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Sixteen years inside the banking floors of an NBFC, twelve companies built from the ground up, and one stubborn belief — that the kind of growth Kerala actually needs cannot be imported from a slide deck. It has to be built here, with the people who already live here.
It began with a small village in Kerala, a physics degree, and a junior posting in a financial company. Nothing about the early years pointed at any of this.
Most people inside banking learn one thing — how to say no. I learned the opposite. How to say yes carefully. How to look at a street vendor and see a payment record, not a risk. How to read between the lines of a loan file at 11pm when the office was empty. By the time I left ESAF Small Finance Bank as National Head, I had seen enough to know the system was built mostly for people who already had money. Almost no one was building for the rest.
So I stopped working inside the system. I started building one.
People now call me a Visionary Entrepreneur in Kerala, and I’ll take the title — but only because the word “visionary” here means seeing what is actually in front of you, not dreaming up something that isn’t.
Oleevia today runs twelve businesses across finance, agriculture, education, restaurants, organic food, arts, media, and youth development. Some are profitable. Some are slow. A few were built knowing they would never make a rupee — like H2A Art Hub, where unemployed youngsters learn Panchavadyam, Nadaswaram, and Shikari Melam for free.
A Visionary Entrepreneur in Kerala doesn’t get to pick only the projects that look good on a pitch deck. You take the boring ones too. The ones that fix something nobody else wanted to fix.
That’s why Oleevia Grameen Credits, our RBI-licensed NBFC, sits in the same building as the Oleevia Foundation that works with tribal, transgender, and fisherman communities. One is a business. The other is a duty. They belong together.
An RBI-licensed NBFC offering small-ticket loans to street vendors, women entrepreneurs, and even celebrities
Supporting farmers with expert knowledge and business loans to strengthen agriculture and national GDP.
A business & marketing consultancy for small businesses and startups.
Empowering tribal, transgender, and fisherman communities with 360° social support
Diploma, skill development, and career counseling programs.
Serving organic dishes with coconut oil and homemade spices in a hygienic environment.
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Practical MBA training for individual entrepreneurs.
Producers of international-standard organic foods like vegetables, fruits, honey, ghee, and millets.
Free training for Bandset, Panchavadyam, Nadaswaram,Shikari Melam, Music, Drama, and traditional performances for unemployed youth.
A youth forum (18-30) mentoring with scientists, IAS officers, technocrats, and thought leaders for as sustainable development of Kerala.
A global Malayali initiative for education, health, housing, and entrepreneurship via crowdfunding.
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The Nandigaura Gauseva & Jeevaraksha Charitable Trust (NGJCT) is a visionary charitable organization dedicated to the preservation, protection, and promotion…
Learn More →I have been called a Banking Expert, a Financial Advisor, a Social Entrepreneur. Each title is partly true and mostly incomplete. What I actually do most weeks is more boring than any of those words suggest. I sit with founders who can’t read their own profit-and-loss statement. I help families restructure debt that should never have existed in the first place. I review business plans late at night because the entrepreneur was too nervous to send them during office hours.
This is the part nobody photographs for the magazine features.
A Business Leader & Entrepreneur, Business Mentor in Kerala only earns those words if the work behind them is honest. There is no shortcut. You sit, you listen, you do the actual math, and you tell the truth even when the truth costs the client something they didn’t want to hear.
The system was built mostly for people who already had money. Almost no one was building for the rest. So I stopped working inside it and started building one.
This state is unusual. High literacy. Strong public services. A diaspora that sends home nearly two lakh crores a year. And yet — small businesses keep failing, farmers keep moving away from agriculture, and young people keep leaving for the Gulf because nobody built them a future at home.
A Visionary Entrepreneur in Kerala has to start from that contradiction. Educated population, weak entrepreneurial base. The textbook answer is to import a startup culture from Bengaluru. I think that is wrong. Kerala does not need to copy anyone. It needs to use what it already has — strong cooperatives, organised agriculture, an artistic heritage, and a diaspora ready to fund the right ideas. The raw material is sitting here. Somebody just has to build with it.
That is what Oleevia is trying to do, one initiative at a time.
Adult literacy rate, the highest in India — yet entrepreneurship density remains low.
Annual remittance from the Malayali diaspora — capital that rarely funds local enterprise.
Active cooperative members in the state — a network most founders never tap.
Of young Malayalis still see migration as the default first career move.
In 2024, I formally introduced Paid Menstrual Wellness Leave for women employees in our group — separate from sick leave, separate from casual leave, and most importantly, non-penalised. I’m told it was the first such policy announced by a corporate leader anywhere in the world.
It was not a press release move. It started because a senior woman in our office took three days off and called it “viral fever” because she didn’t want to explain. That one moment told me the policy itself was wrong. So we changed it.
A Visionary Entrepreneur in Kerala has to take responsibility for the kind of workplace they leave behind — otherwise the next generation will inherit the same dysfunctions we did. Workplace Wellness Consulting is now a proper part of our advisory practice. It is not an add-on. It is the work.
The phrase “Visionary Entrepreneur in Kerala” gets used loosely these days. Sometimes it means someone with a registered company and a LinkedIn page. Sometimes it means someone with funding from outside. I think those are weak definitions. They do not match what Kerala needs from its founders right now.
A real entrepreneur in this state is someone who builds something that survives without them — something that creates jobs, pays taxes here, trains people here, and stays here even when bigger money tries to pull it out. That is the bar. Anything below that is just running a business, which is fine, but it is not the same thing.
If you want financial advisory guidance from someone who has run businesses, managed lending at scale, and still takes individual consultations seriously —this is worth a conversation. Whether it is personal financial planning, sip investment guidance, business consulting, or something more specific — reach out and let’s talk about what actually makes sense for your situation.