Dr. Lalitagauri Kulkarni is Director, Centre for Excellence in Entrepreneurship and Development at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. Her recent books, co-authored with Vasant Chintaman Joshi, include Inclusive Banking in India: Re-imagining the Bank Business Model (2021), and The Future of Indian Banking (2022) published by Palgrave Macmillan. These books examine the possibilities for a more inclusive business model for banks in a digitalized environment. As Director of the deAsra Centre of Excellence in Nano entrepreneurship, she researches policy alternatives for problems of nano businesses in India.
Dr. Kulkarni’s Ph.D. on secondary market trading in life insurance was an investigation into how the institutionalization of unregulated money lending could prevent the exploitation of poor policyholders. She has published papers on inclusive development, finance, and banking policy and has been involved in several research and consultancy projects.
Dr. Kulkarni’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship project aims to understand how financial technology has helped remove credit barriers for low-income women entrepreneurs in the United States. Dr. Kulkarni is examining how US FinTech innovations can be adapted in India to reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion. Applying quantitative and qualitative techniques, her research indicates how the positive externalities of FinTech can be maximized in financing women-led micro businesses in both countries. Through her findings, she aims to help the emerging FinTech industry in India in designing suitable business models for financing women’s micro businesses. Her research also proposes a roadmap for Indian policymakers to take affirmative action to reform the “one-size-fits-all” policy of digitalization.