Ashish Arnikar and Amarish Thakur join Nextgen's Optima as Executive Directors

Two senior professionals of KPMG – Ashish Arnikar and Amarish Thakur – have left the Big Four professional services firm to become executive directors at Nextgen. The pair have been tasked with growing Optima, Nextgen’s enterprise software consulting business. 

Arnikar has recently returned from nearly half a decade in Sillicon Valley, where he worked for Big Four accounting and advisory firms PwC and KPMG. At PwC, Arnikar was the Director for Advisory Services for three years before he left to join KPMG as a Senior Director for Risk Consulting.

Arnikar’s longest professional spell came at Oracle, where he spent 11 years and held the positions of Oracle ERP Technical Consultant and Director for License Management Services in the Asia Pacific. He will take over as an Executive Director at Nextgen Optima, alongside Amarish Thakur.

Thakur also vacates a role as Director for Risk Consulting at KPMG, although he has spent the last three years at the Big Four accounting and advisory firm’s Australia outlet. Prior to his role at KPMG, Thakur was the Director for Risk Services at fellow Big Four firm Deloitte for a spell of two years.

Similarly, Thakur has experience at Oracle in Australia, having spent three years at the firm as a Director for Sales Enablement. Arnikar and Thakur have considerable experience working together, having co-founded Sydney-based software asset management firm Advalora Corporation in 2010.

The two experienced professionals will now be reunited in their efforts to develop Nextgen Optima, an enterprise in which they now cumulatively own 30%. Nextgen’s Optima is an advisory firm that specialises in the domain of software licensing in varying regulatory environments.

The firm supports clients with optimising their investments in licensing. Given the firm’s focus on Oracle, both Arnikar and Thakur are well equipped to manage its operations. Oracle-based capabilities are increasingly coming into demand across the Australian market, and Optima has now received a boost to its competitiveness in that domain.

“Optima’s consulting offerings were aimed at enhancing the overall experience for clients by reducing the complexities and overheads of day-to-day management of their software portfolios,” commented Arnikar upon his appointment.The firm is also looking to expand its scope beyond Oracle into other software capabilities as well, having expanded its partnerships to include SAP, IBM and Micro Focus, among others.