Hardika Shah
Bio
Hardika Shah is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of fintech Kinara Capital that is at the forefront of driving financial inclusion of small business entrepreneurs in India. Kinara Capital is democratizing financial inclusion by simplifying access to credit with a blend of Digital Processes, Data-Driven Credit Decisioning, and Doorstep Customer Service.
Kinara Capital has disbursed more than INR 4,500+ Crores across 87,000+ business loans to date, thus bringing thousands of MSMEs into the fold of financial inclusion. The overall impact of Kinara’s decade of driving financial inclusion has led to 300,000+ jobs supported in local economies in India and to over USD $100 million in incremental income generation for small business entrepreneurs.
Committed to advancing gender parity from day one, Hardika leads Kinara Capital with a women-majority management team and is advancing women entrepreneurs with the company’s HerVikas program. Prior to building Kinara Capital, Hardika spent nearly two decades as a management consultant executing complex projects for global companies across USA, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. She also spent nearly a decade as a pro-bono mentor with emerging social entrepreneurs at Santa Clara University, Stanford University, Accenture Development Partnerships, the Acumen Fund and Columbia Business School. Hardika holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Knox College in Illinois, USA. She earned her MBA from a joint program between Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Under Hardika’s vision and leadership, Kinara Capital ranked among ‘Top 500 High-Growth Companies in Asia-Pacific’ by the Financial Times for four consecutive years (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) and among ‘Best Places to Work in India’ by AmbitionBox for two consecutive years (2021, 2022). Kinara Capital has received the prestigious ‘Bank of the Year-Asia’ global award by the IFC, among other accolades. Founded in 2011 in Bangalore, Kinara Capital has 125 branches serving MSMEs in 100+ cities in India. Kinara Capital is qualified as a ‘Systemically Important NBFC’ by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
