Sanjay Darbha

Founder & CEO

Sanjay is a strategy and management expert with vast experience leading technology enabled business transformation in diverse sectors including IT, Finance, Utilities and retail.

As Founder & CEO, Sanjay is leading the business development strategy to bring together lenders and borrowers to transact with ease, convenience, and peace of mind. He founded PeerLend based on a simple observation that Crowd-Lending is the most effective way to meet the immense demand for hand loans in India where traditional borrowing for relatively small sized loans is mostly informal and ridden with high transaction costs, significant collateral needs, and long lead times.

Prior to PeerLend, as CEO at Everest Technologies, Sanjay led their offshore delivery centre of more than 100 technology professionals, providing strategic and operational guidance in delivering software services in the Retail domain for various apparel and food companies in the US. Prior to that, Sanjay was responsible for leading and harnessing the technology platform at SKS Microfinance and SKS Trusts to develop alternate lines of business and support multiple enterprise-wide service solutions.

An entrepreneur at heart, Sanjay has deep interest in financial inclusion and has conceptualized various innovative business models in the areas like Payment systems, Remittances, Investment products targeting BoP and Rural markets. He continues to envision and experiment with unique and transformational solutions in this space and was involved in the concept and project development of Mobile payment systems in partnership with EKO and mChek.

Sanjay has an executive MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, and received his Masters in Computer Applications from Osmania University, Hyderabad.

Jogesh Malapaka

Vice President - Technology

With more than a decade experience in delivering enterprise-wide technology solutions across Banking and Insurance domains, Jogesh owns the technical delivery of our P2P platform. He works with partners on data security and analytical data processing among other things.

Before joining PeerLend, Jogesh served as a Lead Analyst at the Bank of America (BOA), where he built algorithms for customer fraud prevention using some bigdata tools and technologies. He also led the team that replaced the archaic cheque processing solution at BOA.

Jogesh received four patents, three in enterprise mobile security and one in process for active monitoring. In his 9 years tenure at Bank of America, Jogesh has led teams that delivered web, native and hybrid application solutions, and been a recipient of many platinum and gold awards at BOA for consistent and best performance at various levels.

Jogesh earned his B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

Venkatesh Gali

Director

Venkatesh has more than 10 years of experience in the area of statutory audits and internal audits of NBFCs, Service organisations, Societies,and Charitable Trusts. He has worked in the various areas of mergers and acquisitions, to various corporate and Banks. He and his team also take care of Financial Accounting of various companies along with all the related statutory and regulatory works.

Some of their major clients include SKS Microfinance, Share Microfin, BASIX Microfinance, Ujjivan Financial Services, Bellwether Microfinance Fund, Vaya Finserv, among others.

Venkatesh is a Chartered Accountant, is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

Rama Kandarpa

Independent Director

Rama is a civil engineer by qualification but a development practitioner by choice. She has more than 20 years of experience in developing and leading institutions of social change at the grass-root level and through active alliances/networks panning across various states of the country.

She has done extensive work done on enabling access for poor men and women in the areas of finance, appropriate technology and markets, by nurturing their capabilities in companies like BASIX Microfinance and a Co-operative Society called Jagruthi in Andhra Pradesh.

Her Specialties: Institutional Development expert with focus on Microfinance and Livelihood Promotion, Social enterprise promotion, Small-ticket size loans and other non-financial products, Organizational Learning and Development, and Change Management are key interests.

She has many studies on financial services livelihoods and gender to her credit and has co-authored a book as well, called “Resource Book on Livelihood Promotion (IV Edition)”.

Rama earned her B.Tech. from National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur.

Satyawarth Rao

Manager - Administration & Field Operations

Satya manages the back office operations, and leads Business Development efforts for identified segments at PeerLend. Prior to joining PeerLend, Satya was Accounts and Office Superintendent at Badruka Institute of Foreign Trade. He managed their Public Relations and liaisoned with various government organizations and private agencies. His Operations experience includes working with many services firms in Accounts and Administration, including time spent as Personnel officer in P.E. Engineers and Nava Bharat Enterprises.

Satya earned his bachelors degree in Commerce from Osmania University, Hyderabad.

Latha Iyer

Sr.Manager - Operations

Latha manages the back-end operations and leads Business Development efforts at PeerLend. Prior to joining PeerLend, Latha worked at various organisations such as ICICI Bank Ltd, BASIX Micro finance, Tata Sky Ltd, & Wave Crest Technologies, and managed Customer Service Operations in the areas of Prepaid cards, E-wallet and E-commerce, in addition to Micro finance field operations.

As Team Manager at ICICI Bank for Corporate Banking, Latha was responsible for Capacity management, Business Recovery Planning, Forecasting and scheduling manpower. She also participated in cross-functional audits. At BASIX Micro finance, Latha headed the growth and portfolio of MFI Operations for Karnataka state with a 250-member team. She was responsible for business development in cross-selling products, and lead livelihood promotion to the rural women across the state through financial and technical assistance. Latha also received awards for excelling in Retail Insurance and field recovery operations. She speaks 6 Indian languages and is highly focused on building better customer relationships.

Latha earned her bachelors degree in Commerce from Osmania University, Hyderabad.

Chaitanya Vihari

Sr. Manager - Product Quality

At PeerLend, Vihari works on environment automation, deployment, and feature development. Prior to PeerLend, Vihari worked for more than 5 years for a couple of software companies helping them build cloud automation and provisioning services. He led system testing and production support teams at various retail giants like Ascena and Abercrombie. Vihari manages User Interface at PeerLend, focusing on usability and design driven product development. He is an avid blogger and manages a software testing blog called TestnBug.

Vihari earned his B.Tech. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU).

Rajesh Deshpande

Sr. Manager - Credit

Rajesh is the back office operations in-charge at PeerLend. He has more than decade of experience in Retail operations, Customer service and Relationship management. He was Retail Insurance Manager as SKS Microfinance where he managed Insurance operations for 3 states. He was part of the internal audit team and was associated with reviewing and implementing operational risk governance. He was involved in imparting training to field staff on the insurance product, service standards and claims.

Prior to this, Rajesh managed Operations of more than 15 branches at ING Vysya Life Insurance. Prior to this, he handled credit card collections at Standard Chartered Bank.

Rajesh has a Diploma in General Management, and earned his bachelors degree in Law and Commerce from Osmania University, Hyderabad.

Jagan Janumpally

Manager - Customer Relations

Jagan is a field operations expert. He is responsible for direct marketing and customer sales for business loans. He qualifies prospects, assesses customer profiles and evaluates their credit worthiness. Jagan worked in SBI Life Insurance as Unit Manager for about 3 years where he was responsible for training, recruitment and team management, and managed personal and team sales targets. He was a Branch Manager in SKS Microfinance for about 4 years where he managed Y-O-Y outstanding portfolio of more than 3 Crore.

Jagan is a graduate in Commerce from Osmania University.

Harsha Subramanyam

Test Engineer

Harsha is a test engineer at PeerLend. He is responsible in developing the tests scenarios/test cases and executes them as per the development and release cycles.He works closely with the development team for bug fixes and production releases.

Harsha earned his B.Tech degree from VIT vellore.

Bharath Kumar Bairu

Manager – Accounts

Bharath has 6 years of working experience in Finance & Accounts. At PeerLend, he is responsible for preparing accounts, budgeting, and managing financial information. He is involved in auditing and financial forecasting. Bharath also takes care of various reconciliation activities such as lenders, banks and insurance. He takes care of the statutory requirements and helps in keeping account books and systems upto date.

Bharath has an MBA in Finance from Osmania University.