PANAJI
Making a humble start, but maintaining a steady growth graph, a Goan, Raul Rebelo, recently took over as COO of Mahindra Finance, one of India’s leading non-banking finance companies in Mumbai. Rebelo who hails from Margao has been a banker for two decades, having started as a loan officer in Axis Bank in Pune, and scaling to the top in the later years, heading the bank’s rural lending and financial inclusion department with a large team under him.
His job responsibility included creating new business for the bank and introducing transformational services, which enabled a better and superior customer experience for low-income households. Under his leadership, Axis Bank won the Asian Banking & Finance Award twice, in 2019 and 2021.
An SSC pass from Loyola High School in Margao and a post-graduate from Goa Institute of Management (GIM), this son of Marcelino and Prof Joan Rebelo, asserts, “In all your pursuits, passion is a must. Identifying what you are good at, then building domain knowledge and network, and creating visibility, investing in yourself, without depending on anyone to take responsibility for your upskilling, is needed to have a successful career.”
Having holistic exposure to sports and academics at the school level, Rebelo’s post-graduation at GIM helped him to pick up required skills and meet people from diverse backgrounds. “All this provided rich content and context for the corporate world,” he concludes.
