Mar 2015 – Jun 2017 · 2 yrs 3 mos · Chennai

• Puneet served his last executive position at the IFMR Trust group, in his role as the CFO at IFMR Holdings, where his key responsibility was to create a group structure that would be more conducive to the growth of the group companies and enable better access to capital. As the CFO of the group, other key responsibilities included
• Working towards improving the efficiency of capital across the IFMR Holdings group including its subsidiaries. Given that the group is engaged in the provision of financial services, it is important that capital is available in a timely fashion.
• Work towards raising sub debt and quasi debt
• Managing Investor Relations
• Responsible for financial control systems
• Responsible for compliance/ finalisation of Accounts included consolidated accounts
• Puneet also had governance related roles and continued to serve on the boards of multiple group companies

Nov 2011 – Feb 2015 · 3 yrs 3 mos

• IFMR Rural Finance Services Pvt. Ltd (IRF) is a Private limited Company that works with objective to maximise the financial wellbeing of households and enterprises in remote rural areas by enabling access to a host of financial products and services for them.
• As a part of this role, Puneet was responsible for developing a model that would enable reaching a comprehensive suite of financial products and services to remote rural customers. The model is called the Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services or KGFS for short and translates into Regional Rural Financial Services. The KGFS model is applicable in all contexts where the customers require assisted transactions or in contexts where risk underwriting is primarily cash flow based. The model has applicability in organisations that offer multiple financial products as well.
• Puneet led a team that designed financial products such as insurance products (life, non life, asset, weather and catastrophe), savings/ investment products (including goal based products, pension), banking services (such as remittance and payment services) and credit products. While an important part of the work is to create underwriting frameworks, equally critical is aligning processes for these products to reduce transaction costs, offer better customer service and reduce operational risk.
• A large part of the work at IRF required an extensive use of technology to be able to reduce operational risk and costs. Use of a common technology front end also makes it easier to work with multiple products without the need of training employees on the use of technology every time new products are added, making it easier to add/ change products. Puneet was directly engaged in designing the Technology platform of IRF.

Oct 2007 – Jul 2017 · 9 yrs 9 mos

• Puneet was a part of the Founding team at the IFMR Trust Group. He took up multiple roles at different operating entities as well as the group level. He was directly involved with the conception of the retail and the technology parts of the business in the early years at the group.

Dec 2006 – Nov 2008 · 1 yr 11 mos

• Puneet is the founding member of IFMR Trust, a private (for profit) trust that works towards its mission "to ensure that all individuals and all enterprises have complete access to financial services". The Trust acts like a holding company and has made several investments, most of which are wholly owned subsidiaries.
• Puneet’s involvement at the Trust level requires him to act as a promoter on behalf of the Trust. He is involved in making capital investment decisions across the group companies, work towards setting up strong governance processes, act as a promoter director, be a part of important committees on the board of group companies, and be a part of raising equity into group companies.
• He is also responsible to help group companies develop a strong second line of management. In addition, Puneet is responsible for technology at IFMR Trust and jointly shares the responsibility for managing Trust infrastructure. He is closely involved in looking at the finance, accounts and compliance at the Trust level.

Dec 2006 – Jan 2008 · 1 yr 1 mo

Jul 2009 – Oct 2011 · 2 yrs 3 mos · Chennai Area, India

• IFMR Mezzanine Finance Pvt. Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the IFMR Trust and has been registered as a Non Bank Finance Company in India. The company is engaged in the provision of medium to long term capital to entities such as MFIs to enable them to grow. It intends to create a new class of liability side instruments for local financial institutions enabling them to grow by helping them meet their regulatory capital requirement.
• Puneet was involved in setting up the IFMR Mezzanine Finance from scratch with its set of strong underwriting criteria and a strong team that can evaluate such investments. He continued to act as the CEO of the company till all of the initial capital of the company was committed and suitable replacement was found to replace him as the CEO.

Nov 2008 – Jul 2009 · 8 mos · Chennai Area, India

• IFMR Ventures is a wholly owned subsidiary of IFMR Trust. IFMR Ventures is manages the Network Enterprises Fund, a Private equity fund, that makes investments in rural supply chain companies.
• Puneet was closely involved in conceptualising the fund, its registration, raising funds and making the first few investments from the fund.

May 2001 – Oct 2007 · 6 yrs 5 mos · Mumbai Area, India

• Puneet was responsible for creating & strengthening channels for delivery of financial services to low income households particularly in rural areas. His work included developing models for attracting capital for microfinance institutions, setting up capacity building organisations & attracting low cost funds for on-lending. He was involved in working on other innovative channels such as Credit Franchisees & Internet Kiosks. An important part of his role was to develop products & services suited to the needs of low income households.
• Puneet has also worked on regulatory issues including ones related to card based solutions, credit bureaus & related to development of products and services for the and setting up facilitative infrastructure for microfinance sector.