Bhavyang Oza Associate Director

Bhavyang is an Associate Director of Kotak Infrastructure Fund at Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Limited (“KAAML”). Prior to joining KAAML, he has been a senior member of the Debt Capital Markets (“DCM”) team of Kotak Mahindra Bank.

He joined the Kotak Mahindra Group in 2009 and has over 20 years experience in DCM, where he has led the origination and execution of debt transactions across Indian loan and bond markets. He has successfully executed several DCM transactions involving vessel financing, project financing and refinancing transactions for multiple roads, renewables, greenfield ports and terminal expansions and a large overseas acquisition of coal assets by an Indian infrastructure developer. His clients included large infrastructure developers like Brookfield, Cube Highways, L&T IDPL, Sadbhav Engineering, Ashoka Buildcon, Krishnapatam Port, Karaikal Port, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, Tata Power Renewable Energy, Renew Power, Sembcorp, etc.

Prior to DCM, Bhavyang worked in the Investment Banking business of Edelweiss Capital, where he headed the structured and project finance business that was mandated to execute project finance and structured funding solutions for acquisitions, promoter funding and mezzanine funding. Prior to that, he has worked with Wachovia, Axis Bank and IFCI.

Bhavyang is a graduate in Chemical Engineering and also holds a Post Graduate Degree in Business Management.

Suman Saha Head – Infrastructure Fund

Suman Saha is Head of Kotak Infrastructure Fund at Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Limited. Suman established the Infrastructure Funds management business of the Kotak Mahindra Group in 2013. The Infrastructure Funds team currently advises three Singapore – based fund vehicles which invest in core infrastructure in India.

Suman joined Kotak Mahindra Group in 1995 in its investment banking business. At Kotak Investment Banking, as Executive Director and Co–Head, Equity Product Group, Suman was involved in the origination and end–to–end execution of Equity Capital Market (“ECM”) transactions, including Initial Public Offerings and Follow–on Offerings of Indian companies. He has led some of the largest Indian ECM deals, several of which were in the Indian power, transport, other infrastructure and real estate sectors, like NTPC, Reliance Power, KSK Energy, JSW Energy, IPCL, Indraprastha Gas, IDFC, DLF, Sobha Developers etc. Prior to that, Suman set up and ran the project finance advisory business at Kotak Investment Banking, advising companies in the steel, automobile, power, gas distribution, storage terminal and other sectors.

Suman has over two and a half decades experience in project finance, investment banking, and infrastructure investing and asset management. He began his career in project finance in IDBI, prior to joining Kotak.

Suman is a 1991 graduate in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and completed his post–graduation in Business Management from NMIMS, Mumbai.

Akshay Gupta Executive Director

Akshay is the Executive Director of Kotak Infrastructure Fund at Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Limited. He is part of the Infrastructure Funds management business of the Kotak Mahindra Group. The Infrastructure Funds team currently advises three Singapore – based fund vehicles which invest in core infrastructure in India. Akshay joined Kotak Mahindra Group in 2011 and was part of the team that set up the Kotak Infrastructure Fund. He has been instrumental in closing four investment opportunities with aggregate investment requirement of over USD 450 million in road transport, solar power and energy storage. Three of the transactions involved working closely with co-investors.

Prior to joining the Kotak Mahindra Group, Akshay was at the infrastructure advisory division of KPMG Advisory. At KPMG, Akshay led key engagements in the transport and energy sectors advising on market entry, financial feasibility, public private partnerships (PPP), due diligence and valuation. Some of his clients include Airports Authority of India, National Highways Authority of India, GMR Group, Reliance Industries, Shapoorji Pallonji Group, Cairn India, Sterlite Industries, etc. Prior to KPMG, Akshay was part of the Public Private Partnership team at CRISIL Risk and Infrastructure Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a division of CRISIL Ltd (A Standard & Poors Company).

Akshay has 13 years of experience in strategy consulting for infrastructure, and infrastructure investing and asset management. He began his career in the knowledge management team of McKinsey & Co.

Akshay is a 2002 graduate in finance from Delhi University and completed his post-graduation in Business Management in 2006 from XLRI Xavier School of Management.

Arjun Amlani Vice-President

Arjun joined Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Ltd in March 2020 & brings with him over 9 years’ of experience in project finance and corporate lending.

Prior to joining Kotak Infrastructure Fund, Arjun was a part of the Project & Structured Finance Group of Aditya Birla Infrastructure Finance (ABIF) at Aditya Birla Capital for about 5 years. He was extensively involved in origination, structuring and execution of deals in diverse infra & non-infra sectors. Apart from project finance and corporate loan transactions, he has also handled acquisition financing, construction financing, lease rental discounting and structured finance transactions.

Prior to ABIF, he was a part of the Project Finance & Strategic Business Unit of the State Bank of India (SBI), where he worked for over 4 years conducting due diligence, evaluating and underwriting credit and monitoring life cycle of infrastructure projects. He began his career in the audit and assurance verticals of Deloitte and EY.

Arjun is a CA, CS, FRM & B.M.S (Mumbai).

Debasmita Ghosh Associate Vice President

Debasmita joined Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Ltd in July 2018. Prior to joining KAAML, Debasmita was part of the corporate banking group of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd, which she joined in September 2017.

Debasmita started her career with the corporate banking group of ICICI Bank where she handled end-to-end relationships of large and mid- sized corporates, involving credit appraisal, risk analysis, portfolio quality management and structuring and execution of banking solutions for the corporate clients. Later she was part of the corporate banking team of Kotak Mahindra Bank, where she handled relationships of conglomerates and corporate groups.

Debasmita is a 2013 graduate in Electrical Engineering from the West Bengal University of Technology and has completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Indore in 2015.

Pratik Mehta Associate

Pratik joined Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Ltd in February 2020 and has completed the Analyst program.

Prior to joining KAAML, Pratik was part of the Financial Advisory – Valuations (Domestic) practice at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP for over a year. During his tenure at Deloitte, he was engaged in conducting equity and business valuations for M&A, fund raising, financial reporting and compliance. He has advised several leading Private Equity Funds as well.

He began his career in the statutory audit function at Deloitte Haskins and Sells LLP where he pursued his articleship training for three years.

Pratik is a Chartered Accountant, has cleared two levels of the CFA (USA) examination and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance from the University of Mumbai.

Raj Bhandari Associate

Raj joined Kotak Infrastructure Investment Fund (KIIF) in October’2022 as a part of the Investment Team, having an overall experience of 5 years into Investment Banking & Corporate Finance.

In his immediate previous stint at SBI Capital Markets Ltd (SBICAPS), Raj was part of Project Advisory and Structured Finance Group wherein he developed extensive exposure into Indian Infrastructure landscape having worked upon spectrum of corporate finance solutions involving Acquisition Financing, Securitisation, Refinancing, M&A, and Stressed Asset Resolution etc.

He has worked on transactions involving cumulative capital raising in excess of USD 2 billion for infrastructure projects including Roads and Renewables. He has worked on assignments with almost all the leading Infrastructure PE Funds & Developers in India during his stint at SBICAPS.

Prior to SBICAPS, he was with Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd in the Finance Controller’s team working on the corporate finance activities for India operations of Coca-Cola. One of the notable assignments herein was being a finance partner for the EBITDA Expansion Strategy of Coca-Cola with leading Global Management Consultant Kearney.

He has completed his Chartered Accountancy and cleared all three levels of CFA Programme.

Mukesh Soni Executive Director

Mukesh is an Executive Director at Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Limited (“KAAML”) and joined KAAML in 2021 to lead investments in the infrastructure sector. Earlier, Mukesh was Co-head at Apollo Global Management’s distressed asset buyout platform and lead their infrastructure investments in India. He joined Apollo in 2019 and before that, he had ~18 years of work experience and was executive director with AIRRO (JP Morgan’s Asian Infrastructure Fund) where he looked after the investments and the portfolio. Key investments being Leap Green (1.1 GW Wind Energy Platform), Soma Highways (9 NHAI roads) and Nandi Economic Corridor (Integrated Infrastructure project in Karnataka).

Prior to joining the JP Morgan in 2012, he had experience in covering mezzanine financing for infrastructure projects, advised clients for raising private equity, underwriting, and evaluating projects, due diligence for M&A globally with SREI Infrastructure Finance (One of the largest Infrastructure NBFC in India), Ernst & Young (Largest Infrastructure Advisory practice in India) and GE Capital (Global Investments).

Mukesh has been associated with over US$ 750 mn of financing in combination of mezzanine and debt for projects, covering sectors such as power, roads, logistics, SEZ, telecom and conglomerates. Apart from this, Mukesh was involved in raising private equity funding to the extent of US$ 300 mn. Mukesh started with GE’s global finance leadership program in 2002 and worked on the due diligence on the GE’s global M&A transactions and structured finance investments in US.

Mukesh is a chartered accountant, company secretary and is a commerce graduate from St Xaviers College, Kolkata. He also did his MBA in finance.