Alumni Profile: V Shankar

V. Shankar graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1981. He went on to obtain his Postgraduate Degree in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta in 1983. In 1983, Shankar began his professional career at Pond's India Ltd. In order to provide platform-based services to the Indian financial sector, Shankar launched CAMS - Computer Age Management Services Pvt. Ltd. in 1988. He served as its CEO from 1988 to 2014 and then as a board member. During a five year stint at Pond’s, he went through the Commercial, Project Management and Sales Management functions and was responsible for systems initiatives in these areas. In 1988, along with his wife Vijayasudha, Shankar founded CAMS with the objective of providing what are now known as Platform based services to the Indian Financial industry. 

V Shankar founded India’s largest Mutual Fund platform – CAMS – and is presently focused on his public and angel investments. The distribution of Mutual Fund services was completely reimagined by CAMS, who also created the largest platform of its kind in India as of this writing. The company is currently co-owned by NSE and HDFC and has around 6000 employees. Shankar also sits on the boards of a number of other businesses. Serving as a SEBI regulated entity, CAMS brings the highest standards of governance and oversight to its operations, servicing more than five crore investor accounts with assets in excess of INR 9 trillion. Shankar, in 1989, founded Sterling Software (India) Pvt. Ltd., with the objective of providing IT services and software solutions in the niche vertical of the Mutual Fund Industry. Its software applications offer a wide range of value and benefit to Fund Houses, Distributors and Investors at large. The group has morphed through a couple of large transformations in its history and is presently a professionally managed 4000 person strong provider of IT and platform based transaction processing and CRM services to the Mutual Fund, Insurance and Banking industries in India. 

V Shankar is renowned for his knowledge and rich operational experience of the Financial sector. Apart from being a voracious reader, Shankar is also interested in travel, music, angel investing/mentoring, and in charitable activity. Currently, he is engaged in public and angel investing and mentoring for startups and mature organizations under the aegis of Acsys Investments Private Limited. His work in the areas of finance, leadership, people management and social activities has resulted in recognition including the Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year award by TiECON in 2012 and the Distinguished Alumnus Award by IIM Calcutta and IIT Madras. In the last few years Shankar has also become involved with the promotion of Entrepreneurship through The Chennai Angels and TIE Chennai. Shankar is involved with charities for the old, health initiatives for the disadvantaged, education of the underprivileged, and higher education.