Board Of Directors - Kotak General Insurance

Mr. Gaurang Shah heads the Life Insurance, Asset Management and the International business of the Kotak Mahindra Group. He took over this assignment on May 1, 2010. Mr. Shah has over 31 years of rich and varied experience in the Financial Services sector, several of which are with the Kotak Mahindra Group. He has played a stellar role in building the Group’s Consumer Banking business and Life insurance business. He has held several positions of high responsibility over the years, including, inter alia, the Head of Retail Assets at Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited. He was also closely associated with Kotak Mahindra Primus (a joint venture between Kotak Mahindra Group and Ford Credit International), among India’s leading automobile finance companies. Mr. Shah is a Chartered Accountant, Company Secretary and Cost Accountant.

Mr. Arun Agarwal has spent over 44+ years in the Insurance Industry besides, having been part of / spearheading three start-ups in India (He has been one of the founding members of Tata and AIG JV, Tata AIG General Insurance Company; the first MD and the CEO of the JV between the Murugappa Group and Mitsui Sumitomo, Chola MS General Insurance Company; As Lloyd’s General Representative for India worked with the Indian Government and the Indian Parliamentary Committee for legislative changes for allowing onshore reinsurance branches, including Lloyd’s then worked with the Indian insurance regulator for reinsurance branches’ regulatory framework and finally, getting the license and operationalizing Lloyd’s in India).

Arun Agarwal has published insurance Monographs, as part of the insurance reform agenda, jointly with H Ansari, a former Indian insurance regulator titled, "A Transformative Agenda for the Indian Insurance Industry and its Policy Framework" (May, 2017), “An Implementation Agenda for The IRDAI to Transform its Regulatory Framework to serve The INDIA of 2022” (November, 2017) and "Insurance Governance for World's Largest Democracy" (December 2019) that laid down a complete insurance governance framework. Arun Agarwal has also been a member of the Reinsurance Advisory Committee of the IRDAI (2020/21).

Arun Agarwal was conferred with Lifetime Achievement Award at the 24th Asia Insurance Industry Awards, 2020 Singapore.

Arun Agarwal (under the pen name, 'Arun Ganesh') has recently co-edited (along with Srinath Sridharan) and co-authored (along with 18 other authors) and published a Book titled as “Time for Bharat” (November, 2022), which endeavours to raise educated conversations on public governance across Economic, Education, Healthcare, Agriculture, Urbanisation, Industry, Trade, Financial Services, Taxation, Technology, Environment, Energy, Internal Security, International Relations, Defence, Constitutional and other Legal mechanisms, and Administrative Governance, in an encompassing way. The emphasis is that we must become the worthy legatee of what Bharat stands for, in terms of its rich civilizational continuum and timeless values, reminding ourselves that we are an ideational state and not an ideological state.

Dhananjay N Date joined the Board of Kotak Mahindra General Insurance Co. Ltd as an Independent Director in September 2015.

He is a Chartered Insurer from the CII, UK and an alumnus of the Bishop Cotton School, Simla and St. Stephens College, Delhi. He began his career in 1979 as a tea planter in Munnar, Kerala. Subsequently he stumbled into insurance. After a stint as Branch Manager in Pune for the New India Assurance Co, he was seconded to their London Office. From 1996, he worked for Swiss Re initially in Zurich and then in London. In 2003 he returned as the Head of Swiss Re’s Reinsurance operation in India. After twelve years as the Head, he took early retirement in Dec 2014. He is also an Independent Director on the Boards of Softcell Technologies Ltd and Bajaj Energy Ltd.

Ms. Sharda Agarwal holds a postgraduate diploma from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and a B.Sc. Honours (Economics) degree from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She is a renowned marketing and brand expert, with over two decades of experience in various industries and sectors. She was the co-founder of a strategic marketing firm - MarketGate Consulting. She has served as Director of Marketing at Coca Cola India and was also associated with Johnson & Johnson in India and the US.

She is currently the co-founder of an online women’s health platform - Sepalika. Her company uses evidence-based natural solutions from the field of functional medicine to help women address & reverse their chronic hormonal health conditions.

She is also an independent director on the Boards of Future Lifestyle Fashions and Future Speciality Retail (Lee Cooper brand).

Mr. G Murlidhar is a founder member of Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Limited, and has served the Company in various capacities of increasing responsibility over the years. Mr. Murlidhar has over 30 years of rich and varied experience in functional areas of Finance, Commercial Projects, Marketing, HR, IT, Consumer distribution besides handling public issues and open offers across BFSI, Services and Manufacturing. Mr. Murlidhar is a Chartered Accountant, Company Secretary and Cost Accountant.

Virat Diwanji, Group President and Head – Consumer Bank, is with the Kotak Mahindra Group for over the last two and a half decades. Virat is part of the Bank’s Group Management Council that drives and oversees the Kotak Mahindra Group’s growth charter.

He began his career with the management consultancy division of A. F. Ferguson & Company in 1988. He joined Kotak in 1994.

In his long innings at Kotak, Virat has led over 10 diverse business lines cutting across Assets and Liabilities and has been instrumental in metamorphosing many business divisions into success stories at Kotak. He took on the mantle of managing the branch banking business in November 2007 with the primary responsibility of establishing bank branches as a point of product distribution, transaction processing and differentiated customer experience.

Some of his career milestones include managing the first JV of the Group with an overseas partner, Ford Credit as its Managing Director and incubating & growing two niche customer segments of the consumer banking business viz. Priority & NRI Banking. In the recent past, Virat has successfully managed the integration of ING Vysya Bank’s retail distribution network with the branch banking network of Kotak, a melange of not only business but culture, talent and a unified vision.

Virat is passionate about mentoring budding talent and has groomed several business leaders at all levels.

Suresh Agarwal is the Managing Director (MD) & CEO of Kotak Mahindra General Insurance Company Ltd. (KGI) Since 1st May 2021.

Prior to this role, Suresh was heading the overall distribution at Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company where he was responsible for complete distribution channels, strategic initiatives including customer engagement, distribution process, and quality & operations efficiencies.

Founding member of Kotak Life, Suresh is also part of the Kotak’s key leadership group, which drives the growth charter for the organization.

Suresh started his journey with Kotak as a management trainee in 1995 and was part of the corporate finance division at Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd. He has been associated with the life insurance business for over 20 years, and has played a vital role in establishing the distribution of Kotak Life pan-India. He has total experience of over 26 years.

Suresh is a qualified Chartered Accountant, Company Secretary, and Cost and Works Accountant. An ardent cricket fan, Suresh also enjoys listening to music and watching movies.