Our Board
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Bindu Ananth
CHAIR
Dvara Money
Bindu is the Chair and Managing Trustee of Dvara Holdings (Formerly Dvara Trust). She was Board Chair of Northern Arc Capital from 2009 – 2018. Prior to this, Bindu worked in ICICI Bank’s microfinance team between 2001 and 2005 and was head of the new product development team within their Rural Banking Group in 2007.
She has an under-graduate degree in Economics from Madras University and Masters Degrees from the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) and Harvard University’s John. F. Kennedy School of Government.
Bindu has co-edited “Financial Engineering for Low-Income Households”, a book published by SAGE. She has also published in the Economic and Political Weekly, OECD Trade Paper Series and the Small Enterprise Development Journal. She was a member of three RBI Committees: financial inclusion, SME finance and housing securitisation. She was a member of the Taskforce of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Board of India (2017). She was a member of the Government of India’s High Level Committee on Women (2014-15) and the Tamil Nadu Government’s Expert Committee on Revival of MSMEs (2022).
She is an Independent Director of NeoGrowth Credit, Avanti Finance and Syngenta Foundation. Bindu was a recipient of the ET Prime Women’s Leadership Award in 2020.
Samir is the Executive Vice-Chair and Co-Founder of Dvara Holdings. He oversees the strategic direction of Dvara Holdings’ mission of financial inclusion and manages the portfolio of group companies, with over three decades of experience in building institutions and market infrastructure.
Prior to joining Dvara Holdings, he was the Managing Director & CEO of NCDEX, India’s largest agri focused commodities exchange. During his tenure, the exchange had transformational impact on India’s agri economy through various technology and digital initiatives. He also worked closely with the warehouse regulator WDRA and the capital markets regulator SEBI to launch National E-Repository Limited (NeRL) to provide India’s first repository services for electronic negotiable warehouse receipts, which farmers can use to avail formal sector agri credit.
Before NCDEX, he was the Chief Business Officer of the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX). At DGCX he led the growth of the exchange to make it the one of fastest growing exchange in the world, winning several global awards, amongst them were Contract of the Year and the Best Commodity Exchange in 2012.
Prior to this, he worked at global information company Thomson Reuters for 17 years, where he held various capacities including being the Global Head of Business Planning and Operations for a new inside-Sales unit at Thomson Reuters called Direct; also led Reuters’ India operations as the Managing Director in South Asia.
Samir began his career as an investment banker in Mumbai helping companies unlock value through public offerings and buy-out deals. He is an MBA in Finance, a Mechanical Engineer and has completed an Advanced Management Program from Wharton.