Shri. B.P. Kanungo joined as the Director of CAFRAL on September 20, 2021.

He was previously Deputy Governor with the Reserve Bank of India looking after the Department of Currency Management, Department of External Investments & Operations, Department of Government & Bank Accounts, Department of Information Technology, Department of Payment & Settlement Systems, Foreign Exchange Department, Internal Debt Management Department, Legal Department and Premises Department.Shri Kanungo, a career central banker, joined the Reserve Bank of India in September 1982. He has worked in several functional areas of the bank including banking & non-banking supervision.

He headed the regional offices of the Reserve Bank at Jaipur and Kolkata besides holding the position of the Banking Ombudsman for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. As Executive Director, he was responsible for Foreign Exchange Management, Internal Debt Management and Government and Bank Accounts.Shri Kanungo represented RBI in the International Committee on Global Financial System, Financial Stability Board. 

He was Chairman of Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited, Chairman of the Governing Board of Indian Institute of Bank Management, Guwahati and RBI Nominee Director on the Boards of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, National Housing Bank, Reserve Bank Information Technology Private Limited, etc.

Indrani Banerjee is the Additional Director responsible for the Learning activities at CAFRAL. Prior to joining CAFRAL, she was Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India where her responsibilities spanned the areas of financial market regulation, foreign exchange management, external investments & operations, and legal.

As a part of senior management, her experience encompassed banking regulation, supervision of commercial banks and foreign exchange reserves management. She has also worked in the Monetary Policy Department of the Bank.

While at RBI, she headed several important committees such as the Taskforce for Urban Cooperative Banks and Standing Committee on Currency Management. She had represented the Bank in domestic and international fora on matters including External Audit and Leadership Imperatives & participated in events such as the International Roundtable on the Basel Consultative Paper on Corporate Governance and the World Bank/IMF International Conference on Policy Challenges for the Financial Sector.

While on deputation as Member of Faculty to the National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM) in the area of Money, International Banking & Finance, she was actively involved in capacity building and also coordinated a course on International Banking & Foreign Exchange in the first Post Graduate (MBA) Program on Banking and Finance.

She had a short stint in the South Asia Department of the International Finance Corporation in Washington DC. She has been a nominee director on the Board of EXIM Bank and represented RBI as ex-officio member of the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA).

She is an alumna of Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University and has an M.Phil degree in International Relations from JNU and a Masters in International Development Policy from the Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University. She is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers.

Shri. Diwakar Gupta is Senior Advisor (Research) at CAFRAL. Shri. Gupta superannuated from State Bank of India, India’s largest bank, with about 39 years of experience in various top executive/ senior management positions. He demitted office as Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, SBI in 2013. 

Subsequently he worked for two years as Senior Advisor (Banking Project) in Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd., Mumbai. Later Shri. Gupta worked as Vice President at Asian Development Bank, Manila. As Vice President, he oversaw the private sector and PPP operations of the Bank and participated in the Bank’s broader corporate initiatives like launching and operationalizing the biometric based National ID system of Philippines (akin to Aadhar), creating ADB Ventures, a donor-funded hybrid venture trust fund. He worked as Chair of the Digital Innovation Sandbox, and was a member of the steering committee supervising ADB’s digital agenda.

Currently, Shri. Gupta is Independent Director on the boards of CRISIL Ratings Ltd., Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd., Holiday Club Resorts Oy, its Finland-based subsidiary, and Mahindra Susten, Fullerton India Credit Company (FICC). He is also Non-executive Chairman of India Debt Resolution Company Limited (IDRCL) and Senior Advisor with True North, a leading India-focussed PE fund.

Shri. Gupta was a Member of the Expert Committee for Resolution Framework for COVID-19-related Stress, constituted by RBI. He was Chairman of the Task Force created by Dept. of Financial Services, Min. of Finance, Govt. of India, to review consortium / multiple lending, and suggest measures to make it more efficient (September 2012). He was also a member of High-Level Steering Committee to review Supervisory Processes of Banks, chaired by Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India (2012).

He partnered with Unique Identification Authority of India Limited for rollout of the biometric based unique identification program of Government of India (Aadhar).

Shri. Gupta is a post graduate in Physics from University of Delhi and has done his graduation with Physics honours from St Stephen’s College, New Delhi

Dr. Nirupama Kulkarni is Senior Research Director at CAFRAL. She is an applied empirical economist and her research interests include corporate finance, banking, household finance, real estate and monetary policy. Her recent work focuses on the role of government policies in the financial and housing market and its implications. Her research looks at how government regulation can stack the odds against private market competition and the implications of government policies aimed at increasing homeownership.

Nirupama has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from IIT Bombay, an MBA from Stern School of Business, New York University and a Ph.D. in business administration (finance and real estate) from Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. She has been the recipient of the Fisher Center Fellowship at UC Berkeley, Fisher Center Research Grant at UC Berkeley, Vanier Family Foundation Grant at UC Berkeley and was the FWA Clarin S. Schwartz Memorial Scholar and a Glucksman Research Fellow at the Stern School of Business, New York University.

Jyoti Kumar Pandey is the Senior Program Director currently associated with the CAFRAL’s Learning activities. Prior to joining CAFRAL he held positions as Regional Director of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and UT Chandigarh, Chief General Manager of Mumbai Regional Office and Chief General Manager of  Foreign Exchange Department, Reserve Bank of India, Central Office. As a Senior central banker having more than thirty years of experience he is having in-depth domain knowledge in areas of cross border capital and current account transactions and FEMA; regulation and supervision of banks / cooperative banks/ NBFCs; supervision and operation of Payment Systems and IT Controls.  He has also been a Member of Faculty of RBI’s College of Agricultural Banking, Pune.

He has been a Member of the NITI Aayog Committee to Transform India’s Gold Market, the Committee on Gold Issues - a sub-committee of FSDC and also the Internal Task Force for review of Returns in Foreign Exchange Department of RBI.

He holds an MS in Information Systems from Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, MD; an MBA from Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA; and MSc. (Tech.) from Indian Institute of Technology, Dhanbad. He is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers.

C. Sankaranarayanan is the Senior Program Director currently associated with the CAFRAL’s Learning activities. Prior to joining CAFRAL he worked in State Bank for India for more than 35 years and has held a number of very important assignments in the Bank in India and abroad.He had worked as a faculty in State Bank Staff College, Hyderabad, SVP & Regional Head-SBICAPs Chennai, Country Head & CEO-SBI Maldives, CEO SBI Newyork, Director (FDI), Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, GOI, New Delhi and General Manager, Circle Audit Office, Chennai. He is a Post Graduate in Economics and a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers.                                            

Sunita joined the Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (CAFRAL), Mumbai as Senior Administrative Officer in November, 2021. She superannuated as General Manager from Reserve Bank of India, in January, 2021. She has more than 32 years of experience in working in various departments of the Reserve Bank including DEIO, DGBA, and FED.

She has been previously associated with CAFRAL between 2011-14, while on deputation from RBI as DGM/GM. She was responsible for the overall administration and also worked as a Program Director. Prior to that she was closely associated with core team that setup BCSBI and formulated the Code of Banks Commitment to Customers and Code of Bank’s Commitment to Micro and Small Enterprises. She is MA in English Literature and BSc in Science from University of Rajasthan.