Pradip P Shah

Pradip P Shah runs IndAsia, a corporate finance, private equity, and investment advisory business. He is also the co-founder of www.Grow-Trees.com, a web-enabled social initiative, and Universal Trustees Private Limited. Earlier, IndAsia had a joint venture with AMP of Australia for the private equity business. Prior to that, he helped establish the Indocean Fund in 1994, the first foreign India-dedicated private equity fund, in association with affiliates of Chase Capital Partners and Soros Fund Management.

Before starting Indocean, he was the founder Managing Director of CRISIL, India’s first and largest credit rating agency. Mr. Shah provided technical assistance and training to Rating Agency Malaysia Berhad and MAALOT. He has been honored with a garden of a hundred trees in his name in Israel.

Prior to founding CRISIL, Mr. Shah assisted in founding Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), India’s first retail housing finance company, in 1977. He was seconded from ICICI, where he was Project Officer, to start HDFC from where he was seconded to start CRISIL. Mr. Shah has also served as a consultant to USAID, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Mr. Shah holds an MBA from Harvard, a B.Com degree from Bombay University, is a Cost Accountant and ranked first in India in the Chartered Accountants’ examinations.

He has written articles and given talks in India and in Amsterdam, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Shanghai, Bali, Colombo, Tel Aviv, London, Oslo, Washington, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney on credit rating, housing finance, capital markets, venture capital and other subjects.

Mr. Shah is currently Chairman of Wyeth, Sonata Software and Shah Foods and a Director of Asset Reconstruction Company (India), BASF (India), Godrej & Boyce, Hardy Oil and Gas (U.K.), Panasonic Energy India, Pfizer and Tata Investment Corporation amongst other companies. He is currently Chairman of the Capital Markets Committee of the Indian Merchants’ Chamber, member of the National Executive Committee of FICCI, was a Director on the Western Region Board of the Reserve Bank of India, was the first Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Financial Sector Committee, and has served as a member of the Finance Commission of the State Government of Gujarat; of the Expert Group on Infrastructure Financing appointed by the Government of India; of the Advisory Board of the Bureau of State Public Enterprises, Government of Maharashtra; of the CII National Task Force on Non-Performing Assets; of the SEBI Committee on Venture Capital; of the SIDBI Working Group on Access to Capital Markets for Small Industries; of the Expert Committee, Public Sector Restructuring Program, Government of Gujarat, and of the Gujarat Infrastructure Development Board Task Force on Policy and Implementation. He is also associated with several non-profit organizations as Trustee/Governing Council Member, and co-founded Harvard Business School Association of India.