Kartikeya Desai

Founder & CEO, Desai & Associates

Kartikeya N Desai is the Founder and CEO of Desai & Associates, a mission-based innovative finance advisory and market building firm. We provide advisory services to public, philanthropic, and private capital providers on research, intervention design, strategy and structuring of blended and outcome financing solutions. We also enable market building through education, policy engagement and collaboratives that drive capital allocation for sustainable development and systems-level change.

Mr. Desai is Visiting Faculty at Ashoka University and other varsities and was selected as one of the Indian PM’s ‘Champions of Change’ in 2017 having played a key role in the development of social finance in India through his leadership of pioneering impact investing firms since 2005. Previously Mr. Desai helped found and led Asha Impact, a multi-family office and think tank for UHNIs and business leaders in India, was Partner in charge of Asia for Kois, a global innovative finance advisory firm, and Vice President at pioneering impact investment firms Aavishkaar and Lok Capital. He has served three terms on the Executive Committee of the IIC, an industry association of 50+ impact funds, and on the boards of several well known startups where he led Series-A VC investments including Vastu, Janadhar, Nepra, Gramophone, Adda 24/7, Avanti and Greenway.

Mr. Desai started his career in investment banking and private equity with DSP Merrill Lynch and ML Global Private Equity after graduating from the Wharton School and then Columbia University and working with the Rockefeller Foundation and BTS Group in New York and with the United Nations Development Program in West Africa.