My Story
The road from a Kendriya Vidyalaya classroom to global energy leadership — and everything in between.
I grew up studying in a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Himachal Pradesh — the kind of school that doesn't promise you Kellogg, or Wall Street, or a corner office anywhere. It teaches you something else instead: how to work with what you have, and how to want more without apologizing for it.
My first real job wasn't in a boardroom. It was at NTPC's Rihand power station — a small village posting, overhauling a 500 MW turbine with a 16-member crew, learning that leadership isn't a title, it's what you do when something's broken and people are looking at you to fix it. We finished that overhaul in a record 28 days. Nobody outside that plant ever heard about it. That was fine. I wasn't doing it to be heard.
In 2009, I sat for the 20 Services Selection Board in Bhopal — five days of group tasks, interviews, and the kind of scrutiny that's designed to find out who you really are when you're tired and there's nowhere left to perform from. I came out recommended, All India Merit Rank 4. It's still one of the things I'm proudest of — not because of the rank, but because of what the process demanded: honesty, under pressure, in front of people trained to spot the opposite.
I moved into banking — ICICI Bank, then IDFC First, then Citi, where I spent three years as Vice President in Corporate & Investment Banking, negotiating with the CEOs and CFOs of some of India's largest companies. I helped structure a $4 billion bond issuance — one of Asia's largest — and led financing deals across renewable energy, infrastructure, and telecom. Somewhere in there, I also started mentoring the junior associates on my team, and realized I liked that part as much as the deals themselves.
"I liked mentoring the junior associates as much as the deals themselves."
I earned my MBA at Kellogg School of Management — Dean's List, Magna Cum Laude. While there, I was selected as a Young Impact Scholar, a small group of students recognized for work making a genuine difference in the energy and sustainability space, and separately named to Grads to Watch in Sustainability by Trine. From there, I moved to NextEra Energy, the world's largest renewable energy company, working on business development for clean energy solutions in the US.
Today, I serve as AVP & Chief of Staff at the Aryaman Vikram Birla Office (AVBO), part of the Aditya Birla Group, overseeing renewables, digital infrastructure, special projects, and stakeholder management — including a ₹3,000 crore capital raise and the $1.8 billion acquisition of Sprng Energy from Shell.
Alongside the finance career, I co-founded an evening school that taught underprivileged children in rural India, co-authored an Amazon bestseller on banking and non-performing assets, and served as an ambassador for the World Bank's Global Youth Climate Network. Quietly, I also write poetry and perform theatre, because a career in numbers doesn't have to crowd out everything else.
I've spent years mentoring people through moments I once stood in myself: SSB aspirants preparing for their board, students preparing for IIM and M7 interviews, and professionals trying to figure out how to build a career between India and the US.
That's what this site is for.