Bio

Aalap B. Merchant is a seasoned corporate finance professional with 18 years of wide-ranging experience in business development, investment banking, consulting, investing, sales and trading, and operations. He spent the past 12 years focused on providing strategic advisory services to FinTech and Financial Institution clients at leading institutions such as Nomura and JPMorgan. Through this period, Aalap successfully advised on a multitude (50+) of strategic and financing transactions, ranging from $20mn to $10+bn in transaction size and totaling ~$100bn in transaction volume. Aalap possesses a track record of building advisory practices and teams focused on covering FinTech and Financial Institutions clients and his forward-thinking approach, combined with a “client first” emphasis have often led him to becoming the trusted advisor for senior leadership teams and Boards of various early to late stage firms. Aalap joins Marlin & Associates as Senior Managing Director, to deepen the firm’s capabilities and footprint across the broader FinTech universe including Payments, Transaction Processing, Digital Lending, Mortgage Technology, and others. Prior to Marlin, Aalap helped build a boutique advisory firm that provided M&A and strategic advisory services to lower middle market and early stage clients. Prior to that, he spent seven years at Nomura Securities, joining them in 2010 to help establish the Financial Institutions practice and thereafter, leading coverage of the FinTech sector, a group he created, led, and nurtured into one of the leading divisions within Nomura Americas. Before joining Nomura, Aalap was part of the Financial Institutions investment banking group at J.P.Morgan Securities where he covered clients across Specialty Finance, FinTech, Asset Management and Insurance. Aalap obtained his undergraduate degree in Accounting and a master’s degree in Finance from the University of Mumbai and later earned an MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He is a registered securities principal and currently holds Series 7, 79 and 63 licenses. Aalap is also a budding investor and entrepreneur by night, having invested in several small businesses and early stage platforms, and has mentored several entrepreneurs in building successful businesses. He is also an avid fan of motorsports, cycling and all things technology.