P. H. Ravikumar
Purnam Hayagreeva Ravikumar (born July, 1951) is an Indian financial services sector professional. He has over four decades of financial services sector across banking, non-bank finance segment, microfinance, exchanges, stressed assets and mutual funds.
Career
He started his career with Bank of India in 1972 as a probationary officer at Kolkata. He subsequently served in Bihar (Patna) for about 8 years, Paris (for about 6 years), Chennai (for about 4 years) and Delhi (for about 2 years). In Bank of India he has worked across corporate, retail and treasury segments of the bank both in India and abroad and at operating and control office levels.
He moved in 1994 as a core member of the team to set up and grow ICICI Bank. As a part of the core team, he was part of all policy and structural evolution of the Bank. He was initially head of treasury of the Bank and later took over as head of corporate banking. Prior to merger of ICICI Bank with its promoting entity ICICI Ltd., he moved from the Bank to ICICI Ltd as head of corporate banking for Western and Southern Indian. Post merger of ICICI Ltd with ICICI Bank, he became the Senior General Manager heading the function of building the small and medium enterprises business and agri business. As a part of this responsibility, he drove a mandate with Government of India to set up a national level Commodity Exchange. For this purpose he put together a consortium of ICICI Bank, LIC, NABARD & National Stock Exchange. Subsequently, he worked to get CRISIL, IFFCO, Punjab National Bank and Canara Bank as shareholders. He was seconded initially by ICICI Bank to head the exchange which is called the National Commodity and Derivative Exchange (NCDEX) which is headquartered at Mumbai. He remained the founding MD &CEO of the Exchange from 2003 to 2008. In 2006 ICICI Bank sold their share of 15% equity in NCDEX to Goldman Sachs for about Rs.270 crores (about USD.60 million). NCDEX emerged as among the largest agro commodity exchanges in the world.
From NCDEX he moved on to set up an Asset Reconstruction Company (ARC) called Invent Assets Securitisation & Reconstruction Corp. Ltd.(Invent) where again he is the founder MD and CEO from 2009 to December 2012. At Invent, he raised about Rs.100 crores of capital from a clutch of institutions and built an AUM of about Rs.200 crores.
He is the Chairman of SKS Microfinance Ltd. which is one of the largest microfinance institutions in India with total asset base of about Rs.7,000 crores ( one billion dollars). He took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors of SKS Microfinance Ltd. in November, 2011 at the height of a crisis as a result of (i) the passage of A.P. MFI Act (ii) accumulated loss of about Rs.1300 crores and (iii) the departure of the promoter owing to differences with shareholders. He steered - along with the executive management team - the Company back to financial health. The Company today is a profitable company again with a USD 1.2 billion market cap
He is the also Chairman of Vastu Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. (Vastu) which he co founded with two other colleagues. Vastu is an affordable housing finance company focussed on lower middle class and in particular on self-employed. Vastu is funded by Multiples Private Equity, Mr.Pramod Bhasin, Mr.Samir Bhatia and Mr.Vikram Gandhi. He is further a member of the Board of Directors of listed companies like Bharat Forge Ltd., Escorts Ltd., IG Petrochemicals Ltd and McNally Bharat Engineering Co. Ltd. He is further a member of the Board of Directors of L&T Investment Management Co. Ltd., BOB Capital Markets Ltd., UTI Retirement Solutions Ltd. and Aditya Birla Private Equity which are all large unlisted companies. He is also the Chairperson of the India Advisory Board of Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment, the largest training Institute in the securities market space in U.K.
He is a University rank holder in his Commerce graduation degree exam and has obtained distinction at the Senior Diploma in French examination. He stood Fifth in CAIIB (Part II) All India Examination, has received Calcutta Banker’s Association prize for securing highest marks in higher accountancy (CAIIB Part II) Examination in entire India. He was the first Indian banker to be awarded a Gold medal for excellence in Banking by French Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Economy. He is also the first Indian to be awarded Honorary fellowship by the Chartered Institute of Securities & Investments U.K.
Personal life
Mr.Ravikumar is married. His wife - Mrs.Namagiri Ravikumar is a gold medallist in post graduate mathematics from Madras and a fellow of Chartered Institute of Bankers, London. She has been also a banker and was with Bank of India for about 18 years. He has two daughters.