Lighthouse elevates Rochelle D'Souza, Anshul Jain to managing directors

By Joseph Rai

  • 17 Jun 2021
Credit: 123RF.com

Lighthouse Funds has elevated two women principals in its team to managing directors, among a handful of recent promotions at the mid-market private equity firm.  

The Mumbai based firm, which has backed companies such as Bikaji Foods, Fabindia and V2 Retail, promoted Rochelle D'Souza and Anshul Jain to managing directors, it said in a LinkedIn post. 

D'Souza joined Lighthouse in December 2012 as an investment manager and went on to become vice president in 2014 before moving up to principal in 2017. Prior to Lighthouse, she was a manager at SBI Capital Markets, investment banking division, where she focused on equity capital market transactions. 

Prior to that she interned at Citibank India.  

Jain joined Lighthouse in 2017 as principal. Prior to that she was vice president at ICICI Securities. She previously worked at Morgan Stanley, ABN Amro and Babcock & Brown.  

Jain has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore. D'Souza graduated as an engineer in electronics and communication from Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering (RVCE) and also has an MBA from SP Jain Institute of Management & Research.  

The private equity firm also said that Vivek Kumar has been elevated to principal from vice president; and Vishvesh Varma has been promoted to senior associate from analyst. 

Prior to joining Lighthouse, Kumar was an investment banker with Edelweiss, where he focused on mid-sized Indian corporations in the consumer and healthcare sectors. Kumar, a IIT Roorkee graduate, previously worked with Bajaj Auto. Prior to joining Lighthouse, Varma, a graduate of SRCC, Delhi University, worked in the investment banking division at Avendus Capital and Deutsche Bank. 

Lighthouse was founded in 2006 by Sachin Bhartiya, Sean Sovak and Mukund Krishnaswami. The private equity firm is investing from its third fund that marked the final close at Rs 1,750 crore ($250 million), including a pool of capital for co-investment opportunities in May 2019.

Other portfolio companies of the firm include Dhanuka Agritech, Radiant Hospitality and Xseed Education.