As Indian microfinance institutions start gaining scale, they have started attracting top talent from financial institutions including private equity firms. In a recent move, Sandeep Lohani, the MFI operations director at Lok Capital, has joined India's second largest MFI firm Spandana Spoorthy Financial Ltd as chief operating officer (COO).
Spandana is also a portfolio company of Lok Capital, who in turn has recently appointed Ganesh Rengaswamy as a managing director. Rengaswamy was till recently Unitus' country director for MFI inititives. He was also a co-founder of travel portal Travelguru, and also started India investment practice for US-based VC firm Greylock Partners in a previous role.
Lok, which is raising a $80 million second fund to invest in bottom-of-pyramid opportunities, confirmed these development to VCCircle.
As Indian MFIs scale and have started having ambitions to list Spandana has also strengthened its top management by appointing Giri Giridhar as CFO, who was till recently at the same position at Aditya Birla Retail Ltd.
