March 6, 2018

As a consultant at Deloitte’s San Francisco office, looking into the strategy and operations of technology, media and telecommunications companies, Nisha Dutt was as far removed from the world of social impact as could be. “I didn’t even know that ‘multilaterals’ referred to institutions like the World Bank,” she says candidly.

Yet, within five years of joining impact investment advisory services firm Intellecap as a senior manager—“I had to return to India for personal reasons. Intellecap pursued me, and I felt the work they were doing was interesting,” she offers—Dutt rose to become CEO. Today she is credited for growing the Hyderabad-based entity into a globally recognised advisory firm that offers investment banking, consulting and research services focussed on the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP).

When she joined in 2009, Intellecap—part of the Vineet Rai-run Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group—primarily advised microfinance institutions and multilaterals. But given her earlier avatar, Dutt couldn’t understand why corporates were being left out of Intellecap’s ambit. “Intellecap truly believed in private sector-led development, so I couldn’t understand why they were leaving out such a huge part of the private sector,” she says.

Moreover, it was a time when the mid-market segment was getting increasingly saturated and corporates were looking to target BoP consumers. Leveraging Intellecap’s deep understanding of this base, Dutt went about advising companies such as Unilever on product innovations, go-to-market strategies and distribution, opening up a new revenue stream for Intellecap—“which became much larger than anything else they were doing,” says Dutt, declining to share revenue figures. The company, however, points out that CAGR stands at 21 percent between 2011 and 2018.