Biography

Bhagwan Chowdhry is a Professor of Finance at the Indian School of Business and Research Professor at UCLA Anderson where he has held an appointment since 1988. He is the Executive Director, Digital Identity Research Initiative (DIRI), and Faculty Director, I-Venture @ ISB. 

Professor Chowdhry has also taught at the University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business . He has an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Iowa and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

His research interests, on which he has published several papers in finance and economics journals, are in International Finance, Corporate Finance, Impact Investing, and FinTech.  Professor Chowdhry is an Advisor to several FinTech start-ups. 

He has written a book with his colleague Anas Ahmed at DIRI, FinTech for Billions: Simple, Human, Ubiquitous. 

Professor Chowdhry has proposed Financial Access at Birth (FAB) initiative in which every child born in the world is given an initial deposit of $100 in an online bank account to guarantee that everyone in the world will have access to financial services in a few decades.