Deepak Satwalekar

Deepak Madhav Satwalekar is an Indian business executive. He served as the Managing Director of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) and as the founding Managing Director and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance. He has also served on the boards of Indian companies including Infosys, Wipro, and Asian Paints. He was reported to be "the No.2 man in HDFC." He's mentioned extensively in the book, A Bank for the Buck where he suggests the name Bombay International Bank for the proposed HDFC Bank, which gets rejected.

Early life and education

Satwalekar comes from a Maharashtrian family. His father was the painter Madhav Satwalekar, and his grandfather was Sanskrit scholar Shripad Damodar Satwalekar. His brother, Vikas Satwalekar, was the executive director of the National Institute of Design (NID).

Satwalekar graduated with a Bachelor of Technology in mechanical engineering from The INDIAN Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) in 1971. He received a Master of Business Administration from the Kogod School of Business at American University in 1977.

Career

Satwalekar joined HDFC and became its managing director in 1993. In 2000, following the deregulation of the Indian insurance sector, he was appointed founding managing director and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance (now HDFC Life). He served in this role until November 2008. He suggested the name of proposed HDFC Bank to be Bombay International Bank

Board memberships

Satwalekar was an independent director on the board of Infosys from 1997 to 2013. He has also served as non-executive chairman of Asian Paints and held directorships at Tata Power, Piramal Enterprises, the National STOCK Exchange of India, and Home First Finance Company. In July 2020, he was named lead independent director of Wipro.

He has served as a consultant on housing finance to multilateral organizations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, USAID, and UN-Habitat. He also chaired the Reserve Bank of India Committee on Corporate Governance in Public Sector Banks.

Non-profit and education

Satwalekar is a trustee of the Infosys Science Foundation. He was previously chairman of the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Management Indore and has served on the advisory boards of educational non-profits including Teach For India and Isha Vidhya.

Awards and recognition

Satwalekar received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Bombay.

Personal life

Satwalekar is married to Maya Satwalekar. The couple funded the Deepak and Maya Satwalekar Design and Making Lab at IIT Bombay as part of the institute's MakerSpace initiative.