Praveen Vecha is a Rural Business and Financial Services professional with over 2 decades of experience. He is a successful leader with expertise in managing a Profit Center, Large teams, Product Development, Risk Management, Sales, Marketing and Strategic Initiatives. His overall experience has consistently been in building deep distribution asset businesses from scratch in the hinterlands of India, with scale and an impeccable credit track record.

He is currently the MD & CEO of IDFC FIRST Bharat Ltd (IFBL), a Fully owned subsidiary of IDFC FIRST Bank. With over 385 branches and 10,000+ workforce , IFBL is making a deep impact in its operational markets offering lending solutions.

In his last assignment, he worked as the CEO of APAC Housing Finance Pvt Ltd. He built the affordable Housing and Micro Mortgage business for APAC Group taking the network to over 30 branches in less than 2 years.

Prior to that he worked at IDFC FIRST Bank as a Senior Director - BC and Partnerships. He was responsible for the integration of the business of Grama Vidiyal Micro Finance Ltd. with the bank by aligning the governance, product, process, technology and business with the bank. He worked on building a strong foundation for making the entity a multi-product Business Correspondent.

He was with Fullerton India Credit Co Ltd between 2005 and 2016. In the initial years of the long association with Fullerton India, Praveen worked as Manager for Marketing and for Strategic Initiatives. In 2007, he became a core member of the team which built the Rural Business vertical (Gram Shakti). In the project phase, he developed the Product Program by balancing the underlying risks in Rural Market and developed the distribution model.

After spending time in the corporate office during the project phase, he went on to start the Business in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Within a couple of years, he started managing business in South India. In 2016, he moved into the Corporate Office to manage the business at National level.

He started his career with EID Parry (I) Ltd as a Management Trainee in the Farm Inputs Division where he honed his understanding of the rural consumer. He moved to ICICI Lombard General Insurance Co Ltd where he was part of the team which started the rural business vertical for the company.

He is a Postgraduate in Agri Business Management and a Graduate in Agriculture

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