Assistant Vice President - Venture Financing (Startup & Venture Debt | NBFC Lending)

Company: Capwise Financial Services Private Limited

Position Title: Assistant Vice President - Venture Financing

Company Overview:

Capwise Financial Services Private Limited is a full-service financial institution focused on corporate finance, capital markets and strategic advisory, spanning M&A Advisory, Private Equity Fundraising, Debt Syndication and Structured Finance. Capwise is building an NBFC lending platform, backed by the firm's advisory and fundraising franchise and its access to India's growth-capital ecosystem and is seeking a senior leader to build and scale the business.

Position Overview:

The Assistant Vice President - Venture Financing will play a central role in building and scaling Capwise's startup & venture debt business within the NBFC. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role spanning origination, credit structuring and portfolio management for growth-stage, VC-backed and new-economy businesses, along with a direct contribution to shaping the credit framework, funding relationships and governance standards for this segment of the NBFC's book. The role sits at the intersection of lending and the venture ecosystem, working closely with founders, VCs, PE funds and other growth-capital stakeholders. The platform is built to serve fast-growing, capital-hungry businesses at inflection points in their journey, a segment where speed, structuring creativity and relationships matter more than scale, and where the leader will shape a differentiated credit franchise rather than inherit one.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Business Growth & Strategy:

- Strategy: Drive the lending strategy, target segments and growth roadmap for the venture financing business, in close partnership with senior leadership.

- Growth Accountability: Take direct accountability for origination and disbursement growth, AUM, deal volumes and pipeline conversion for the segment.

- Market Development: Identify and open new high-growth client segments, geographies and products.

2. Origination & Deal Structuring:

- Origination: Originate and close venture debt / startup lending transactions across growth-stage, VC-backed and new-economy companies.

- Structuring: Lead client engagement on marquee transactions and design bespoke structures, security, covenants, pricing, event-linked terms and upside participation, that win competitive situations.

- Execution: Own client engagement end-to-end, from origination through documentation and disbursement.

3. Credit & Portfolio Management:

- Credit & Risk Framework: Establish credit underwriting, risk appetite and approval frameworks capable of assessing high-growth borrowers on cash-flow, enterprise-value and sponsor-support considerations; own portfolio quality, GNPA/NNPA and credit costs.

- Portfolio Quality: Own portfolio quality for the book conduct independent diligence on originated deals (revenue quality, unit economics, cash burn/runway, leverage, liquidity) and monitor covenant compliance and early-warning indicators.

- Repayment Structuring: Design and oversee repayment schedules - amortising, bullet, milestone- and capital-event-linked and disbursement-to-repayment workflows across products, aligning cash flows to each borrower's funding cycle.

- Collections & Recovery: Own collections and recovery operations; monitor delinquencies, bucket-wise performance and early-warning triggers.

- Stressed Asset Resolution: Drive restructuring, settlement and resolution of stressed accounts, protecting portfolio quality and customer conduct standards in line with RBI Fair Practices Code norms.

4. Founder & Investor Ecosystem:

- Relationship Building: Build and own relationships with founders, CXOs, VCs, PE funds, AIFs, incubators, and law/advisory firms to drive proprietary deal flow.

- Ecosystem Presence: Represent Capwise within the growth-capital ecosystem to build the brand and pipeline for the venture financing business.

- Cross-Franchise Collaboration: Facilitate collaboration between portfolio companies and the broader Capwise advisory/fundraising franchise where relevant.

5. Funding & Compliance Support:

- Funding Relationships: Support and help develop funding relationships across banks, NBFCs and debt/private-credit funds to help optimise cost of funds and liquidity for the segment.

- Regulatory Compliance: Ensure all origination and credit activity complies with RBI's NBFC regulatory and prudential framework, Fair Practices Code, and KYC/AML/PMLA norms.

- Documentation & Reporting: Maintain documentation and reporting standards required for audit, regulatory and internal governance purposes, and support senior leadership on reporting as required.

6. Team & Process Building:

- Team Building: Build and guide the team supporting the venture financing business - origination, credit, and portfolio monitoring.

- Process Ownership: Contribute to defining KPIs, processes and turnaround-time standards for venture debt underwriting as the business scales.

- Stakeholder Management: Partner with Risk, Legal, Treasury and Compliance functions to ensure smooth deal execution and portfolio governance.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

- AUM & Disbursement Growth: Growth in assets under management and disbursement volumes.

- New Business Origination: New client acquisition, pipeline build and entry into new segments or products.

- Portfolio quality covenant compliance, early-warning resolution, credit cost trends.

- Repayment & Collection Efficiency: On-time repayment rates and collections/recovery performance.

- Turnaround time on credit evaluation and deal closure.

- Contribution to credit framework/process development.

- Funding relationship support and cost-of-funds efficiency for the segment.

Qualifications & Experience:

- Education: MBA/PGDM from a Tier-1 business school, Chartered Accountant (CA), or equivalent professional qualification.

- Experience: 7 to 8+ years in venture debt, startup lending, structured lending, NBFC/bank credit businesses or related fields, with demonstrated ownership of origination, credit underwriting and deal structuring. Direct experience with collections/recovery and exposure to growth-stage or sponsor-backed lending is a strong advantage.

- Track Record: Proven ability to originate and close lending transactions, build sourcing channels, and manage a book end-to-end, from credit decision through to collections with demonstrable institutional funding relationships.

- Skills: Strong leadership, entrepreneurial drive, client-facing presence and commercial judgement, balanced with governance orientation.

- Mindset: A builder's mindset, comfortable defining processes and frameworks rather than only operating within existing ones, with the ambition to grow into a broader leadership role as the venture financing business scales.