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Prior to joining Avendus he was Senior Vice President at Bennet Coleman (Times Group) where he helped the family set up their Family Office. He was instrumental in deciding the scope of the Family Office and its functions beyond wealth management, and the appropriate staffing thereof. The Family office functions included Succession Planning, Tax Planning, Wealth Management, Lifestyle Management, Entity management (for investment companies & Charity Trusts), CSR monitoring and advising on Board constitution of the companies in the group. He then served as the Head of the Family Office for the next 3.5 years. Simultaneously with being the Head Family Office at Times Group, he also worked with other families on their Succession and Estate Planning issues and assisted them with drafting Family Constitutions, formation of trusts and Wills. Over the last decade, since he entered the Estate and Succession planning field, Ashvini has worked with over 300 large and small families, successfully completing quite a few complex and conflictual Succession Planning assignments. This includes transfer of promoter shareholding of companies listed on stock-exchanges by obtaining requisite permissions from SEBI. Prior to joining Times Group, he was the Founder MD and CEO of Universal Trustees Private Limited (UTPL), a company co-promoted by Dileep Choksi and Pradip Shah with ICICI Group as an investor. At UTPL he was responsible for completely setting up the company from scratch and taking it to cash break-even. Ashvini has over 28 years of experience of which 11 years have been as an Estate & Succession Planning Professional. Prior to this he has worked in International Private Banking, Mutual Funds and Capital Markets. He has held senior leadership positions in Private Banking business of ICICI Bank in the USA and UK. He plays an active role in setting up the procedures and systems that in turn help the organisation to hold steady initially and reaps the dividends later reaching new heights. Ashvini is a LLM (Pro) from National Law University, Delhi, PG Diploma Holder in Trust & Estate Practice from STEP UK, an MBA in marketing and a commerce graduate. He is currently pursuing an Advanced Diploma in Family Dispute Resolution from NALSAR, Hyderabad. Ashvini is a member of Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners, UK (STEP), Family Firms Institute, Inc. USA (FFI) and Family office Exchange. He regularly contributes articles to the STEP Journal and The Practitioner by FFI. He has been a part of jury the ET Family Business Awards for the 2018 and 2019 editions and is a regular speaker at Family Business Program at SPJIMR. He has also been a guest speaker at IIM, Ahmedabad. He has also conducted sessions for CII and FICCI. He specialises in Estate and Succession Planning.

A Financial Services professional with deep expertise in Family Office and the Investment Advisory space, Nitai is the Lead for Investment Strategy and the Chairman’s Family Office at Hero MotoCorp Ltd., the world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer. Over the years, Nitai has been exposed to different asset classes and financial markets (domestic and global), giving him rich experience and an extensive network. As a part of Private Banks as well as Institutional and Boutique Multi and Single Family Offices, Nitai has worked with Ultra High Net Worth Families, Corporate Treasuries, and highly placed professionals/entrepreneurs. Nitai has been one of the earliest professionals to work on Family Offices in India, key to development and execution of the concept and the first-ever, commercial launch of Multi Family Office Services in the country. In the process, he also founded and managed an exclusive team of portfolio analytics specialists to cater to portfolio management needs of Family Offices. Nitai has been investing for nearly two decades across the globe’s Capital Markets in multiple asset classes, specializing in investments in unlisted ventures in sectors as diverse as air purification, electric vehicle manufacturing, co-living, multi-modal ride sharing, vernacular social media, mobile entertainment, sports data tech, logistics SaaS platforms, rooftop solar, B2B business platforms, smart kitchen devices, electric mobility infrastructure, and more. Currently leading the structure and team at a large, diverse, and global Single Family Office, Nitai's interests and expertise lie in dealing with complex structural issues (solutions around Family Governance, Global Wealth preservation and transmission) and also in implementing portfolio risk-reward optimization techniques (in theory as well as in practice). Nitai holds a degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and MBA from the Indian Institute of Management.

Soumya is the founder of Waterfield Advisors, India’s largest independent Multi Family Office and Wealth Advisory company and brings over 25 years of experience in financial services. She started her career with ANZ Grindlays Bank (later Standard Chartered Bank) and spent 17 years with the Bank, working in both India and Singapore. Her last assignment was heading the Private Banking division of Standard Chartered in India, before founding Waterfield in 2011. At Waterfield, Soumya advises several of India’s leading business families on their global investments, issues related to succession and the continuity of their family enterprise, corporate and family governance, business strategy and philanthropy. The company presently advises on global assets of ~US$4.3 bn and is one of the most awarded Wealth Management firms in the country. Soumya was recently featured in the Forbes India Women Power List 2021 and was awarded Outstanding Private Banker Asia Pacific by Private Banker International in 2021. Apart from being recognized as one of India’s top 100 women professionals in Finance, Soumya also serves on the Board of several non profit organizations in the education and healthcare space. She presently serves as a Trustee of Peepul, a charity focused on creating a school transformation platform for government schools in India; on the Advisory Council of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar’s Research Park and Entrepreneurship Centre; as a Board Member of the Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP, founded by Padma Vibhushan Dr. VS Arunachalam), a research Think-Tank that recommends public policy on the use of new emerging technologies for social and economic development in the areas of Energy, Climate Change and Infrastructure; and as a Trustee of The Banyan Acadamy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM), a non-profit that works in the area of mental health and homelessness. Soumya also serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director of Aavas Financiers, a listed housing finance company, engaged in the business of providing mortgage loans, primarily to the un-served, unreached and under served segments in India. Soumya was awarded the Radhakrishnan Scholarship to study at Oxford University, U.K, where she completed her Masters in Mathematics and holds a B.A (Hons) in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

Equalified Angel Investor (EAI)

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