Founder & Advisory Board

Ashima Goyal has been appointed as Emeritus Professor at IGIDR from January 1, 2020, for a term of five years. Her contribution and achievements in the field of Economics have won her multiple awards. She was the Member of the Economic Advisory Council Prime Minister until October 2020.

Ashima is one of the four most powerful women in Economics, a thought leader, by Business Today. She edits the Routledge journal Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies; has provided consultancy to ADB, DEA, GDN, UNDP, RBI, UN ESCAP, and WB; is active in the Indian policy debate. She contributes a monthly column to the Hindu Business Line, leading financial daily, and was a visiting fellow at Economic Growth.

Over the years of her service she has served several boards and policy committees and at present Ashima is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of India’s Central Bank. In her free time, she enjoys unwinding by listening to some old classical music.

Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is a senior columnist of the Hindustan Times, New Delhi, and served as the paper’s Foreign Editor for 20 years. He wrote about international politics and economic issues for the Telegraph and the Statesman newspapers in Calcutta from 1985 to 2000.. He served two terms on the National Security Advisory Board to two Prime Ministers of India from 2011 to 2015. He was a member of its task forces on maritime security, neighbourhood policy and China among others.

Pramit is also Distinguished Fellow and Head of Strategic Affairs at the Ananta Aspen Centre, the Indian affiliate of the Aspen Institute. As a member of the Aspen Strategy Group of India, he is a delegate for a number of track two strategic dialogues including those with the United States, China, Israel, South Korea, Turkey and a US-India-Japan trilateral. He is also a delegate for two track two climate dialogues with the US and the UK.

He remains a non-resident associate fellow with the last organization. He has lived in or travelled through more than 50 countries and enjoys reading in his pastime.

Sandeep Parekh is the Managing Partner of Finsec Law Advisors, a financial sector law firm based in Mumbai. He worked as an executive director at the Securities and Exchange Board of India and has been a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Over the years he has worked for law firms in Delhi, Mumbai, and Washington, D.C.

Sandeep is admitted to practice law in New York. He has published opinion pieces leading publications like the Financial Times and The Economic Times. He is the author of a well-received book “Fraud, Manipulation and Insider Trading in the Indian Securities Markets”. In 2008, Sandeep was recognized by the World Economic Forum as a “Young Global Leader”

Sandeep is an independent director on the board of HDFC Bank Ltd. He was the Chairman of SEBI’s Proxy Advisory working group and is a member of SEBI’s Mutual Fund Advisory Committee.

Douglas W. Arner is the Kerry Holdings Professor in Law, an RGC Senior Fellow, and Associate Dean (Taught Postgraduate) of the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. Douglas specialises in economic and financial law, regulation and development. He is author, co-author or editor of eighteen books, including The RegTech Book (Wiley 2019) which is comprehensive resource that offers an essential guide to the disruption, innovation, and opportunities of technology in the regulatory

Douglas is currently leading a major 5 year Hong Kong Research Grants Council Senior Research Fellowship project on the role of FinTech and RegTech in financial inclusion and the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as a 4 year RGC Research Impact Fund project focusing on FinTech policy and regulation.

Douglas is one of the core team of another TRS project focusing on digital finance, financial stability and financial inclusion. He led the development of one of the world’s largest massive open online courses (MOOC) on financial technology and has been a visiting professor or fellow at Duke University, Harvard University, the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research to name a few.

Dilip Cherian created Perfect Relations and is a leader in policy and external communications in India. He authors two widely read columns in leading Indian publications on macroeconomics, Indian bureaucracy, and polity.

His career spans over three decades in journalism, advocacy, and public relations. He has pioneered the concept of ‘Image Management’ in the country and is a valued political advisor. He authors two widely read columns in leading Indian publications on macroeconomics, Indian bureaucracy, and polity. Dilip has been variously an Economist, a Bureaucrat, an Editor, an Entrepreneur, and Mentor, in an energetic run that’s still on.

Currently, Dilip is an Independent Director at the Jagran Prakashan Group, publishers of India’s largest newspaper daily, Dainik Jagran. Apart from being a board member of many international firms, Mr. Cherian is a visiting faculty in many universities of repute such as the London School of Economics and IIM Ahmedabad. His guidance will help the firm in developing its external relations.

Dilip lives in New Delhi with his family and enjoys traveling extensively both locally and internationally (in non-Covid times)