Independent Directors

Lord Meghnad Desai – Independent Director

Lord Meghnad Desai is a Non-Executive, Independent Professional Director at Elara. In addition to being the Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Puraskar in 2004 and the Padma Bhushan in 2008. He is the former chairman and active member of the British Labour Party. Lord Desai holds over 25 books and 200 articles in learned journals to his name and is also an Honorary Fellow of the London Stock Exchange. He holds a Masters Degree from University of Mumbai and is a PHD from University of Pennsylvania. He was awarded the ‘SKOCH CHALLENGER AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN ECONOMICS’ at a ceremony in New Delhi on Saturday, 22nd March 2014, presented by Dr. Montek Ahluwalia.

T.N.SHANKAR - Non-Executive Director

Shankar has twenty two years of experience, of which the last ten has been as head of manufacturing businesses in India and in South Africa. Key career achievements were, concluding a Joint venture with an Austrian company; setting up a green field project in India; Managing acquisition of an Engineering company in South Africa. Prior work includes Management consultancy for a premier consulting company and in corporate planning for a large conglomerate in India. Shankar is a Mechanical Engineer from IIT, Chennai and an MBA from IIM Bangalore.

Rakesh Puri - Non-Executive Director

Rakesh has over 20 years of post qualification progressive experience in Senior Positions in listed and multinational companies in securities market, finance, operations, compliance and legal, corporate secretarial, takeovers and managing IPOs and Institutional placements. Prior to joining Elara as Director in January 2007, he worked with CLSA Group. Rakesh has been involved with transaction management of IPOs/Rights/QIP/PE/Open offers of over 3 billion USD, namely TCS, NTPC, Suzlon, Kiri Dyes, Crompton Greaves, Emco, PCIL, Deccan Chronicle, E*Trade and Parabolic Drugs and has worked on numerous cross-border transactions. He has been responsible for setting up Elara in India and also for starting new offices in Singapore, Mauritius and New York. He is commerce graduate, holds a post graduate degree in Law (Professional), is fellow member of ICSI and also qualified CPA from USA . He also holds NSE´s Certification in Financial Markets in Equity, Compliance, Depository and Corporate Governance modules.Currently, Rakesh is practicing as a Corporate Lawyer, registered with Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa. He deals with with Companies Act, FDI, M&A, FEMA, SEBI Laws, RBI, NBFC, etc. and regularly appears before SEBI, Stock Exchanges, SAT, NCLT, NCLAT, High Court, etc.