Apollo's Mintoo Bhandari to step back from India leadership

Bhandari will also step back from his direct leadership role at Aion Capital Partners, a special situations-focused joint venture launched by Apollo and ICICI Venture in 2013, though AVCJ understands he will stay with both Apollo and Aion as an advisor. He will also continue hold his current board seats at Apollo and Aion’s portfolio companies, including Welspun Corp and Essel Group.

He will be succeeded at Apollo by Utsav Baijal, a partner at the firm. Baijal is also a partner at Aion, where he will share leadership with managing directors Parth Gandhi and Kalpesh Kikani following Bhandari’s departure.

Bhandari joined Apollo in 2006 and opened its India office in 2008. Prior to joining the firm he was a manager at Harvard Management Company, which handles the endowment of Harvard University, and later co-founded India-focused private equity firm The View Group.

In his role as head of India Bhandari has spent significant amounts of time commuting between London, where his family lives, and Apollo’s Mumbai office. The change will give him more time to spend with his family, along with pursuing his fundraising work with the foundation of Indian children’s rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Kailash Satyarthi.

Apollo closed its ninth global fund at $24.7 billion last year. As of September 2017, the firm had $242 billion in global assets under management. Five of its 16 offices worldwide are in Asia, including two in India.

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• Topics
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• Apollo Global Management