Rupalee Ruchismita

Rupalee is the founding head and Executive Director of the Centre for Insurance and Risk Management (CIRM) at IFMR; a technical group, which provides micro insurance expertise to the sector. As a pass out of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, she has worked with the Social Initiatives Group (SIG), a grant and research making group within ICICI Bank. Her work has been in the field of Financial Inclusion. She has also been involved in developing ‘Catalytic Infrastructure’ and is engaged in ‘Policy Advocacy’ in the microfinance sector to ensure sustainable development of the microfinance sector. She has worked in developing micro-health insurance products for community institutions.

Clémence Tatin-Jaleran

Clémence has joined CIRM in April 2009, in the framework of the TA Fellowship program of the Microinsurance Innovation Fund (ILO, Intl Labour Office). She is an actuary with 8 years of professional experience, mainly in Canada where she worked for a major P&C insurer. She conducted strategic reviews, pricing revisions, KPIs evaluations, scoring and performance analysis. She graduated with a Master in Financial and Actuarial Sciences from ISFA, Lyon, France and is a Fellow of the French Institute of Actuaries. She’s interested in microinsurance for its social inclusion dimension. During the course of her work at CIRM, she wants to work on development and assessment of microinsurance schemes, share her knowledge with the CIRM team and learn about microinsurance schemes and challenges in India. Her two particular areas of interest are Health Microinsurance schemes (pricing, assessment and social impacts) as well as Weather Insurance Products (pricing methodology, limitations and overall impacts).

Anupama James

Anupama James holds a post graduate diploma in rural management from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. She has done her graduation in Agriculture from Kerala Agricultural University. She has worked in projects associated with NGOs, co-operatives, small agricultural enterprises as part of internships both at the graduate and post graduate level. Currently she is working as a consultant in the agriculture risk vertical.

Alok Shukla

Alok Shukla brings with him strong analytical skills and business perspective of weather insurance industry in India. Alok is a graduate from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. After his graduation, he joined Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS), a leading Indian weather insurance broker company supported under Incubation Centre of IIT Kanpur. At WRMS, he handled trading and underwriting functions in the capacity of Vice President. In his three years of stint at WRMS, he has touched almost all types of weather products offered in India. He heads the agriculture risk vertical at the Centre and his key areas of interest are OTC products and product packaging.

Altaf A. Virani

Dr. Altaf A. Virani holds a Master’s degree in Hospital Administration from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. His focus at TISS was on Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Healthcare and Hospital Planning, Operations and Systems Design. His master’s dissertation examined the dimensions of service quality in nursing through a gap analysis of patients’, providers’ and accreditor’s perceptions of service quality. His areas of interest include Health Economics and Healthcare Financing, Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Management Information Systems in Health. Dr. Virani holds a Bachelor’s degree in Homoeopathic Medicine and Surgery from Goa University and is a certified first aid instructor and trainer. He has held various honorary positions with the Aga Khan Health Services in Goa. Currently, he is working as a consultant with the health vertical at CIRM.

Anupama Sharma

Dr. Anupama Sharma has done her B.V.Sc & A.H. from Choudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University in Hissar (Haryana). She is University merit scholarship holder for academic excellence throughout her graduation. After completing her graduation, she did her Post Graduation Diploma in Rural Management (PRM) from Institute of Rural Management, Anand (premier institute for rural management). She is active member of Blue Cross Society (society works for the therapeutic and preventive measures for the stray animals). Currently she is involved in looking at challenges involved in livestock insurance product as well as process which hinders the reach of livestock insurance to low-income households.

Chetan Bhatia

Chetan Bhatia is a Masters in Economics from one of the premier institutes for higher education and research in economics in India, Madras School of Economics, Anna University, Chennai. He graduated from the University of Delhi with BA (Hons.) in Economics. His research interests lie in Risk Management, Development Economics and Applied Econometrics. His Masters theses titled “Tax Efficiency in India: A Comparative Study of Selected Indian States” measured tax efficiency and analyzed the factors affecting tax efficiency at the state level. With a strong analytical background he is equipped to assist all the verticals within CIRM in modeling and analyzing data. Currently, he is responsible for the ‘Livelihood Risk Management’ vertical and involved specifically in Agriculture Risk Managment.

Janani Akhilandeswari

Janani holds a Masters in Financial Economics from Madras School of Economics, Chennai. She graduated in Commerce from the University of Madras. She is a gold medalist at both masters and graduate level. Her research interests lie in applied econometrics, risk management and economics of insurance. In her masters thesis on “Real Estate Bubbles” , she developed an econometric model that can forecast real estate price speculations in an economy. At CIRM, she works on data analysis, risk modeling and pricing for all the verticals.

Javed Hazarika

Javed Hazarika completed his Bachelors and Masters of Statistics degree from ISI Kolkata. He is a member of Institute of Actuaries,India and is planning to write IAI exams.He has done many projects related to demand-forecasting,score prediction in cricket,time-series analysis, etc. during his academic life.He has good analytical,statistical and programming skills.

Mangesh Patankar

Mangesh is a Post Graduate Diploma holder in Rural Management from Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). He has worked with various NGOs and cooperatives during his internships. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Mumbai University. Before joining IRMA, he was with the French consultancy giant, Capgemini. There he worked in the e-governance project of London Borough of Croydon as a techno-functional consultant. He was the Project Quality Lead and Configuration Manager of his team and was honored by Project Star Award for his performance. He has been honored by Jagatik Marathi Parishad (Global Marathi Conference) as an advanced learner of Modi (an ancient script used as a substitute of Devanagari). His focus area includes designing practicable price and volume risk hedging mechanisms for small and marginal farmers.

Raghuram

Raghuram holds a Masters in Quantitative Economics from Indian Statistical Institute. He graduated in Mathematics from Chennai Mathematical Institute. He has worked in the Risk Management department of a (Catastrophe) Reinsurance company. He is working as a Pricing Consultant and aspires to be a Micro Insurance Actuary.

Akhil Behl

The youngest member of the team, Akhil Behl, is an Economist by training, with an M.Sc. in Economics from IGIDR, Mumbai. After completing his under-graduate studies in Mathematics, he switched to Economics because of a keen interest in Development economics and the issue of inequality. His research interests include theoretical modeling of economic behavior, risk-management, and savings practices exhibited by low-income individuals/groups. At CIRM, he is presently involved with designing products that bundle life insurance with savings/non-life insurance based products.

Gayatri Krishnan and Dhruv Parthasarathy are interns at the Centre for Insurance and Risk Management.