Nalini Subramaniam has built three companies in three unrelated sectors — healthcare, specialty manufacturing, and fintech — and sold two of them at what she calls the right time, not the most profitable one. MedAssist Healthcare, the diagnostic and primary care chain she founded in 1996 after training as a Chartered Accountant at Price Waterhouse, was acquired by Apollo Hospitals in 2008. Coatex Industries followed it out the door in 2018, acquired by Germany's Wacker Chemie AG.
"Every business I have built started from the same question: what does this customer actually need, as opposed to what we think they need? That question never gets old."
She completed B.Com at Stella Maris College, Chennai · University of Madras (1990) — 🏅 Gold Medal. 1st rank, university..
Her current venture, Fintra Technologies, founded in 2020, provides lending and financial services to India's 65 million MSMEs — a market she understands, she says, from twenty-eight years of having operated as a small business owner herself. Fintra secured its NBFC licence within fourteen months of founding.
Her holding company, the Subramaniam Group, now combines revenues approaching ₹500 crores and employs over 2,400 people. She received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2021 and the CII National Award for Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019.
She serves as a Non-Executive Director on the board of Indian Overseas Bank, and holds an Executive MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau — a credential she completed while running her second company, not before starting her first.
Founder & Chairperson, Subramaniam Group; Non-Executive Director, Indian Overseas Bank; and Member, CII National Committee on MSMEs.
Financial Services for MSMEs; Women Entrepreneurship; and South India Industrial Ecosystems.
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