Sonal Varma

Managing Director, Chief Economist, India and Asia ex-Japan, Nomura

Sonal Varma is a Managing Director, and Nomura’s Chief Economist, India and Asia ex-Japan, based in Singapore. Her responsibilities include analyzing and forecasting key regional trends and publishing in-depth, thematic reports on the economy as part of Nomura’s Asia ex-Japan Global Markets Research team. She manages a team of economists covering the region. She joined Nomura in October 2008 from Lehman Brothers, where she served as India Economist.

Sonal was ranked No.1 for pan-Asia research by The Asset in 2022 and 2023, No. 3 in 2024 and received an Honorable Mention in 2025. The same publication also ranked her as one of the top two economists for India research from 2012 to 2019. Additionally, Sonal was ranked by Asiamoney’s Brokers Poll as the No.1 India economist in 2020, and No.3 in 2021. She was consistently ranked among the Top 2 economists in India by Institutional Investor every year from 2013 to 2018.

Sonal previously worked as an economist at ICICI Bank and rating agency CRISIL. She was a member of the Indian government’s working group to construct the index of industrial production, and her views are frequently sought by the media, think tanks and policymakers.

Sonal holds a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, in India.