Aarti Gupta

Dr. Aarti Gupta is a seasoned investment professional, policy leader, and one of the few prominent female voices shaping conversations on money and investing in India today.
She has spent over 14 years in the investment space, leading capital allocation across public and private markets. Belonging to the promoter family of the Jagran Group, she currently serves as Chief Investment Officer of her family office, where she oversees long-term capital strategy across asset classes. She is also Managing Partner at Anikarth Ventures, focusing on early-stage investing, portfolio strategy, and founder mentorship. Alongside this, she leads impact-oriented work through the Anikarth Foundation, which supports entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and community-level economic empowerment.
Dr. Gupta serves as an Independent Director on publicly listed companies, including Jindal Stainless, as well as on boards of family-owned companies and startups. She brings a rigorous investor and governance lens to board-level decision-making. She is Vice President at Harvard GlobalWE and Policy and Advocacy Head at FICCI FLO, where she works at the intersection of capital, policy, and women’s economic participation.
She holds a PhD from IIT Kanpur, has studied at Harvard University, and is an alumna of Northeastern University. Having lived and worked across India and the United States, she brings a global yet grounded perspective to investing and institution-building.
A regular columnist and public speaker, Dr. Gupta writes extensively on money, investing, and financial decision-making, with a sharp focus on women. She also writes a weekly Hindi column in Dainik Jagran, translating complex financial ideas for a mass readership across urban and non-metro India. She is also an investor on a televised startup show, where she evaluates early-stage founders and business models, reinforcing her public-facing role as a practitioner investor.
She is the force behind I Am My Own Lakshmi, a structured financial literacy and investing program that has run multiple cohorts across India. The initiative focuses on moving women from savings-led thinking to informed investing, combining practical frameworks, behavioural insight, and real-world market experience.
Through her writing, platforms, and programs, Dr. Gupta challenges long-standing myths around women and money while offering grounded, experience-led tools rooted in lived investment practice rather than theory. Her work reflects a rare blend of capital markets expertise, startup investing, boardroom governance, and accessible financial education.