Prajakta Shetye-Deo is a Chartered Accountant with over 16 years of experience across the areas of Banking, Finance, and I-Banking. For the last decade, she has focused on mentoring start-ups not just to raise finance but also to scale-up. Prajakta has an excellent academic track record with a merit rank at nearly all competitive exams. She graduated from the Commerce stream, topping Pune University. She completed her Chartered Accountancy Course in 2000 and secured a place in the top ten of the all-India merit list at all three levels of the course. She has worked with ICICI Bank in the Treasury Middle Office Group and was instrumental in setting up their Dealing and Settlement systems in their treasury, the Negotiated Dealing System (NDS) as well as the Commodities Trading System. Prajakta then moved to the HSBC Group and was a Project Leader with their Global training outfit. She led the Securities & Capital Markets training team and delivered training successfully across countries like Japan, Argentina, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc. in 5 regions (Asia-Pacific, Australia, Middle-East, and Far East & Latin America).
Always wanting to work with, and for entrepreneurs and business owners in the SME segment, she and her husband, Vinit, started Posiview Consulting Partners Private Limited - a boutique investment banking consulting firm in the year 2006. With Vinit undertaking all the front-facing roles of PR, marketing and pitching to VCs, she managed back-end operations like building financial plans, preparing investor memorandums, managing administration & statutory compliances, along with raising a family. Since 2007, she has worked closely with entrepreneurs, industrialists and technocrats, providing them business support, financial planning, equity and debt syndication services. The 2-member team were able to do some significant deals like the first brand equity deal in Pune with Seed Infotech and Bennett Coleman (investor). By 2009, they had 2 other employees, a decent balance sheet and a deal pipeline to boast of!
This is when she enrolled for the ISB Goldman-Sachs 10,000 Women Program. This program helped broaden her horizons in terms of how businesses could scale up. Mentoring helped her understand what should be her focus areas. Also, when she was steering, her Mentor, Jay, would pose the right questions that would help her prioritize. Refreshed and re-invigorated after the course, she jumped back into the business.
Having played multiple roles at Posiview in its journey over the last decade, Prajakta is now leading Posiview Ventures - the start-up consulting arm - as its Chief Mentor. She has personally trained over 300 and mentored numerous small business owners in entrepreneurship and business planning. From 2012-2014, she was associated with the world-wide Goldman-Sachs 10,000 Women Programme, training women entrepreneur-scholars at the Pune centre. Currently she is also a Mentor with the Cherie Blair Foundation for their "Mentoring Women in Business" program along with doing honorary mentorship for women entrepreneurs from developing countries. She is also the Chief Trustee of Posiview Marg Foundation where they work in the areas of girl-child education and women well-being & empowerment.
Over the years, the company has explored media associations and ventured into allied areas. The real-estate consultancy division of their firm crossed INR 1,000 crores in sanctions in FY15-16 alone. Her organisation has now developed the agility to quickly seize new opportunities that come their way. They now have four divisions with different Business Heads - Debt Syndication, Equity Syndication, Early-Stage Consulting and Training & Advisory Services and is now gearing up to launch RERA Advisory and Training services to help the Real Estate Sector ready itself for the compliances under the Real Estate (Regulatory and Development) Act, 2016.
Aristotle's words - "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit" - made a lasting impression on her at a very young age and she strives towards excellence in every task.
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