Jayshree Venkatesan , Public Policy Scholar, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, is an independent consultant on Financial Inclusion. She was involved in founding IFMR Mezzanine Finance, a group company within IFMR Trust that provided quasi-equity finance to early stage and not-for-profit microfinance institutions. She was Chief Executive Officer of IFMR Mezzanine Finance, and IFMR Advisory Services. She is the recipient of the Chevening Gurukul Fellowship for Leadership and Excellence for 2014, awarded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and hosted by King’s College, London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), UK.