Kartik Desai to join Kois as Partner (Asia)
Kartik Desai to join Kois as Partner (Asia)
Kois is pleased to announce that Mr. Kartikeya Nitin Desai is joining us as Partner to lead the firm’s advisory business across the Asian region based out of our offices in Mumbai, India. Kartik is a seasoned development finance leader with 17 years of experience in investment banking, private equity, venture capital and economic policy and is considered a pioneer of impact investing in India. He is currently serving his notice period as Executive Director of Asha Impact, an impact investment and policy advocacy organization for Indian business leaders he has led since 2014. He will join us full-time as of September 1, 2021.
Founder and Managing Partner of Kois Mr. Charles-Antoine Janssen said “We are delighted to welcome Kartik to our leadership team. We are excited by the expertise, relationships and passion he brings to the table, and working with him to grow our business and deepen its impact across our work in India and multiple Asian markets, as we together build a global platform to enable innovative finance for donors, corporates, governments and private funders.”
Said Serena Guarnaschelli, Partner (Kois) “Kartik brings impact investing and advocacy experience across each of our three areas of focus (i) education, skilling, employment, (ii) healthcare and wellness and (iii) climate and sustainability and we are very excited about having him join us in making Kois a global platform for catalyzing blended finance.”
Said Kartik Desai “It has been a privilege to help create Asha Impact, building a portfolio of incredible founders and leading a fantastic team on both the investments and policy side, and I am very thankful to Vikram and Pramod for their continued support. I strongly believe that the blended finance market is at an inflexion point with greater need for outcome-based funding and tri-sector collaboration in a post pandemic world, and couldn’t be more excited to be joining Charles, Francois, Serena and the rest of the Kois team to unlock greater capital for development and apply it to the most pressing existential issues facing humanity.”
Said Vikram Gandhi and Pramod Bhasin, Founders of Asha Impact “Kartik has played a pivotal role in Asha Impact’s formative years and we thank him for all his efforts in building the institution over the last seven years. We wish him well in his new endeavor as he pursues his passion for driving impact through social finance.”
Kois
Kois is a global impact finance firm with asset management and advisory businesses focused on impact investment and blended finance across three areas (i) education, skilling and employment, (ii) healthcare and wellness and (ii) climate and sustainability. It has offices in Brussels, Paris, London and Mumbai and works in both developed and emerging markets providing advisory, structuring and fund management services to governments, corporates, philanthropic and private funders. Kois is a pioneer in innovative finance, launching the first impact bond in Europe in 2014 and since advising over 50 blended finance transactions from refugee employment and humanitarian response in the Middle East to child protection and sustainable land use in Europe to blue-collar livelihoods and mental health in India.For more information please visit www.koisinvest.com
Asha Investment Platform is a capital-on-call ‘virtual fund’ to mobilise domestic capital from high net worth individuals and family offices to fund high quality for-profit social entrepreneurs solving major social problems by leveraging business principles in a scalable and sustainable manner across the country.
Asha Impact Trust
The Asha Impact Trust is a non profit entity to capture lessons from the experiences of investee companies and sector experts, and share these targeted insights with policymakers to create social impact at scale. The Trust also works to build the capacity of the impact investing ecosystem in India and globally.
Kartikeya N. Desai
Kartik grew up between Delhi, Geneva and New York and started his career in 2004 in the United States as a management consultant with BTS and projects with organisations like the UNDP and Rockefeller Foundation after graduating from Wharton and Columbia, before moving to India in 2005 to join Merrill Lynch in its investment banking and then private equity team based in Mumbai. In 2007 he transitioned to the development finance space and led fundraising and investments for two pioneering Indian impact funds – Lok Capital II, focused on financial inclusion in India, and Aavishkaar Frontier Fund, a multi-sector and geography fund focused on South and Southeast Asia – prior to helping found and lead Asha Impact, one of India’s most respected impact finance organisations, for the last seven years.
Over the last decade, from microfinance to affordable education, Kartik has built a track record of raising and deploying private capital across high quality social enterprises in sectors including financial inclusion, education, health, agriculture, waste, affordable housing and energy access, with multiple successful exits and industry awards. Beyond his role as an investor, Kartik has been active in market building and policy advocacy, leading the work of the Asha Impact Trust with government, regulatory, and philanthropic institutions, driving thought leadership through op-eds, research reports and white papers on impact investing and blended finance, and serving as a three-time elected board member of the Impact Investors Council and Co-Chair of its Ecosystem Committee on Blended Finance.
Kartik is a founder and mentor to NGOs in the inclusion, digital media and mental health space and an active angel investor in social enterprises working in remote or underserved parts of India. He has been part of various Government of India initiatives such as the PM’s Champions of Change and Parliamentarians and Innovators for India and is an active speaker and contributor to professional seminars, education institutions and government consultations on development finance. He graduated in 2002 with a BSc Economics (Finance and Management) from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and in 2004 with Masters in International Affairs (International Finance) from SIPA, Columbia University.
