VERDUROUS is home to an impressive panel of highly qualified experts with diverse backgrounds and possessing rich experience in their respective areas of specialization. The experts bring with them a proven track record of financial structuring and closure and experience in successfully initiating several corporate groups into green businesses.
Complementing this domain expertise the team has benefited from intensive exposure to and an in-depth understanding of environmental markets and relevant technologies. Prescriptions are tailored to reflect the relative maturity of the capital and financial markets and legal structure and the socio-cultural circumstances in the country / region.
Dr. Srinivasan Sunderasan brings close to 30 years of diversified experience in Project Management, Investment Management and leadership in multi-cultural environments. He has been exposed to several industries including Financial Services, White Goods, Construction, Telecom, Energy (Fossil Fuels as well as Renewables) and Consulting. Sunderasan is a life member of the Solar Energy Society of India, a Member of the Institution of Engineers – India and a Member of the Indian Institute of Architects. He is a member of the Society of Industry Leaders, a S&P / Vista Research initiative and a member of the EIU Global Executive Forum. He has been the Dy. Country Manager-India for the US$ 30m IFC/GEF Photovoltaic Market Transformation Initiative (PVMTI), Investment Officer – India for the US$ 50m Solar Development Group (SDG) and Investment Officer – South Asia with the Triodos Renewable Energy for Development Fund (TRED Fund). He has authored over 45 research papers, many of which have been accepted for publication without comment by international peer reviewed journals. His biography has been selected for inclusion in consecutive annual editions of Marquis Who's Who since 2008. The International Biographical Center, Cambridge, UK, has featured his profile among the Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century, 2009 / 2010.
Mr. Sunderasan has been awarded a Doctoral Degree in Business Economics by the University of Vienna, Austria, for his work on Mainstreaming Renewable Energy. He has also undertaken graduate course work in Economics at the University of Vienna. His first degree is in Civil Engineering, followed by a Masters' Degree in Business Administration from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He has acquired graduate qualification in Environmental Law at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and graduate qualification in Architecture.
Mr. Nikolaus Spieckermann holds a Masters' Degree from the London School of Economics & Political Science, in partial fulfillment of which, he has submitted a dissertation on Institutional Change and Transition (in Eastern Europe). He has undertaken coursework in Development Management and Health Economics at the London School of Hygiene. Nik also holds a Masters' Degree in the Social and Economic Sciences, specializing in SME Management, and International Economics and Development, awarded by the Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration. He has also been the EU Erasmus program grant-funded exchange student at the Institut des Études Commerciales Supérieures, Strasburg, taking courses in International Finance, Financial Engineering, Strategic and Project Management and Logistics. Nik is currently pursuing a Doctoral program in Economics at the University of Vienna, Austria.
Mr. Nikolaus is a Senior Analyst, advising € 38m technology VC Funds, as a part of which, he is involved in commercial and strategic due diligence for new investments, business strategy development for portfolio firms, and management of divestment processes. He has also been Investment Analyst with Invest Equity, a € 30m technology VC Fund, sponsored by Investkredit Bank AG. At the COBA Group, London (now PwC), he has applied both qualitative and quantitative research methods and analysis for strategy formulation, strategic and commercial due-diligence for venture capital and private equity funds, general strategic advice and turnaround situations. Further to his professional and academic interests, Nikolaus is actively involved in primary-healthcare development projects in Burkina Faso, West Africa managed through Vienna/Ouagadougou-based NGO laafi (www.laafi.at), which he co-founded in 1994.
Mr. Girish Kharel brings over 25 years of experience in the hydropower and rural electrification sectors. He started his career at mechanical engineering workshops, where he designed, built and installed equipment for small hydropower projects. For the past 15 years he has worked as an independent consultant on hydropower, specializing on microhydro site development and rural electrification. He has international consulting experience having worked in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Ethiopia. As a consultant to the Small Hydropower Promotion Project he has been acive in promoting hydropower development in his home country, Nepal. More recently, he has spent close to one year in Afghanistan working in a conflict-ridden environment, helping establish and develop microhydro power projects in the war-torn country. In addition, Mr. Kharel possesses hands on experience in the capacity of an Independent Power Producer, operating a small rural microhydro based utility in a remote district of Nepal, reaching over 1500 consumers. He has also developed training material and has conducted numerous training programs in related areas. After graduating from the Holland Park School in London, he was awarded the Higher National Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, England.
Mr. Lalith Gunaratne pioneered the model for retail marketing solar homes systems with micro financing for rural off-grid households in Sri Lanka with his company Power & Sun (Pvt.) Ltd (later Solar Power & Light Company Ltd, and subsequently sold to Shell Renewables). He developed an international consultancy business in renewable and rural energy and has worked throughout Asia and Africa. He has coordinated rural energy study tours, conducted case and feasibility studies, and lent his technical expertise to myriad renewable energy projects, including a Rural Energy Best Practices report for SARI/E. He is the founding member, convener and head of the board of the Energy Forum of Sri Lanka, an organization promoting rural electrification and efficient energy use. He serves as a Board Director of the Solar Development Foundation now called the Triodos Renewable Energy Development Fund funded by World Bank, the Dutch Government, GEF and the Rockefeller Fund. He has established a human resources development and experiential learning organization, Sage Training, in Sri Lanka in 2003, which provides training and capacity building for corporations, government and non-profit organizations in Sri Lanka and India. His current training and development projects include the public sector with People’s Bank and Sri Lanka Ports Authority. He is a Mechanical Engineering Technologist qualified in Canada, Marketer qualified in UK and holds an M.Sc. in Responsibility and Business Practice from the School of Management, University of Bath, UK. He regularly contributes features and articles on sustainable development and related topics.
Ms. Meena Nambiar is an Architect from the College of Engineering, Trivandrum, Kerala and has received a Masters’ degree in Environmental Planning from the School of Planning And Architecture, New Delhi. A Chevening Scholar at the Bradford Centre for International Development, UK, she has attended the session on Environmental Policy and Decision Making at the European Union Office, Brussels in 2003. As part of the Joint Programme by Environmental Impact Assessment Centre, University of Manchester and the University of Bradford, she did an individual research project on the environmental assessment processes in India and the UK. She has acquired graduate qualification in Environmental Law at the National Law School University of India, Bangalore.
Of the Twenty years that she has served as a professional Architect, she has spent over 10 years as an Environmental Consultant for various infrastructure and township / city planning projects in different parts of the. She possesses extensive experience in carrying out ‘Detailed Environmental’ and ‘Social Impact’ Assessments and in formulating Environmental Management Plans for infrastructure projects, especially in the Transportation sector, conforming to the guidelines issued by relevant statutory authorities viz., the Government of India, State Governments, and by institutions such as the World Bank group. She has provided assistance and guidance in the environmental clearance processes for several infrastructure and township projects undertaken by Public Sector organizations such as the NHAI, GSRDC, MMRDA, MSRDC etc.
Ms. Kamini Singh is a Registered Architect with a Masters’ Degree in Planning awarded by the prestigious School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India. Her graduate thesis on the impact of random industrial development on housing in Hyderabad City analyses the consequent environmental degradation and offers recommendations on zoning policies and guidelines for integrated and sustainable development of Housing and Industry.
Ms. Singh is currently, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the reputed Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India, and guest faculty at the National Institute of Construction Management and Research – center for excellence and premier construction management institute. She specializes in Housing and Community Planning dovetailed with Ecology and Environmental Planning. Ms. Singh has supervised several student projects on urban cluster planning, housing development, etc. She has attended a number of conferences on municipal management, e-governance and interaction with architecture and improvement of urban planning in developing countries.
Mr. Rajaram Yanamandra brings with him over 25 years of rich and diversified professional experience in Management Consulting and Financial intermediation including private equity syndication, venture capital investment, valuation and private placement of equity with strategic investors/institutions, syndication of long and short term debt from banks and financial institutions. In addition to advising corporates on diversification, mergers and acquisitions, Rajaram extends advisory services to individual and institutional clients on investments in both primary and secondary markets and manages investment portfolios in his capacity as Member of the Hyderabad Stock Exchange. He has also contributed to framing the syllabus and charter for formation of Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI), Hyderabad (subsequently, ICFAI University). Rajaram holds a Bachelors' degree in Science and is a graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Dr. Abraham is Associate Professor at the Department of Finance and Economics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Saudi Arabia. Areas of his interest include pricing issues in Investments, especially contingent contracts, fixed income security price dynamics in continuous time finance and Global linkages of markets and rates. His publications have featured in a large number of highly rated international journals and conferences. Prof. Abraham is a Mechanical Engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and has been awarded a Doctoral Degree in Finance by Boston University, USA.
Mr. Prasanna V. Karmarkar is an expert in Business Processes Design and Management and Information Systems, specifically web-enabling corporations via Content Management Architectures. He has had an international multi-disciplinary education - a Mechanical Engineering degree from Osmania University, Hyderabad India and a Masters' Degree in Information Systems from Griffith University, Australia. He has worked at various Fortune-500 organisations representing the Insurance, Finance, Semiconductor and Media/Publishing verticals. These include AOL Time Warner, New York Life Insurance Company, American Express, New York Life Investment Management LLC and ON Semiconductor.
Mr. Hari Haran is a senior director on the board of Verduous Solutions and brings over three decades of rich and diverse experience in the areas of Communications Technology, Team-leadership, Purchasing and General Administration across geographies and across industry sectors. He has made significant contributions to various projects undertaken by the company from time to time.
Mr. Vamshi Krishna has over 11 years of work experience overall and for last 8 years has been associated with Verdurous Solutions as the Energy Access and RE / EE Financing Specialist. Among others, he has worked on the ADB – Energy Resource Assessment assignment in Bangladesh, on the UNDP – Solar PV Tariff Determination work in Vietnam and other similar projects in several countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Ethiopia in addition to desk work for projects implemented across Rwanda, the Philippines, Bhutan and a few other countries.
At Verdurous, he has led the team that designed and built a micro-Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine. He is also actively involved in the applied research projects, product commercialization, and publication in the field of Energy Economics and related fields.
He is currently pursuing a Doctoral program in Global Energy Policy from EUCLID University (An intergovernmental - UN treaty University). He has completed a 1-year graduate level program on policy development and financing for the energy sector at Yale University, USA. He also holds a Masters' Degree in Financial Economics from Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and a Masters' Degree in Business Administration (MBA), specializing in International Finance, awarded by Edith Cowan University, Perth Australia (off-campus program in Bangalore, India). His first degree is in Electrical Engineering from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, where he has worked extensively on on-site power, and more specifically, on micro-wind generators and solar PV systems.
Mr. Carsten Michelsen's area of expertise is in the field of renewable energy systems covering solar, wind and hydro combined with a strong background in electronics and electronic manufacturing of RE system components. Carsten's experience in renewables dates back more than 20 years while being in the electronic industry for more than 30 years.
Mr. Carsten's main focus in the field of renewable energy is photovoltaic in the form of stand-alone and grid-connected embedded generation solutions. Stand-alone solutions include • solar home systems, • school and clinic systems, • commercial AC systems and • hybrid mini-grid systems. His experience includes the conceptualisation of delivery models, establishment of management systems, engineering design, technical specifications and project management.
Through his concurrent activities as solar system component provider Carsten has contributed to increase the quality standards for solar electronic manufacturing in India with an emphasis on reducing overall system life cycle costs. These activities could be expanded to Bangladesh and Ethiopia in combination with curricular development for solar entrepreneurs at respected universities.
Mr. Carsten has presented and facilitated capacity building training programmes for beginners and advanced solar technicians. In the Federated States of Micronesia where he trained and supervised technicians in an EU funded project which involved the installation and commissioning of multi-kWpeak off-grid PV systems on remote islands. Carsten has participated in numerous feasibility studies covering a wider field including wind diesel hybrid and micro hydro systems.
Ms. Roshini Josepherson is a Certified Practising Accountant (CPA Australia) who brings a decade’s worth of rich experience in Financial Management, Accounting and General Administration having been associated with both not-for-profit as well as for-profit organisations. She also has worked in diverse cultural settings, across states at home in India, and in Australia. She has also served as a volunteer with Oxfam Australia as a ‘Corporate Partnerships Financial Assistant’ relating to work-place giving.
At Verdurous Solutions, she works on project viability assessments (assessed business plans submitted to the DFAT / Australia for implementation in Vietnam), financial model development / validation, and on return computations and asset valuations (completed detailed documentation for a large and long-term line of credit from the ADB). Her research interests include viability assessments of energy efficiency (EE) investments and baseline definitions, cost structures of renewable energy (RE) project and program implementation, energy time-shifting and cleaner transportation solutions. She brings native English language competence and a working knowledge of the French language. Her first degree is in Commerce and Accounting and she has acquired graduate qualification in Management (PGDM – equivalent to an MBA).
Ms. Prathyusha Asundi is a Fellow of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (FCS) and holds a Bachelors’ Degree in Law (LLB), with over 10 years of hands-on experience with governance, secretarial audit (process audit), documentation, and due diligence / independent assessment of intervention operations and with appearing before the National Company Law Tribunal and National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, the Regional Director and the Registrar of Companies. Areas of her professional interest include corporate governance practices, legal due diligence, private equity investment processes, regulatory compliance for foreign direct investments, legal documentation, charge (registration and satisfaction of charges created with mortgage and hypothecation of securities against debt) management. She has also served as visiting faculty at various reputed professional training institutes for the Company Secretary program and for MBA programs.
She has completed all the levels of examinations in Sanskrit conducted by the Surasaraswathi Sabha, Sringeri in Karnataka, India, and holds a Senior level certificate in Indian Classical Music (Vocal) by the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board and has performed at social gatherings on festive occasions.
She is the leading Monitoring, Governance and Compliance Specialist at Verdurous and she has worked on evaluating business plans under assignment with Palladium, played a major role in developing guidelines for the design of a green bond trading platform in Bhutan, and reviewed the electricity sector governance structures in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz Republic on an ADB assignment. Ms. Prathyusha works on improving project management processes at Verdurous Solutions in addition to working directly on M&E assignments undertaken by the company. She brings native English language competence, advanced Sanskrit language expertise, and a working knowledge of the French language. She is currently persuing a Doctoral program in International Law and Treaty Law from EUCLID University (An intergovernmental - UN treaty University).
Mr. Syed Abdul Haleem is a GIS Consultant with 20 years of hands-on experience in enterprise GIS implementation, geospatial data modeling, and data analytics. He brings extensive experience in design and development of custom scalable GIS solutions, Geospatial Data Management, GIS standards, policies and procedures to optimize efficiencies, and to improve productivity and performance. Mr. Abdul Haleem is also an expert in ESRI suite of products from desktop to server/portal implementation in a hybrid Windows/Linux environment.
Mr. Abdul Haleem holds a Bachelors’ degree in Civil Engineering from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, and a Masters’ degree in City & Regional Planning from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He had undertaken the development impact assessment of Buhairat City on the Red Sea shore of Jeddah as a part of his graduate course work.
Mr. Abdul Haleem is formally trained in ArcGIS Sever and Portal Administration, Developing Applications with ArcGIS Server Web APIs, Data Management Systems for Exploration and Petroleum Databases, and in Information Security Essentials, Custom Javascript – MVC Framework – HTML, Java Programming and Web Component Development. His professional qualifications include ESRI certification for ArcGIS Desktop Training and Development, ESRI certification for Geodatabase Design, Secure Application Development, as a Java Programmer and a Web Component Developer.
He was associated with the ESRI distributor in Saudi Arabia as GIS technical specialist and has worked on various GIS projects in urban planning, pavement management systems, and real-time geospatial tracking applications. In 2003 Mr. Abdul Haleem joined Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, and has since worked on the company’s GIS applications until he separated from the company in 2018. During his 15-yeartenure, Saudi Aramco was awarded with Best User Application(GIS) award in year 2005 and the Special Achievementin GIS award in 2006.
In Saudi Aramco, Mr. Abdul Haleem worked for the upstream business line developing and supporting new GIS applications and implementing the latest ESRI-GIS tools in sub-surface mapping, geospatially enabling wells, seismic & rig location data, utilizing GIS in ‘play fairway’ mapping, supporting the GIS functions in prospects and portfolio generation, and in mapping and evaluation of contingent oil and gas resources in GIS. He also, trained users and supported focused GIS solutions like Exprodat, Premiere Power Tools and PaleoGIS for generating composite common risk segment maps and developing plate models. His most recent accomplishment was the implementation of the ArcGIS Server and Portal technology to provide GIS services to business critical applications within the company.
Mr. Abdul Haleem has attended the ESRI International Users conferences held in San Diego, California, in years 2000, 2005 and 2006and the ESRI Middle-East and Africa Developer Summit in Dubai in year 2013. He has participated in the Petroleum Users Conference in Houstan Texas in year 2013, and the Geospatial World Forum in Lisbon, Portugal, in year 2015. In addition, Mr. Syed Abdul Haleem has attended the Saudi GIS Symposium each year between years 2008 and 2017 and had presented papers titled “Well-Conflict Detection and Planning Using GIS” (11th Saudi GIS Symposium) and “Return on Investment (RoI) on Geospatial Data (9th Saudi GIS Symposium). He had also presented a paper titled “Empowering Upstream Users Through Geospatial Data” at the GEO – 2012, the 10th Middle-East Geosciences Conference and Exhibition in Manama, Bahrain.
Ms. Shruthi Rao is an Industrial Engineer with a Graduate Diploma in Marketing and Operations Management (“PGDM”: equivalent to an MBA program) with 15 years of experience in various sectors including manufacturing, software development, business analysis, education and training. She completed online course “The Health Effects of Climate Change” and “Energy within Environmental Constraints”, with Harvard University. She holds a B2 certificate in German from Goethe Institut, Bangalore, and an Elementary French Course Certificate from Alliance Française de Bangalore. She is currently pursuing a Doctoral Program in Sustainable Development and Diplomacy from Euclid University, Bangui.
Since 2016, she has been associated with various projects with Verdurous Solutions as an independent reviewer. In recent times, she has supported implementation of the consulting assignments undertaken by the team, including:
Prior to her association with Verdurous, Shruthi helped with the preparation of “The Agricultural and Food Engineering Working Document”, for publication by the FAO titled “Agro Industrial Parks – Experience in India” at KL Rao Associates, a consultancy firm in Bangalore. She has worked as a Business Analyst at Tata Consultancy Services, an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, in various domains including Banking and Financial Services, Retail and Travel, working with customers across Europe and Asia. She was a team leader on a few end-to-end software development and implementation projects. She also worked as a German language trainer at The Institute of German Studies, Bangalore.
Ms. Manasi Bhopale has completed a Bachelor’s degree in Town Planning from College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) / University of Pune, India and a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology IIT Bombay. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Economics and has also enrolled for Spanish language classes.
As part of her Master’s program, Manasi has worked on a World Bank funded ‘Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture’ in Maharashtra where she contributed to the beneficiary selection methodology and monitoring and evaluation plan. As a part of her Bachelor’s project, she worked with the Pune Municipal Corporation on a project titled ‘Analysing market forces versus planning interventions’. The project investigated the use and non-use values attributed to public spaces using the Contingent Valuation Method, hypothetical development model and economic area analysis. The findings helped the Municipal Corporation understand the differences in motivations of planning interventions and market forces that eventually led to planning violations.
Currently, Manasi is working as a Research Associate with Verdurous and her research interests lie at the intersection of planning and Development Studies. At Verdurous, Manasi has undertaken extensive work on the energy sector in Vietnam and has contributed substantially to the costing and optimization of alternatives to the proposed Power Development Plan (PDP-VIII). She has worked on recommendations to bolster the environmental credentials of the proposed Hyderabad Pharma City. Manasi has studied the energy sector in Georgia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan (as a part of a CAREC region-wide study) to recommend region-wide optimization of energy supply and demand. In the past few months, Manasi has contributed immensely to the development of the green taxonomy and to assessing the achievement of climate targets for Bhutan as a part of an ADB assignment. Manasi has volunteered as a Principal Investigator at the International Socioeconomics Laboratory, Harvard on an intervention research titled ‘Public Perception of Huawei's global race for 5G Technology: A Case of Undergraduate Students in New York’.
Dr Juan Valle Robles has a PhD in Architecture & Urban Planning from European University of Madrid, a Masters degree in Architecture (M.Arch) from the European University of Madrid, and an MBA from ICADE Business School. He also has completed various certification courses, prominent ones “Management Public Policy: Sustainable Cities in a Globalized World” from Harvard University and MIT Metro Lab Initiative Certificate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr Juan Valle Robles currently works as a consultant in urban planning and urban development and has carried out consulting projects in countries on four continents: South America (Argentina, Chile, Brazil), Europe(Spain, France, Italy), Africa (Morocco, Kenya, Lesotho), Asia (Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Indonesia). He has experience working with multidisciplinary teams involving architects, urban planners, engineers, policy makers, economists, business planning and lawyers, to achieve the goals of the project and the client. As an expert in architecture and urban planning, he has worked on management and supervision projects of different scales, working with national, regional or local governments.
Mattar Ramachandra Pai is a cleaner energy access, cleaner energy technology and services, and natural-resource management specialist with extensive experience with manufacturing and services involving improved cook stoves, solar thermal systems, solar PV lighting systems and water pumps. He brings hands-on experience with inventory and distribution of RE technologies including Solar PV based water pumping systems, solar thermal water heaters, cook stoves and PV lighting systems. He has also worked on energy efficiency among households, communities and social organizations. Over the years he has undertaken field surveys and impact assessments to improve rural energy service delivery.
For almost ten years now, Ramachandra Pai has successfully managed and operated chemical-free organic vegetable farming on a medium scale. Between years 2006 and 2013, he set-up and served as Managing Director of SELCO Energy Solutions (P) Limited, a solar thermal water heater manufacturing company. Between years 1998 and 2006, Pai served as the Executive Director of SELCO Solar Light Private Limited, organizing and managing sales and service of solar PV lighting systems in rural areas. Pai also set-up and managed a dealership of TATA BP Solar India Limited, winning the annual best dealership award twice.
Pai holds a Bachelors’ degree in Science (B Sc.) and a graduate degree in Zoology from the University of Mysore, India. He has undergone a training program on enhancing sales force performance at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmadabad. He had commenced work on a doctoral program and had subsequently switched fields to start work on RE / EE and energy services.