Narayan Ramachandran has been a Mint contributor for 16 years and writes a fortnightly column called “A Visible Hand”. He spent over three decades on Wall Street, most of it with Morgan Stanley. Narayan was the country head of Morgan Stanley India, leading all of the Group's businesses. Prior to that, he was the head and lead portfolio manager of Morgan Stanley’s Global Emerging Markets and Global Asset Allocation teams, managing over $25 billion in assets. He began his career at Goldman Sachs.

Narayan is Chairman of TeamLease Services, as well as Unitus Group, India's largest social enterprise bank. Narayan is also Chairman of Vivriti Next and UC Inclusive Credit, which are pioneering firms working on bringing credit to underserved markets.

In the 2010s, Narayan finished a full eight-year term as Chairman of RBL Bank, one of India's fastest growing banks. He serves as the Chairman and co-founder of InKlude Labs, a social business enterprise working in the field of education and public health. Through InKlude Labs, Narayan works with deserving enterprises to help them scale. He is currently working on incubating the Center for Wildlife Studies and Asan Cup, a feminine hygiene start-up.

He served as General Partner and Member of the Global Strategy Advisory Board of L Catterton Asia, a consumer-focused growth equity firm. He is an active private equity investor in financial services, technology, social enterprises and consumer businesses. He is co-founder and Fellow at the Takshashila Institution, a public policy school and think-tank. He teaches an online graduate-level course on contemporary economics.

Narayan received a BTech in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and an MBA from the University of Michigan. Narayan holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.