CORPORATE LEADERSHIP
Devarajan Nambakam: PGP 2006 (Senior Managing Director & Co-COO, Investment Banking, Goldman Sachs, India)
Devarajan Nambakam holds the distinguished position of senior Managing Director and Co-Chief Operating Officer of Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs, India. With an impressive tenure spanning 18 years at the firm, he has been instrumental in driving strategic initiatives and fostering growth. One of Devarajan’s key contributions lies in his role as a trusted advisor to some of the firm’s largest Indian and global clients. By providing strategic counsel and deepening Goldman Sachs’ franchise, he has played a crucial part in shaping the trajectory of numerous businesses. His involvement in transactions spanning sectors such as Healthcare, Renewables, Oil & Gas, Industrials, Telecom, and Infrastructure underscores his commitment to driving economic growth and development. He has twice been awarded by Goldman Sachs for contributions to the firm’s Leadership and Culture (in 2014 and 2024).
Beyond his professional endeavours, Devarajan actively participates in industry forums and conferences to contribute his expertise towards broader societal goals. He participated in the Harvard India Conference (Feb-2022) to discuss Energy Infrastructure Investment and in a session by the United Nations on sustainable finance in India. Through his managerial and administrative roles, Devarajan has actively nurtured talent within the firm, focusing on hiring, mentoring, training, and retaining individuals, including graduates from prestigious institutions like IIMs.
Congratulations, Dev on receiving the award. What does this award mean to you?
If I go back 18 years and think about it, would I be in the same job, in the same organisation? I honestly never thought about it. I think, along the way, at each point in the job and in life, I just kept reacting to things that came and I did the best I could. At each point when I did those things, it wasn’t with the knowledge that it’s going to be a success or a failure. So this award is a validation by IIMA of me having done something right in the last 18 years. And so to that extent, it’s a satisfaction that some of the choices, some of the decisions I’ve made along the way were the right ones. If I think about my journey, I would like to think, I hope I’m only in the middle of it. I have a lot left to do. So this award is a big responsibility. I have to be a good ambassador for IIMA, and I want to carry this responsibility and represent our alumni community and our institution well, going forward with my career as well. So in short, this award for me is both a validation, which gives a sense of satisfaction, but equally a sense of responsibility for what I need to carry forward with me in the future as well.
What can you tell us about some significant challenges that you faced in your career?
I work in advisory which is a very people oriented business. The job involves working with other people who are your colleagues and to be of service to other people who are your clients. The best parts and the challenging parts of this job involve people. If you ask me, “What has been the biggest challenge,” it’s not a quantifiable, specific incident or event, but one thing that over the years, I have felt as something that keeps coming up. In a people oriented business, you are going to be working with people and going to be getting inputs on how you should be, what you should do, how you should look etc and these are all well intentioned. But the reality of it is, it’s very easy to get lost in a people driven industry on what your true fabric is. So for me, the challenge is, I want to hold on to my fabric as an individual. I want to embrace my strengths, my areas of improvement, my vulnerabilities, my weaknesses, all in equal measure, because that’s what makes it true full and so I feel like, over time, through those tools and pushes, I have managed to do that to a reasonable extent. What I am saying is probably not true just for investment banking. It’s true for almost any people oriented job. So that’s probably what I would highlight as something I needed to overcome or understand and to be able to do this job successfully.
About the investment banking landscape. What are your observations over the last 18 years?
I think the investment banking industry has matured a lot. Today, the role that investment bankers play in different aspects of commerce, whether it’s mergers and acquisitions, whether it’s capital raise, private capital raise or public capital raise, whether it’s cross border in our joint ventures and M&A, or whether it’s domestic consolidation, these are all themes that have emerged in the Indian economy in the last decade and a half, and over time, both clients as well as investment bankers, have understood what each other’s role is, and so the clients understand when they need what kind of advice or service and so who they can work with. Similarly, investment bankers have understood what their value proposition is in these instances.
Second thing I will say, and this is less to do with investment banking, but more to do with how wonderfully well India’s positioned on the global economic platform. India is seen by far as the best emerging hotspot of economic growth. Global companies want to invest and grow in India. Capital and investment bankers play a role in making sure that they are able to channel that capital effectively, making demand and supply meet. We are probably going to figure out new things that investment bankers can be helpful with or play a role in India’s economic development.
What is your advice for somebody who wants to make a career in investment banking?
In my mind, success in this field is entirely about how you work with people, which has nothing to do with finance. If you think about it, the people element of it becomes much more important. Today, after 18 years, I need to know finance. Yes, I need to know deal making, but ultimately it boils down to working with people to make it a successful industry or business, and so that element of it is often less understood. So if there was one piece of advice I would give to students who are thinking about investment banking, they should think about their own personalities, their own preferences, their own people skills, and it’s not in a good or bad way. Some people are, by definition, more people-oriented and like to work with others, whereas some people are a little bit more oriented towards working with products or in smaller teams or individually. There’s no good or bad in it, but I think the choice to make is the success that one wants to see in investment banking is only going to happen if they can work well with other people and serve other people. That’s one element, which I thought was not very well understood.
As a recipient of young alumni achievers award, what do you hope to accomplish in the future, personally and professionally?
Every time I tell someone I am from IIMA that eyebrow lifting makes me feel very proud, but it also makes me conscious that people are seeing me as the representative of an institution. I need to now demonstrate on a going forward that I was worthy amongst many talented peers of mine who could have received this award. Like I said earlier, I have mostly been fortunate in life that I’ve been reacting to what comes. I give it my best shot, and if it works out and it ends up being successful, I feel happy. I say that because in the next five years, 10 years, 15 years, I hope to do what I am doing. I hope I will be successful, but maybe it will be something else. I don’t know about changes in the future. I don’t know what opportunities will come. So it’s hard for me to sit here and say, This is what I’ll be doing in 15 years. What I can say and the way I think about it is whatever choices I make whatever it is I choose to do, if I do it in a way that makes my family, that makes my institute, that makes my peers proud of me, I would count that as success. It doesn’t matter if it’s investment banking or something else. So my personal and professional goal is the same, which is to have an impact and do something in the future which makes all of these people proud.
