Nalini Kothari
Hi, I'm Nalini.
I've always had a knack for being thrown into the deep end of things and figuring out how to swim.
When I began my career, I thought investment banking was the end goal. It took a few late nights and one existential crisis during an internship to realize it wasn't. I wanted my work to mean something, to create impact that reached beyond spreadsheets and valuations.
That realization led me to Emaar, where I spent five years learning how to make sense of ambiguity (and occasionally chaos). I rotated across businesses, jumped between strategy, operations, and data, and worked directly with leadership. Somewhere between PowerPoint decks and meetings, I discovered that I loved uncertainty, the space where you don't have all the answers but still need to move forward. Emaar taught me comfort with ambiguity, a bias for action, and the joy of building something from scratch.
Consulting at BCG felt like the natural next step. It gave me the chance to scale that problem-solving instinct, reaching across industries, cities, and sometimes entire countries. The projects here are audacious: city-scale masterplans, sustainability roadmaps, and transformation journeys that most people would call moonshots. I call them Monday.
What I value most in my work is meaning, momentum, and the people I do it with. I'm happiest when surrounded by brilliant, kind, well-meaning people who push me to think sharper and act faster.
Outside work, I'm a dancer who finds rhythm in structure, a traveler who collects stories more than souvenirs (though I do obsessively collect souvenirs), a quizzer who's endlessly curious about the world, and a movie buff. In fact, I met my now-husband because we were both obsessing over the same Bollywood star during our very first conversation.
If there's a thread that ties it all, it's this: creating impact with people, for people, and creating impact that lasts.
Experience
Boston Consulting Group
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Boston Consulting Group
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Emaar Properties PJSC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Emaar Properties PJSC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The Viral Fever
Mumbai, India
The Viral Fever
Mumbai, India
Nomura Investment Bank
Mumbai, India
Nomura Investment Bank
Mumbai, India
UBS AG
Mumbai, India
UBS AG
Mumbai, India
Education
Indian Institute of Management Lucknow
MBA (Finance & Marketing)
Jun 2015 – Feb 2017
Chairman's Merit Certificate
Hansraj College, University of Delhi
Bachelor of Commerce (Honours)
Jul 2011 – May 2014
Ranked among top 5% of 10,000+ students
Outside work
Dancing
If I weren't consulting, I'd be dancing.
If someone asked what I'd do if I wasn't a consultant, the answer would probably surprise them: I'd be dancing. I've always needed a creative outlet in my life. At one point it was debating, but dance has been the one constant. I trained in Bharatanatyam as a child, tried a bit of ballet in college just to get into the dance society, and somehow keep finding my way back to it every few years. There's something deeply freeing about movement, fluidity, and creating without rigid boundaries. I'd love to take a year off just to explore new dance forms. It's firmly on my bucket list.
Travelling
Travel keeps me grounded by reminding me how big the world really is.
Travel is something Dubai made possible, both geographically and financially. The travel bug bit early; I was six months old when I first flew to Seychelles, where my father was working at the time, and many summers spent there opened my eyes to how beautifully different the world can be. Once my savings allowed for it, I took to travel with a vengeance. I've now visited around 63 countries and, in true consulting fashion, set myself the goal of reaching 100 by 2030. These days, the joy isn't just about exploring new places for myself but also about taking my parents along for the ride. Watching them see the world on my dime is one of the things I'm proudest of.
Quizzing
What began as a way to kill time became our favourite form of connection.
Quizzing came into my life much later than it should have and completely by accident. On a long trip to Hong Kong, my then-boyfriend (now husband) and I, two unapologetic nerds, decided to kill time by going through college quiz decks on SlideShare. That one spontaneous session turned into a Sunday ritual of tuning into Kvizzing by KV on YouTube, and now it's practically our love language. We make quizzes for each other, for friends, for family, sometimes just because it's fun to learn something new. It's become this joyful, slightly competitive thread that runs through our life together.
Movies
Movies are my escape, my comfort, and occasionally my rabbit hole to philosophy.
I'm not a serious movie buff, I've seen what those look like, but I'm definitely the person who'll catch every Bollywood reference before you finish the sentence. Movies are my favourite form of escape; they disconnect me from my surroundings in a way books or shows rarely do. One of my favourite pastimes is going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of movie pages, reading about storylines, cast trivia, and critic reviews until one link leads to another and I somehow end up on a page about philosophy. That's what I love about Wikipedia — it rewards curiosity. It's also a love I share with my father, who still reads movie reviews in the newspaper before heading to the theatre. I'm a purist that way too; good movies deserve to be watched on the big screen, not a laptop.