Non-Executive Director I Microfinance Company
NGS Global’s depth and quality of known technology executive contacts led to a successful board appointment.
Background
Our client was a new generation microfinance company headquartered in the Delhi area of India. They offered credit products like microfinance and microenterprise loans, and were planning to offer insurance, pension and other services to their microfinance customers via third party arrangements. Through these products, they aimed to reach the lives of the “Bottom of Pyramid” and the “Missing Middle” customers, thereby contributing to India’s financial inclusion goals.
The Need
Our client was seeking to bring in an accomplished technology executive in a non-executive board director role who could guide them on their technology strategy. Technology is a key foundational element in order to run a profitable microfinance business, as loan sizes are small and the number of customers is large. Our client was seeking a technology executive who had worked in the financial services industry; hence brought domain know-how, but was not engaged in any full time employment. Given potential conflicts of interest, executives who were currently engaged in any board directorships with other microfinance companies were excluded.
Our Search Process
As we have contacted several technology executives across industry sectors over the years, in connection with our search assignments, we restricted our search to known executives who we may have evaluated earlier for our other clients in the financial services industry. Additionally, we took care to only target those who were not currently in full time employment, but were preferably engaged in consulting assignments around technology strategy and implementation.
Secondly, we checked the current directorships, if any, of our target candidates using publicly available information and shortlisted only those who were not engaged in board director roles with conflicting interests.
We shortlisted two candidates of whom one was offered the position.
Our NGS Global Value-Add
• Execution led by a Partner that meant only the most relevant candidates were targeted from our list of known contacts that was built over the years.
• Influencing the shortlisted candidates to engage with our client in a dialogue, as our client were a relatively unknown entity given their size and nature of business.
• Effective intermediation that meant that both client and candidate side expectations were aligned, leading to a successful outcome.
Contact Soumitra Agarwal (Project Head)