus her work on areas that she is truly passionate about. Since then, she has worked as a consultant for a number of for-profit and not-for-profit firms on financial inclusion and livelihood related initiatives. This includes a stint with Jana Foundation (promoter of Jana Small Finance Bank) where she worked on financial literacy, distribution and skilling related projects for the lending entity’s 5 million strong client base. Her experience with these projects led her to join Elevar as she resonated with their customer-led investment thesis.
Ruchi has completed her BA (Eco Hons.) from Lady Shriram College, Delhi and MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi. She is a trained PCC level coach.
I have not come across many organisations so deeply invested in their end customers.
A day spent interacting with either our end customers or field staff of portfolio / potential investee companies, especially when it involves travel to a non metro location.
Passion and drive for creating a more equitable world.
It is a marathon and not a sprint.
My ideal day starts with a strong cup of filter coffee and my favourite business newspapers (I still swear by the print versions) and ends watching an espionage thriller on Netflix with my husband for company. One of my recent passions is cooking dinners with exotic menus for unsuspecting family and friends – a skill (as I call it!) acquired during the Covid lockdown.
