Board Director
Shalaka is the Gender Lead, South Asia for the International Finance Corporation (IFC)- the private sector focused arm of the World Bank; where she works where she works on gender in the private sector, and ways to include both women and men as entrepreneurs, investors, employees, consumers, community stakeholders, and leaders. Shalaka has 14+ years of global leadership experience in social venture, financial inclusion, livelihoods and market-based solutions to poverty in emerging markets, especially in Asia. Her social enterprise career began with UNICEF where she worked on micro-planning and building public- private-nonprofit alliances. She also worked with Ashoka, a global association of the world‘s leading social entrepreneurs. Her private sector experience includes ICICI Bank – India’s largest private sector bank – where she led the process of integrating private sector partners into the Bank’s initiatives in health, education and micro finance.
Shalaka has played a key role in building the field of impact investing globally. She was part of the Founding team at the IFMR Trust, a for-profit social enterprise dedicated to building financial inclusion for low-income individuals and enterprises in India. Shalaka also served as a Managing Director of Unitus Impact- an early-stage impact investing fund which supports the growth of scalable livelihood ventures in Asia. She then served as Managing Director, Asia-Pacific for Toniic- the world’s most active network of impact investors, supporting social ventures and funds across 28 countries. She led Toniic’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region and as its Chief Investment Officer globally, across asset classes.
A Chevening scholar and an Aspen Global Leadership fellow, Shalaka serves on the Boards of Toniic Global , the IEF Entrepreneurship Foundation (which works with Indian State governments to mainstream entrepreneurship) and UnLtd, India (a leading incubator for social entrepreneurs). She is based out of Mumbai, India and enjoys poetry, travel and dance.