Sunish Sharma

Founder & Managing Partner at Kedaara Capital

Panellist

Sunish founded Kedaara Capital in 2012 alongside Manish Kejriwal and Nishant Sharma, in partnership with global private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R). Kedaara is an India focused private equity fund with approximately USD 6 billion in funds advised/managed, and over USD 4 billion in realized exits. The firm follows a distinctly operationally oriented investment strategy that has consistently supported the profitable growth of its portfolio companies, delivering top-quartile returns to its investors.

Prior to founding Kedaara, Sunish served as a Managing Director at General Atlantic (GA), where he joined as one of the earliest members of the India investment team in 2004 and was the second employee hired in the Mumbai office. Over nearly eight years at GA, he played a critical lead role in the majority of the firm's India investments and was instrumental in building the local program to approximately USD 1 billion of invested capital by 2011. Before GA, Sunish spent over six years as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company in India.

With approximately 30 years of experience spanning the full lifecycle of private equity — from origination and diligence through portfolio management and exit — Sunish has built deep expertise across financial services, consumer, healthcare, business services & technology, and industrial sectors. He currently serves on the boards of, and has led investments in, Axtria, R1 RCM, Porter, Impetus, Dairy Day, K12, Avanse, Neurealm, Purplle, Lenskart, Vedant/Manyavar, Spandana, Ajax, and Care Health Insurance. In the past, he has served on several other boards / led investments in Mahindra Logistics, Manjushree, Bill Forge, Hexaware Limited, IndusInd Bank, Jubilant Lifesciences, Cyient Limited, and IBS Software Services, among others.

Sunish served as a Jury Member for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2022 and 2023, gaining direct and close exposure to some of India's most exceptional business builders and their journeys of value creation.

Sunish is a gold medallist from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, holds a degree with honors from Delhi University, and is a qualified cost accountant.

Beyond investing, Sunish is deeply committed to education as a vehicle for societal impact. He is a Founding member of Ashoka University, established to provide a world-class liberal education in India, and co-founded the Young India Fellowship in 2011 in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, a multidisciplinary programme designed to develop future change agents for India.

Sunish has been recognized by Business Today as one of the "25 Hottest Young Executives Below 40 in India" and featured in its 20th anniversary issue as one of the "Next Big Guns" — the Top 20 professionals representing the future of Indian business. He has also been named one of "Asia's 25 Most Influential People in Private Equity" by Asian Investor, and is a frequent speaker at leading private equity conferences across the region.