Manisha Girotra and the art of being taken seriously

Before the boardrooms, there was a photograph. Manisha Girotra keeps a picture of herself as a teenager, visiting her parents’ friends in Delhi. The girl from Shimla could barely look at the camera. The city children seemed impossibly assured. Years later, after a pitch she wishes had gone better, the banker returns to that picture. It reminds her how much ground she has covered.

There is something appealing about a dealmaker keeping a private benchmark that predates the deals. A disappointing meeting can make a long career shrink to the size of one awkward afternoon. The photograph restores the scale. Her instruction to herself is brief: “Be kind to yourself.” Even the person paid to advise other people through difficult decisions needs an occasional word with her own inner committee.

A temporary job, with unusually permanent consequences

Girotra studied economics at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and completed her master’s at the Delhi School of Economics, earning a gold medal. She wanted to pursue a doctorate in Britain. The family could not finance that next step, so employment offered a route: work, save, and eventually return to study. Banking entered the plan as a means of paying for something else.

She began at ANZ Grindlays in London, later led North India for Barclays, and went on to UBS. The attraction became the work itself: entrepreneurs with ideas, conversations about how businesses grow, the intellectual pleasure of helping a company find its next move. “I am an accidental investment banker,” she has said. The accident acquired a timetable, clients and, eventually, an entire career.

Economics had given her a way to think. Corporate finance still required learning. She has described working through the day and studying finance at night. It is an instructive detail for anyone intimidated by an accomplished executive’s biography. The completed version lists institutions and appointments. The working version includes someone going home to learn what tomorrow’s meeting will require.

The meeting before the meeting

In her early career, Girotra encountered clients who directed their attention to the men beside her. She was asked to fetch coffee and order pizzas. On an overseas roadshow, a male colleague wanted his suit ironed. The difficulty was painfully ordinary: before discussing a company’s finances, she had to establish that she was there to discuss them.

These incidents explain why her accounts of advancement spend so much time on credibility. Preparation had to do two jobs. It had to produce sound advice, and it had to overcome an assumption about who could supply it. The extra burden rarely appears in an organisation chart. It can consume a substantial part of a working day.

Her father’s advice, which she has recalled publicly, was to persist with useful ideas and a serious understanding of the client’s business. He recognised that the people across the table were confronting a change in expectations. She could not make that adjustment for them. She could keep giving them reasons to listen.

“I enjoy the business of setting up businesses.”

Manisha Girotra

That sentence helps explain the career that followed. Her interest reaches beyond winning a mandate. Building a team and a business gives an adviser a version of the entrepreneurial experience she observes in clients. It also carries the inconvenience familiar to every entrepreneur: the institution has to be assembled before it can be admired.

Starting again when the market said wait

By 2012, Girotra had run UBS’s Indian business, with responsibilities spanning investment banking, commercial banking, markets, research and wealth management. She then joined Moelis to establish its India operation. The firm’s announcement placed her in Mumbai and connected the appointment to its international expansion. Ken Moelis had chosen an executive who already understood both Indian companies and transactions across borders.

The timing made the move interesting. Investment banks were facing slow deal activity and weaker fundraising. India was a crowded market with fierce competition and low fees. A new entrant needed clients, bankers and patience. Girotra’s initial plan included hiring ten to twelve bankers over a year. It was a business plan for an uncertain market, with the recruiting still to be done.

At the launch, her argument was that a quieter market gave a firm time to recruit and get close to clients before activity recovered. The reasoning has a practical elegance. A business that waits for favourable headlines may find that everyone else has read them too. Starting in a lull brings its own risks, but it also allows the work of preparation to happen before the rush.

The independent advisory model mattered to her. She spoke about long relationships, confidentiality and advice free of conflicts. For the client, the appeal was an adviser concentrating on the transaction and its consequences. For Girotra, the move created another chance to build an Indian franchise within an international firm. An established career had become the starting capital for a new undertaking.

When a company crosses a border

The transactions attached to Girotra’s career cover very different kinds of ambition. Vodafone’s purchase of an interest in Hutchison Essar brought an international telecoms company further into India. Bharti Airtel’s purchase of Zain’s African operations took an Indian company outward. The Birla Group’s acquisition of Novelis involved another kind of geographical and industrial expansion. Each required companies to think beyond a familiar home market.

Her experience also includes public listings and capital raising. When she joined the KPIT Cummins board in 2012, the account of her work cited North American listings for Infosys, Genpact and WNS, alongside Indian offerings. These are distinct tasks. Buying a business, selling shares and finding a new group of investors all involve explaining what a company is worth, and why someone should believe in its future.

A cumulative transaction figure compresses years of work into a memorable number. It leaves out the less photogenic part: persuading people with different interests to agree on a price, a structure and a sequence of decisions. The adviser’s presence is temporary. The consequences of the agreement remain with the companies and their owners. That imbalance gives the job much of its seriousness.

The India argument changes

In 2010, while at UBS, Girotra was already making the case for India’s growth and the international appetite it attracted. By March 2026, her explanation of the market had acquired a different emphasis. She pointed to the expansion of domestic capital: banks, mutual funds, family offices, private credit and private equity. Indian businesses had more ways to finance their plans.

She also described a change in owners’ attitudes. Selling a family business voluntarily once carried a different meaning. Increasingly, founders could view a sale or consolidation as a sensible response to the need for scale. Professional managers and equity incentives widened the possibilities. Her reading of the buyout market begins with what owners are willing to consider, as well as what investors can afford.

For an adviser, that changes the conversation. A founder can weigh several routes: a strategic sale, private investment, a public listing or another form of financing. More choice requires more judgment. The existence of money does not settle which terms suit a business, or when an owner should act. It makes the quality of the advice more consequential.

A seat at the table, and a say over the money

At a July 2026 discussion in Mumbai, Girotra addressed women’s financial participation. Access to accounts and credit had expanded opportunities, she said. The discussion also examined the distance between having an asset in a woman’s name and enabling her to make decisions about it. A bank account opens a door. Using it confidently is another stage of the journey.

The subject fits the concerns she has raised throughout her career. Who gets heard? Whose judgment is assumed to count? Who controls a decision with lasting economic consequences? In an early client meeting, those questions concerned her authority as a banker. In a conversation about financial inclusion, they concern the authority women exercise over their own resources.

Her responsibilities now extend into corporate governance. She serves on boards including Naspers and Prosus. A September 2026 Prosus announcement lists her on its audit committee. Advisory work and board service place different demands on a person: one centres on helping a client reach a decision, while the other includes continuing oversight. Both require a willingness to ask questions when a comfortable answer would be easier.

The road back to Shimla

For all the international transactions, her personal geography keeps returning to the mountains. Asked in 2023 about an alternative career, she spoke of establishing and expanding schools in Himachal. Asked about a favourite destination, she chose Shimla. She described returning to its Indian Coffee House for filter coffee and dosa, including after a lost deal. Finance has developed more elaborate recovery strategies. Few sound as inviting.

She also plays golf and has spoken about the importance of extended family and childhood friends. Those relationships preserve an identity beyond the professional one. The people who knew a person before the title arrived can be wonderfully unimpressed by the title. For someone whose work depends on judgment, that seems a useful circle to keep.

And there is still the photograph. The teenager in Delhi and the executive in Mumbai belong to the same life, though their ease in a room may differ. Girotra looks back at the shy girl to remember progress when a meeting disappoints her. After decades spent helping businesses consider their next move, she keeps a small, personal reminder of how far a person can travel.