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Who We Are

Home First is young housing finance company built on a single premise: we believe everyone should own their dream home. We blend technology and personalisation, so the loan process is easy and hassle-free. Simply put: our customers always come first.

Our founders

These guys founded Home First.

Jaithirth Rao

Jaithirth Rao

Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao holds Master’s degrees in Business Administration from the IIM-Ahmedabad as well as the University of Chicago, US. He is a visiting faculty at both the institutions. He has been honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Chicago. He was also the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Mphasis during which time he was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award twice in 2001 & 2004, and the Karnataka State Rajyothsava Award in 2005. In the past, Mr. Rao has served as chairman of NASSCOM. He was with Citicorp for 20 years in various capacities, including the Head of Citibank where he was primarily responsible for building one of the bank’s Asian retail and credit card franchises, apart from working in various parts of the world. He has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Harvard Business School and lecturer at IIT, Bombay. He is on the Board of Trustees of the India Foundation of the Arts and of Sujaya Foundation.

P S Jayakumar

P S Jayakumar

P S Jayakumar is currently the MD and CEO of Bank of Baroda. He holds a master’s degree in Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur, a master’s degree in Commerce from the University of Madras, and is an Associate Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He is also a Gurukul Chevening Scholar from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1998). Mr. Jayakumar started his career with Citibank in 1986 and has held many senior management positions there, including being country head for Consumer Business in India and Head for Consumer Lending Business in Asia Pacific. During his banking career, spanning 27 years, Mr. Jayakumar has contributed significantly to the development of the retail banking industry in India.

Manoj Viswanathan

Manoj Viswanathan

Manoj Viswanathan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from BITS, Pilani and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. He possesses experience of more than 18 years in consumer lending, encompassing sectors such as automobile loans, mortgages, and unsecured lending. He is considered to have played an important role in building the branch-based consumer-lending model for Citigroup in India. He is the Managing Director and CEO of Home First Finance Company.

Our Board of Directors

Deepak Satwalekar

Deepak Satwalekar

Deepak Satwalekar is the Chairman and Independent Director of our Company. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and a master’s degree in business administration from the American University. Previously, he was associated with Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited as a director and HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company Limited as the managing director and chief executive officer. He has also been recognised as a distinguished alumnus by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He was appointed as an Independent Director on the Board of our Company with effect from October 23, 2019.

Geeta Dutta Goel

Geeta Dutta Goel

Geeta Dutta Goel holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi and a post graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She is a finance professional and Country Director for Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in India at present. She manages the strategy and implementation of the foundation’s work in India in two key areas of Education and Family Economic Stability.

Geeta has served as the Chairperson of India’s Impact Investors Council from 2017-2019, and has been on several taskforces on Responsible Finance with the World Bank’s Consultative Group to Alleviate Poverty. In 2017, She was nominated by Business Today amongst the 30 Most Powerful Women in Impact and Forbes India nominated her as the 20 Power Women Changing the Game in 2020.

Geeta has served on distinguished Boards such as Ujjivan Financial Services, Janalakshmi Financial Services, Micro Housing Finance Corporation, Swadhaar FinServe, Arohan Financial Services, Sonata Finance etc.

Anuj Srivastava

Anuj Srivastava

Anuj Srivastava holds a BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and holds an MBA degree from London Business School. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Livspace – a home interiors and renovation platform. Livspace has created an industry first design-to-manufacturing cloud platform that integrates the 3 marketplace participants – consumers, designers, and vendors to deliver homes, offices, co-working spaces and stores. Before setting up Livspace, Anuj was heading product marketing and growth at Google where he was responsible for building, launching and scaling products such as Google Wallet, Google Adsense, Google Local and Google Adwords. Anuj was also a lead on the integration team for Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick.

Sucharita Mukherjee

Sucharita Mukherjee

Sucharita is the Co-founder, whole-time director and CEO of Kaleidofin, a neo-bank that provides intuitive and tailored financial solutions to over a million underbanked customers in India. Prior to this, she co-founded the IFMR group and most recently was the group CEO of IFMR Holdings. She conceptualized and founded Northern Arc Capital, building capital markets access for financial inclusion and Northern Arc Investments, an alternatives fund management platform focused on informal sector finance. Sucharita was recently chosen as a young global leader by the World Economic Forum. She was chosen as one of the “top 40 under forty” business leaders by Economic Times in 2016 and received the IIM Ahmedabad, Young Alumni Achievers Award in 2017. Prior to her move to India, Sucharita was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank in London, working primarily on credit derivatives structuring and sales. She is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University.

Divya Sehgal

Divya Sehgal

Divya joined True North in 2010. He is based in Mumbai and is responsible for investments in and scaling up of businesses in the Financial Services and Technology sectors. Divya holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Delhi and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM, Bengaluru. Prior to joining True North, he was Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Apollo Health Street, a leading healthcare outsourcing firm and one of the top five in its space globally. Before that he worked as a consultant with McKinsey, with the corporate finance team at ANZ and as an entrepreneur at Emedlife, one of the first corporate healthcare advisory firms in India that eventually merged with the Apollo Group.

Maninder Singh Juneja

Maninder Singh Juneja

Maninder joined True North in 2016 and is based in Mumbai where he is involved in building and managing businesses primarily in the financial services sector. An MBA from IIM Lucknow, Maninder has over 17 years experience in the banking and financial services industry. Prior to joining True North, Maninder was the group Head for ICICI Banks Retail Banking group, covering Strategy, Products, Small Business Loans, Branch Banking and distribution channels. Prior to this, he started his career with Godrej as a Branch Manager and has worked with Godrej GE Appliances and GE Transportation financial services.

Narendra Ostawal

Narendra Ostawal is based in Mumbai, joined Warburg Pincus in 2007 and since then has been working with the Firm’s Indian affiliate. He is involved in the Firm’s Investment Advisory activities in India and evaluates opportunities in Financial Services and Healthcare sectors in India. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, Mr. Ostawal was an Associate with 3i India and McKinsey & Company. He is a Director of AU Small Finance Bank Limited, Avanse Financial Services Limited, Computer Age Management Services Pvt. Ltd., Fusion Microfinance Pvt Ltd., IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company Limited and Laurus Labs Limited. Mr. Ostawal holds a Chartered Accountancy degree from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and an M.B.A. from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Manoj Viswanathan