Aisha de Sequeira: The banker with a smile

While she would say that the strategy on the chess board of deals was what she thrived on in her chosen profession—investment banking—for anyone who knew Aisha de Sequeira, she was always the investment banker with a twinkle in her eye and an infectious smile. With her, it was always people first, then business.

De Sequeira featured regularly on Fortune India's list of The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, and was the quintessentially friendly, but fast-driving dealmaker for the Morgan Stanley franchise in India and burnished its profile in an intensely competitive landscape, all the while espousing its time-tested values of giving back, pushing for diversity, doing the right thing, and putting her clients ahead of all else.

She passed away on December 10, succumbing to an almost five-year-long battle with cancer that she fought with steely courage, soldiering on to perform at top-flight levels with exemplary professionalism until the end.

Under her, Morgan Stanley raised some $20 billion of capital for clients in India and provided advisory services for over $70 billion in M&A deals. These include investments by Nippon Life into Reliance Life and Reliance Asset Management, the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, and more recently, the first REIT deal for the Blackstone Group-backed Embassy Group.

The most recent and high-profile transaction she advised on was Facebook's mega investment into Reliance Jio earlier this year.

Beyond the transactions and deals and the big numbers, de Sequeira is perhaps the only investment banker who spent most of her time abroad to have returned to India in recent years, made a name not only for herself but also for Morgan Stanley, and garnered the franchise the big transactions. Most, if not all, other investment bankers have all been India-based. The fact that she was able to do that, despite having lived abroad for decades, stands testament to her ability to make meaningful and genuine connections with people across the spectrum of businesses.

She came to Mumbai to run Morgan Stanley's investment banking business after it parted ways with JM Financial, after having worked with it in New York for over 20 years.

A die-hard Goan, her grandfather Dr Jack de Sequeira was a politician, and president of the United Goans Party. Her father, in turn, owned the local Coca-Cola bottling plant and was also a member of Parliament. De Sequeira went to school at Our Lady of the Rosary, after which she went to Goa Engineering College. She was deeply religious but also hugely open minded.

Yale University came after that and soon after her lifelong association with Morgan Stanley. America didn't just teach her to be independent, it also plugged her into excellent networks. PepsiCo's former CEO Indra Nooyi was both a mentor and friend to her.

Never one to shy away from speaking her mind, the finance graduate who was fluent in Konkani would say that a reputation took generations to build but could be lost overnight, if one was careless. She was also quick to push those around her to achieve greater heights. "You should try to interview Mukesh Ambani or why don't you write a book on doing business in India?" were gauntlets de Sequeira threw at me during one of our regular coffee meetings where we would discuss where the exciting narratives were developing.

In the years that followed during her battle with cancer, her focus remained circumspect yet practical. She never once stopped working. I ran into her once on an early morning walk along the Worli Sea-face promenade and the conversation opened with a salvo of queries on oil prices, interest rates, and the state of the real estate markets in Mumbai.

Having recovered from the flu days earlier, I was conscious about air quality around Worli with the increasing construction and dusty air around the walkway. Did it not concern her? Her trademark smile was an indication she'd already fought so many bigger battles that she wasn't even going to deign to answer my question.

Not so long ago de Sequeira wisely told me, "Many people may think they know me but very few people actually do." Despite being from Goa, she wasn't much of a drinker and instead preferred top-notch Japanese green tea. She was good with people, could read them well, and she put relationships before profit. When asked how did one get to become a trusted advisor to promoters and business owners in India, her answer was simple but unexpected. "Be transparent, be consistent. Say no to a deal if they shouldn't do it even if it means you're losing money. In the long term that plays out better for all," was her answer.

If courage had a face to it, it would belong to de Sequeira. Health challenge or not, she was clear that she was not going to let cancer define her or who she was. "I am determined to battle this and fight it," she said to me. She meant every word, we now know.