Bahniman Hazarika

Bahniman Hazarika is a finance executive and former impact-investing principal whose career spans corporate finance, venture capital, management consulting, and investment banking across the United States, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honors) in Accounting from Shri Ram College of Commerce (University of Delhi), the Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) designation from the Institute of Internal Auditors, and an MBA with a concentration in Finance and Accounting from Emory University's Goizueta Business School in Atlanta.

He began his career as an advisory/operational-process consultant at Ernst & Young in New Delhi, India, later moving into investment banking at Wachovia Securities and private equity roles at Navigation Capital Partners in Atlanta and Viscogliosi Brothers LLC, a New York-based private equity firm. At Gray Ghost Ventures, he served as Director of Investments, where he brought experience in mergers and acquisitions, growth equity, buyouts, and restructuring. In that role he worked alongside the firm's principals to source, evaluate, and execute investments and to build, monitor, and manage the firm's portfolios of early-stage, emerging-market impact enterprises.

Gray Ghost Ventures, founded in 2003 and headquartered in Atlanta, is a Certified B Corporation impact-investing advisory firm that has committed more than $100 million to for-profit, market-based solutions for poverty alleviation, financial inclusion, affordable education, and environmental improvement in low-income communities in emerging markets. During his tenure, Hazarika held board and board-observer roles tied to portfolio companies, including board and audit-committee membership at Range Networks and BabaJob, and board-observer seats at Movirtu and M-KOPA.

Hazarika subsequently moved into senior corporate finance leadership. He served as Business-Unit CFO / Finance Director for The Home Depot's online businesses (HomeDepot.com, Blinds.com, TheCompanyStore.com, and HD Home), then as Chief Financial Officer of Interior Define (appointed March 2022), and most recently as Chief Financial Officer of Reverb.com. His Gray Ghost investment role therefore appears to be a historical chapter of his career rather than his current position.

• Invested through Gray Ghost Ventures' impact mandate: for-profit, market-based solutions that serve low-income, "bottom-of-the-pyramid" communities in emerging markets.
• Stage: seed and early-stage operating companies, where the firm provided both capital and hands-on portfolio support (board/observer involvement, monitoring, and management).
• Sectors emphasized: mobile/telecom technology, financial inclusion and mobile payments, affordable education, and employment/livelihood platforms.
• Geography: focus on Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya) and India, reflecting Gray Ghost's emerging-markets thesis.
• What earned a "yes": ventures combining a clear social-impact outcome with a scalable, replicable, and ultimately profitable commercial model — the firm explicitly sought solutions that were "scalable, replicable and profitable."