Varad Pande

Varad is a Partner in Dalberg’s Mumbai office and co-leads Dalberg’s Financial Inclusion Practice Area. His recent work at Dalberg has focused on supporting public-private initiatives to drive financial inclusion and digital payments in South Asia. He has also led strategic engagements to recommend new investments in education, urban environmental management and water.

Varad has held diverse roles across government, strategy consulting, and multilateral institutions. Before coming to Dalberg, he was Special Advisor to India’s Minister for Rural Development and Environment and Forests, where he drove the agenda on sustainable livelihoods, water and sanitation, financial inclusion, environment, and climate change. Varad was also a member of the Government of India’s Low Carbon Expert Group and on the launch team of India’s Unique ID Program Aadhaar, which aims to transform service delivery. He was Principal Advisor to Abhijit Banerjee on the UN’s High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda and sherpa on the UNSG’s Global Sustainability Panel. Previously, Varad was a Team Leader at the Monitor Group, where among other things he helped set up a national economic development agency and led a large multi-stakeholder project to scale-up inclusive business models that create social impact. He has also worked at the World Bank on governance decentralization, primary education, and water and sanitation. Varad has an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge and a BA Honors in Economics from St. Stephens College, Delhi. He is a Fellow of the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for International Cooperation at NYU, and he sits on the Policy Advisory Group of the Global Financial Inclusion Initiative (GFII) at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Yale University.