Board of Directors

Shri Mahabaleshwara M.S. took charge as Managing Director & CEO of Karnataka Bank on 15.04.2017. After successful completion of his first term of three years, RBI re-appointed him for a further period of three years with effect from 15.04.2020. He has over 37 years of banking experience both at operational and administrative levels. The Bank is implementing its most sought-after wholistic transformation exercise ‘KBL-VIKAAS’ under his leadership aiming to position the Bank as ‘Big, Strong and Vibrant’ & the ‘Digital Bank of Future’ in the years to come. Further, he had played a pivotal role in the ‘Digital Banking’ & ‘BPR’ (Business Process Reengineering) initiatives of the Bank on earlier occasions. The Bank has surpassed “Rupees One Lakh Thirty Nine Thousand Crore Business” and also achieved a milestone of more than 11 million customers under his able leadership.

He has done his Masters in Agricultural Sciences (M.Sc. Agri), with specialisation in Agronomy, from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bengaluru. He is also a Certificated Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers (CAIIB) and Honorary Fellow of Indian Institute of Banking and Finance (IIBF) & holds Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM) from St. Aloysius College, Mangaluru.

Further, he is also associated with the following Institutions/Organisations:

• Chairman, Southern India Banks’ Staff Training College (SIBSTC), Bengaluru.
• Member of the Managing Committee of IBA (Indian Banks’ Association), Mumbai.
• Member of the Governing Council of IIBF (Indian Institute of Banking & Finance), Mumbai.
• Non-Executive Chairman of M/s KBL Services Ltd., Bengaluru, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank.
• The president of the Bankers’ Club, Mangaluru.
• Member of CII National Committee on Banking 2021-22.
• Member of FICCI National Committee on Banking 2021-22.

Further, he served as a member of the Managing Committee of IBA (Indian Banks’ Association), Mumbai for a period of three years (September 11, 2019 to September 16, 2022).

Considering his invaluable contribution in the field of banking and also to the society, he has been honoured with various awards and accolades by several prestigious institutions / organisations. Major among them are:

• ‘CEO of The Year’ award presented by the ‘World Leadership Congress & Awards’, Mumbai.
• ‘CEO with HR Orientation Award’ at the 27th ‘World HRD Congress Summit’ presented by ‘ET Now’ in the year 2019.
• ‘Distinguished Alumni Award’ presented by ‘Alumni Association of University of Agricultural Sciences’, Bengaluru (UASB).
• ‘Aryabhata International Award of 2017’ presented by ‘Aryabhata Cultural Organisation (Regd.)’, Bengaluru.
• ‘Shree Krishnanugraha Prashasti’ presented by his Holiness Shri Shri Vishwesha Theertha Swamiji, Pejavar Mutt, Udupi.
• ‘A. Shama Rao Memorial Outstanding Achievement Award - 2021' presented by 'A.Shama Rao Foundation', Mangaluru.
• Award of Excellence [Leadership Capital (4.0) – Jan-Feb 2022]’ by PFRDA, New Delhi.
• ‘Purushothama’ award of Shri Ramachandrapura Mutt, Hosanagar presented by Shri Shri Raghaveshwara Bharathi Swamiji.
• ‘FE Pillar of the BFSI Industry’ award from Financial Express.Com - IE Online Media Services Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai.
• ‘Jagadguru Bharathi Thirtha Puraskar’ award by His Holiness Sri Sri Vidhushekhara Bharathi Sannidhanam, Sri Sharada Peetham, Sringeri.
• ‘Sri Raghavendra Anugraha Prashasti’ from Sri Raghavendra Swamy Mutt, Mantralayam.

Mr. Kalmanje Gururaj Acharya is a practising Chartered Accountant from Bengaluru having around 30 years of experience. He secured top Ranks in B.com, CMA & CA Examination. He is presently the senior partner of M/s. K.G. Acharya & Co, Chartered Accountants, Bengaluru, specializing in Corporate finance, Corporate taxes & Company law. He is a Member of the Bangalore–Financial Reporting Review Group, formulated under Financial Reporting Review Board of ICAI, New Delhi.

Earlier, he was a Director on the Board of erstwhile State Bank of Mysore and was also Chairman of the Audit Committee of the said Bank. He was also a member in other Board level committees notably, Risk Management Committee, Nomination Committee, Remuneration Committee and High Value Frauds Committee.

He was also a Member of the Expert Advisory Committee of ICAI, New Delhi.

He is on our Board of Directors since 26.04.2022.

Mr. Jeevandas Narayan is a graduate in Commerce from University of Mysore. He has over 40 years of vast experience in Banking and finance sector. He is a career Banker who retired from State Bank of India as Deputy Managing Director and his last posting was Managing Director in State Bank of Travancore. After retirement from SBI, he was the Nominee Director of the SBI on the Board of Soma Enterprises Ltd. for a short stint in the year 2017.

He was appointed as Additional Director (Independent Director) of Manappuram Home Finance Ltd. w.e.f. February 2, 2017 and then, he held the post of Managing Director of Manappuram Home Finance Ltd from June 2017 to May 2021. Later, he was re-designated as a Non- Executive Director of the said Company with effect from June 1, 2021.

He was ranked among the top 40 CEOs by the BT-PwC list of India’s Top 40 CEOs from the BFSI Sector 2016.

Mr. Jeevandas Narayan is also serving on the Governing Body of MSNIM, a leading Management Institute based at Mangaluru and is currently nominated as its Correspondent. Both these positions as Governing Body member and Correspondent are “Pro bono” positions.

He is on our Board of Directors since 26.04.2022.

Mr. Keshav Krishnarao Desai, aged 55 years, holds BE (Mech.) graduation. He has been into the automobile business for the past 32 years. Presently he is the Managing Partner of Desai Group of concerns established in the year 1939 having its head office at Hubli and other offices at all the major places of North Karnataka region namely-Gadag, Haveri, Ranebennur, Koppal, Sindhanur, Raichur, Kustagi, Vijayapur and Bagalkot. The Group has dealerships for the products of TAFE Limited and FORCE MOTORS Limited. He is also into real estate business of constructing residential/commercial complexes for the last 25 years. He is the Managing Trustee of Shri Bindurao Desai Trust which owns Geeta Mandir, in Hubli. He is the trustee of Lokshikshana Trust, publisher of the daily Kannada Newspaper Samyukta Karnataka, Karmaveera and Kasturi.

Mr. Keshav Krishnarao Desai is Director on the Board of the Bank Since February 19, 2016.

Mr. B R Ashok, FCA, aged 57 years, is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), a professional member of the Indian Institute of Insolvency Professionals of ICAI (IIIPI) and a 1st Rank holder in the post qualification Diploma Course on Information Systems Audit conducted by the ICAI in December 2002.

He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in the year 1984 having more than 35 years of experience in practice and his areas of expertise include statutory central audit of banks, statutory audit of insurance companies, corporates including public sector undertakings, NGOs and other entities besides advisory, consultancy and taxation assignments.

He also has expertise in the fields of statutory related attestation services, consultancy in direct taxes and FEMA, management advisory services and representation before various adjudicating authorities up to Tribunal level in income-tax. He is a partner in M/s. R K Kumar & Co., Chartered Accountants, Chennai, a partnership firm established in the year 1974.

Mr. B R Ashok, is Director on the Board of the Bank since August 27, 2019.

Justice A V Chandrashekar aged 66 years is a B.Com, LLB graduate who is a Former Judge, High Court of Karnataka and former Judicial Member, Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal. He commenced his career as a practicing advocate in the year 1984 and during the early part of his judicial career he worked as the Additional District & Sessions Judge and Principal District & Sessions Judge in several districts of Karnataka state. He also worked as the Member Secretary, Karnataka State Legal Services Authority (K.S.L.S.A), Director, Karnataka Judicial Academy (K.J.A) and Director, Bangalore Mediation Centre (B.M.C).

In the year 2013, he was appointed as a Judge of the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka and superannuated in the year 2016 after serving in the said capacity for three years. After superannuation, he conducted arbitration proceedings in various cases, including private arbitrations and arbitration cases referred by the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka. Subsequently, he was appointed as a Judicial Member, Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal (K.S.A.T) from 2017 to 2019. He was also the Chairman of the committee constituted by the Karnataka State Child Protection Commission to prepare the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for effective implementation of Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 and the Rules thereunder.

He has also significantly contributed to the academic and training requirement of judicial trainees and while functioning in the capacity of Director, Karnataka Judicial Academy, he coordinated in formulating a training manual for the training of newly recruited civil judges and was also involved in the drafting of the rules governing the Karnataka Arbitration Centre, an initiative of the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka.

He has also published various articles on topics in substantive and procedural laws for the benefit of judges in the district judiciary, including role of judges in upholding the rule of law (published in the Karnataka State Law University journal in the year 2014) and the fundamental duties.

Justice A V Chandrashekar is a Director on the Board of the Bank since August 19, 2020.

Mr. P Pradeep Kumar, aged 64 years, is a Post Graduate in Science (Statistics) (M.Sc-Statistics) from University of Madras. He is also a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. Currently, he is a member on the Board of Directors of companies engaged in the business of real estate, asset reconstruction, software business, cements etc.

He is a career banker, retired as Managing Director (Corporate Banking) of State Bank of India (SBI), the largest bank of the country, in October 2015. During his long association of 39 years with SBI (3 years of which at Board level), he gained rich experience in various areas of banking including corporate and international banking, treasury management, information technology, retail, transaction banking, strategic planning, business development, risk management etc.

He has excellent track record of successfully leading large teams across various business verticals of SBI. He also successfully led the US Operations of SBI as the Country Head-US. He held multiple assignments driving large projects in the Information Technology Wing of SBI. As a Head of IT (Chief Information Officer), he led SBI’s IT strategy, set up India’s largest data warehouse. He also lead the analytics foray of SBI. During his association with SBI he was member of important committees of Directors and was chairman of Risk Management Committee.

Mr. P Pradeep Kumar was appointed on the Board of our Bank w.e.f. 19.08.2020 (Independent Director) and he assumed charge as Part Time Chairman w.e.f. 14.11.2021.

Mrs. Uma Shankar, is a former Executive Director of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). She was with RBI for over 37 years in different capacities. Her core competence is in the financial sector supervision, however she has also been responsible for currency management, foreign exchange and the internal accounting and administration.

She is a Post-Graduate in English Literature and a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers (CAIIB) and also has had Executive Education at Columbia Business School, New York (2009 alumni). She was also on the boards of few Public Sector Banks as a RBI nominee.

Mrs. Uma Shankar is a Director on the Board of the Bank since November 1, 2020.

Dr D S Ravindran (PhD), aged 61 years, is a Retd. IFS (Indian Forest Service 1986 Batch) and the former Principal Secretary to the Government Khajane-2, Finance Department, Government of Karnataka with over 34 years of experience in the areas of administration, civil service, research, financial planning, Information Technology, Public Policy Planning & Implementation Process, Renewable Energy etc.

He is a Post Graduate in Agriculture and has pursued Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy & Management (IIMB). He holds PhD in Forest Economics (from University of Wales) and in most of these qualifications earned by him, he stood the first rank.

Over his illustrious career he held various key posts in the Government such as:

• Principal Secretary to the Government, Khajane-2, Finance Department, Government of Karnataka;
• Chief Executive Officer, Centre for e-Governance, Government of Karnataka, Bangalore;
• Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal,
• Project Officer (Forestry), Biomass Energy for Rural India Project, UNDP-GEF Project, Bangalore,
• Conservator of Forests, Kodagu Circle (Karnataka State).

During his tenure as a Chief Executive Officer, Centre for e-Governance, Bangalore he was responsible for conceptualization and implementation of key e-Governance Programmes of Govt. of Karnataka. He was instrumental in the implementation of Data Centre, Networks, AADHAAR, Bangalore One and Karnataka One Citizen Delivery Centres, e-Procurement and HRMS Enterprise Applications thus transforming the way the Government interacts with the citizens. More than 20 projects were implemented during his tenure, to e-enable the Government of Karnataka to take up smooth G2G, G2B, G2C applications.

He implemented and handled AADHAAR in the Karnataka State as the Registrar leading to 3.4 crore enrolments which is more than 50% of the Karnataka State Populace. He developed the concept of “The Karnataka Resident Data Hub”, a platform to link various services of the Government to AADHAAR to facilitate better delivery of services. This model was adopted by the UIDAI for national level scaling. Also, he implemented an innovative Document Management System (DMS) for AADHAAR enrolments. He has received several National Awards for this work. The Karnataka State emerged as number one in the “e-Governance Readiness Index” amongst all the States of India.

During his position held as Principal Secretary to Government of Karnataka, Khajane-2, Finance Department he was responsible for the implementation of a transformative electronic platform for carrying out all the financial transactions of the Government. Large-scale Government Process Engineering was taken up in this project and more than 75000 users were brought on this platform creating a unified Integrated Financial Management System for the Government of Karnataka besides modernizing the State Treasuries System. He also coordinated with different stakeholders such as E-Kuber, 20 Banks, NSDL, Postal Systems, NPCI, Aggregators etc. that lead to more than 330 integrations to enable implementation of real-time and electronic payment and remittance systems and also taking care of proper reconciliation system.

Currently, he is the Consulting Advisor to Treasuries on Khajane-2 since May 2020 advising the Government of Karnataka, Treasuries Department on the Technical and Operational Management of the Integrated Financial Management System, providing both technical and policy inputs for management of the Financial Transactions of entire Government of Karnataka.

He has bagged several awards for his excellence in performance and initiatives. Some of them being:

• National Award for best e-Governance Project for e-Procurement Project, Karnataka, from Government of India (2012),
• National Web Ratna Award (Silver) for the Best Portal for citizen services delivery for Bangalore One, from Government of India (2011),
• Future E-Gov Award at International Conference at Kuala Lumpur for the e-Procurement Project (2011),
• Most Innovative Document Management System, from Unique Identification Authority of India(2011),
• CSI-Nihilent award for the HRMS Project of Government of Karnataka (2010),
• Received Commonwealth Scholarship of UK, a competitive scholarship for Doctoral Studies,
• Recipient Gold Medal for being Topper for the PGPPM, IIM, Bangalore (2007),
• Recipient of 6 Medals, including the Curie Medal for the Topper for securing the I Rank in M.Sc.(Forestry) at IGNFA,

Recipient of 4 Medals for overall best performance for IFS Officers at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie.

Dr. D S Ravindran is a Director on the Board of the Bank since April 1, 2021.

Mr. Balakrishna Alse S, a B.Sc (Agri) and CAIIB aged 61 years is a versatile Banker having practical experience in almost all facets of Banking. During his 35 years of tenure at Corporation Bank, he has worked in Agriculture Policy and lending, Credit Sanctions, Credit Risk Management, HR, Integrated Risk Management (as Chief Risk Officer) and Information/Cyber Security (as Chief Information Security Officer). He also had concurrent charge of Chief Vigilance Officer for over 7 months.

In his capacity as Executive Director of Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), he was overall-in-charge of Corporate Credit, Stressed Assets Management, Recovery, Accounts including Audit & Balance Sheet, Risk Management, Digital Banking, Cyber security, etc. He was an active member of the Team implementing EASE 2 reforms in which OBC stood first amongst mid-sized PSBs. He retired as an Officer on Special Duty at Punjab National Bank (PNB), post amalgamation of OBC with PNB.

He has undergone various trainings programmes at reputed institutions in India and abroad like CAFRAL, NIBM, ISB, SBISTC, Frankfurt Business School and University at Buffalo, USA.

Post superannuation, Mr. Alse has been selected as a member of the Settlement Advisory Committee of Canara Bank.

Mr. Balakrishna Alse S is on the Board of the Bank since May 26, 2021.