Ajay Rajendran is the Founder and Chairman of Meraki Group. Under his leadership the Group started its operations in the UAE in 2005. In his capacity as Chairman, Ajay has helped shape the Group’s growth in the UAE and Singapore.
He is the Chairman of the Education business leading the three schools’ education portfolio – North London Collegiate School Dubai, North London Collegiate School Singapore and Hartland International School. He leads a team of more than 900+ staff in the education business with around 5,500+ students across the three schools.
He also acts as Chairman for mid income residential real estate businesses as well as contracting businesses in Dubai. The real estate project has been very well received with exquisite quality and finishing and is fully sold. Ajay is known for incisive industry analysis and team-building skills ensuring the Group projects throughout the region are delivered to the highest quality standards.
His experience in the entire spectrum of real estate, construction, facilities management, education operations, and business strategy and planning while keeping ‘customer’ at the centre of everything has led to setting up one of the top premium IB schools in Dubai and Singapore.
Ajay is a gold medalist in Chemical Engineering from M.S University Baroda and holds a post-graduate degree in Business Administration from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, University of Mumbai.
Rohan Bhaskar leads the Investments and Strategy department for the growing education portfolio of PNCI. He has over 15 years of commercial experience, primarily in real estate and education, including acquisitions, development management, capital raising, fund management, and financial operations.
Rohan has closed transactions both internationally and in the GCC region worth more than AED 3.7bn (including UAE, UK, US, Saudi, Qatar, Bahrain, and Singapore). He has led several sale and leaseback funding transactions for K-12 schools in the region and has been involved in both debt and equity capital initiatives.
Prior to PNCI, Rohan spent close to a decade in the region working at investment banking units in Qatar and Bahrain and has also worked in India at PricewaterhouseCoopers and PepsiCo.
Rohan holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from S.V. Regional Engineering College, Surat, and holds a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, he is also a Chartered Financial analyst (CFA).
Bernard J. West has two decades of experience building investor-backed education businesses across developed and frontier markets in Asia, Africa and America. His work in the sector spans K-12 education, post-secondary training and online learning. Currently, he is an advisor to PNCI’s education business.
Bernard served as the founding CEO of Tadrees Education Holding in KSA, a K-12 education platform sponsored by the Safanad and NCB. He grew the school platform to serve more than 12,000 students in less than 5 years. Bernard’s previous work includes managing and advising several leading education companies, school acquisitions and public/private partnerships.
Bernard West is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and of Howard University.
