Dr Sundar Venkatesh

Dr Sundar Venkatesh is Distinguished Professor of Finance and Strategy at First Bridge Business School. A chartered accountant who began his career in audit and corporate roles, he earned his PhD at IIM Ahmedabad. For more than two decades he has helped senior executives, founders and management teams use accounting and finance as instruments of strategy, rather than as matters of compliance.

He taught at IIM Bangalore, where he won the outstanding teacher award for the first-year MBA core course four years in a row, and at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and Vietnam. He has served as Dean, Associate Dean, Programme Chair and Head of Field, including as Dean at Shiv Nadar University, and has helped design curricula and build institutions in several countries.

His research, grounded in the emerging and transition economies of Asia, is written with the classroom in mind: textbooks, teaching cases and peer-reviewed articles that turn local business realities into lessons students can use. At First Bridge, that means finance taught through real decisions about growth, capital structure and risk.