Key Team Members

Yogesh Mariwalla
Managing Director

• - Master in Statistics from Mumbai University with a first rank.
• - ‘Human Resources Executive Program’ from Stanford Business School.

Yogesh is a business focused business leader, with a deep understanding of various business processes and their linkage to success. Yogesh has diverse experience across industries and functions. Yogesh believes that development of people is the key for any business to succeed and has throughout his career spent time helping companies navigate change and empower employees to achieve sustainable growth

He is a frequent speaker at various forums, takes guest lectures at IIMs and is a member of the CII HR committee. He was also a member of the CII SME committee. Yogesh has worked closely with the top management of various companies helping them develop strategies for growth and reshape their organisations, by effectively leveraging their Human resources. Yogesh has helped various small and medium enterprises professionalise their companies and take them to the next level of growth.

Prior to entering the area of consultancy Yogesh spent 23 years in the corporate world, primarily with the Tata Group. He has built his career leading change and transformation as a HR leader and strategic business partner. He has headed corporate functions like Human Resources, Corporate Planning, Information Technology, Network Expansion, Channel Management and At the time of leaving the Tata group he was Chief HR & Corporate Affairs for Tata Capital. .Under his leadership Tata Motors won the Best Employer award for 3 years in a row from 2002 to 2004 Yogesh pioneered the concept of HR as a profit centre in Tata Motors and then went on to help other Tata companies such as VSNL, Tata Chemicals, Tata Precision instruments Singapore, Tata Steel, and Rallis in setting up various HR practices that are best in class. He has also helped mentor employees on various business assignments in sales and collections.

Anuradha Vaishampayan
COO & Head Strategy

Anuradha is a seasoned professional with a unique blend of corporate as well as consultancy experience. Anuradha has a doctorate in Psychology, postgraduate in Management with specialization in HR from ICFAI Business School, Mumbai. Anuradha is also a member of the NHRD network and India Women Network(IWN) an initiative of CII.

Anuradha spent the early part of her consulting career guiding organisations to align their HR and business strategy. She has worked with a number of senior professionals helping, reviewing and guiding them to achieve their performance goals. After having cut her teeth in various HR sub functions; Anuradha graduated to help organisations develop their overall strategy as well as growth plans which would ultimately lead to Execution Excellence. Anuradha has worked with several companies - ranging from start ups to Fortune 500 companies - helping them develop innovative and pragmatic solutions closely linked and aligned to their business strategies. She has also been instrumental in helping companies, build organizational capability in line with their current and future requirements. Her experience varies across sectors ranging from automobiles, medical devices, consumer products, financial services as well as IT.

Anuradha has done extensive work in the area of Psychometric testing and her success has led to development of tests beyond the HR space. Tests designed by her are being used as substitutes for credit ratings to help aid lending decisions. Anuradha expertise in this space includes design of these tests for International markets.

Anuradha is a natural leader and has effectively led teams consisting of persons senior to her in age and experience. In these assignments Anuradha has worked closely with the clients with a focus on understanding their needs to help provide the best solutions. This involves regular update sessions with the clients leadership as well as her team to ensure and check clarity of direction as well as to ensure that deadlines are met.

Prior to joining Index Advisory Anuradha has been associated with companies Saint Gobain and Catwalk Worldwide. At Index Advisory Anuradha has been a fast track employee and has managed assignments independently which includes dealing with CEOs specially in the SME space.

Pallavi Maitra
COO & Head Research

Pallavi is a seasoned HR professional who worked for 15 years in the corporate world before switching to the consultancy space. Pallavi has done her Masters in Psychology where she was a gold medalist.

Post that she has also acquired a degree in law as well as completed HR Gurukul the flagship program of the Tata group for budding HR professionals. Besides this Pallavi is a qualified practitioner of various psychometric instruments.. Pallavi is a well read person and always up-to-date with the latest happenings in the psychometric space.

For a large part of her corporate career Pallavi was associated with Tata Motors. During this stint Pallavi has worked across various plants as well as in the corporate office. She has worked in every area of the function in great detail. She has also seamlessly worked on various key group initiatives with the top management of the company. When Pallavi left the Tata group she was heading the HR for the commercial functions (non plant) of Tata Motors.

Pallavi has done extensive work in the areas of Business Excellence processes as well as training. Pallavi was a key member of the team responsible for TBEM in the Tata group which is modeled around the Malcom Baldrige Award. Pallavi played in key role in helping Tata Motors win this award. Pallavi is heavily focused on Research and has been instrumental in cutting down the time taken by Psychometric tests.

Akshata Kulkarni
Head - Quality Assurance

Akshata has a Masters of Psychology with specialization in clinical Psychology from University of Mumbai. She has worked on research projects in the areas of decision making, humour and personality and has taught subjects like Psychological Assessment and Fundamentals of Organization psychology to Bachelor of Arts students. She has also been affiliated with certain NGOs assisting them in their Impact Evaluations as an external research consultant. She champions the cause for an Anti-Plagiarism Movement in Indian Academic Research context. On a rainy day, good fictional books and pets cheer her up.

At Index, Akshata specializes in psychometrics and aids in developing psychometrically sound tools, using various statistical software. She also looks after the Quality Assurances and aids the team in better decision making. She has also been mastering People Analytics and enjoys exploring real-world problems with a researcher’s mind.

Rameshwari Ganji
Head – Client Relations

Rameshwari is an Alumni of IIM Kolkata. Prior to this she did her post graduation in Commerce from Mumbai University and a masters program in Psychology from IGNOU.

After a seven years industry experience Rameshwari moved into the consultancy space with Index Advisory. Before joining Index Advisory Rameshwari has worked with HDFC Bank and Paramount Healthcare. Her area of expertise cover areas like Training, HR Operations, matching people to the right job, psychometric test etc. Rameshwari has skills which allow her to work seamlessly which may involve geographies, hierarchies, countries as well as different type of people. With highly effective interpersonal and delivery skills Rameshwari is a most sought after person by subordinates, peers and bosses alike.

Some of her major projects includes international projects in Psychometric tests. Rameshwari is an expert in multi-tasking and can work on many projects simultaneously and delivering high quality output to the client leading to customer delight.

Poorva Mokal
Head – Product Development

Poorva has a doctorate in Psychology and has a Master’s in Applied Psychology from University of Mumbai. She has received the degree of PhD in Psychological Studies from State University of Sheffield. She also has done a Certification course on Family Counselling from Ramnarain Ruia College and a Certification course on Fundamentals of Research from Monk Prayogshala.

Poorva chose to study Psychology after coming across Sigmund Freud’s well known “Psychoanalysis Theory”. She is fascinated by how things that people do unintentionally also have some hidden and unconscious motives behind them. She is a voracious reader and is particularly interested in Sigmund Freud’s work. Some of the Sigmund Freud that she had read are Interpretation of dreams, Civilization and its discontent. She has also done a book presentation on the book “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” by Sigmund Freud.

Before joining Index, Poorva had a stint with Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (HPCL) as Research Assistant for special projects. Her job was to analyse the data extracted from the psychometric test inventories like MBTI, Strengths Finder, aspiration scale. Her in-depth analysis helped the senior Management to understand and devise development and role assignment for the newly recruited employees based on their personality and aspirations. She was also involved in some interesting projects like conducting research on the relationship between employee time perspectives and productivity, team-based reward system and Locus of control.

At Index, Poorva specializes in psychometrics and aids in developing psychometric test construction and validation. She manages the development process of new and existing tests and assessments including the collection and psychometric analysis of the test data. With her specialized research capabilities, she can transform the relevant complex psychological concepts & models in creating tests that can be represented to the target audience in a simplified version.

Kalika Sen
Head- Process & Technology

Kalika has a master’s degree in Psychological Studies with Distinction from University of Sheffield. Kalika is a multi speciality person with qualifications in Science, Fine Arts and Computer Technology & After working for 5 years with India’s largest bank (HDFC Bank) Kalika decided to move to consultancy to use her skills better. At Index Kalika again straddles between various functions seamlessly including HR advisory, Business Excellence and Improvement, Psychometric Testing and designing questions using the Ink Blot theory. A very enthusiastic person Kalika manages a host of clients both in Indian and Global markets and has travelled in Asia as well as Europe. In the Business Excellence space Kalika has interacted with CEOs of SMEs and helped them improve their performance and productivity by designing strategic plans and hand holding these companies. Kalika have done extensive work in the area of Psychometric testing and this has led to successful development of tests beyond the HR Space. This test is being used as substitutes for credit ratings to help aid lending decisions. With a skill which put her at ease with Top management as well as people lower down the order; Kalika can incorporate a 360-degree view in the strategy.

She also has accolades in the stream of fine arts. She enjoys art appreciation and painting in her free time.

Prarthana Mishra
Manager – Client Relations

Prarthana is a qualified and a diligent HR professional with an experience of over 11 years in various functions within HR. Prarthana is a gold medalist in Organizational & Industrial Psychology and has also done her PGDBMS from Symbiosis Institute of Management Pune. She is also a certified practitioner for Psychometric tests like MBTI, 16PF and others. Prarthana is also certified in Competency mapping, BEI and Performance management from TVRLS, Hay and Mafoi. Prarthana has worked for Tata Motors, Tata AIG and MAHYCO before joining Index Advisory. As part of her career she has worked hands-on on many key projects in these organisations. Her area of expertise covers competency mapping, work design, training and development, performance management systems, balance scorecard, employee engagement studies and compensation architecture design.

Prarthana is an expert in multi-tasking and can work on many projects simultaneously and delivering quality output to the client leading to customer delight. She has the unique skill of getting into depth of and assignment as well as stepping back and taking a helicopter view of the project at the same time.

Rohit M
Business Analyst & Technology Officer

Rohit is a B. Tech in Computer Engineering from COEP Pune one of the most reputed institutes. Prior to joining Index Advisory Rohit was working as Lead Business Process Improvement at Searce. Here he guided companies on automate business processes and to improve work efficiencies, leveraging technology and ensuring bottom line improvement with use of technology.

At Index Rohit is managing the sophisticated technology platform on which the psychometric tests of Index run. He is also responsible for the integration of the technology platform with the clients IT systems.

Ajay Vaze
Partner – Consultancy Services

Ajay brings about 14 years of professional experience in Business and HR Consulting. Prior to that for 7 years Ajay gained rich industry experience in the Financial Services, Steel, Non-Ferrous Metals and Telecommunication industries, with a focus on Credit Appraisal of Corporate Clients, Management Assurance, Project Management and Business Development.

His vast expertise lies in Systems implementation, Operational, Sales and Marketing Excellence, Change Management Implementation, Organization Restructuring, Strategy Deployment and Innovation Framework Design across the Industries. Ajay has helped large client organisations in clarifying their strategies in alignment with business objectives and conceptualised many restructuring exercises across various industries. He has successfully completed over 40 projects spanning India, Middle East and South East Asia.

• Restructured 9 service functions in 18 locations across India (a steel major with a workforce of 65,000)
• Operational Excellence at 5 locations (India’s No. 1 Steel Service Centre)
• Implemented a new Performance Management System (India’s No. 1 Housing Finance company)
• Implemented Management Control Systems for Jamshedpur City
• End-to-end Change Management at an integrated steel complex with captive power plant (steel and power major in Chhattisgarh)
• Innovation Audit for a Global Chemical giant

A Bachelor of Engineering (Metallurgy), a MBA in Finance, and has completed Group I of the Treasury and Forex Management Program of ICFAI.