Leaders Under 40: Rohit Boda

Combining legacy with entrepreneurship while evolving across emerging markets is all in a day’s work for this young leader whose management style is rooted in curiosity, growth and long-term thinking.

For our series on Leaders Under 40, Rohit Boda, group managing director of the J.B. Boda Group and Chairman at 0910 Holdings, spoke to Intelligent Insurer about growing up in a family deeply embedded in insurance and how his path into the industry – while shaped early – has focused consistently on learning and staying motivated.

“I belong to an insurance and reinsurance broking legacy family. I’m the third generation of the J.B. Boda Group,” he said. “Being born in India, in an Indian household with eight decades of my family working in the business of insurance, of course pulled me towards joining the family business.”

Yet the scale of opportunity, rather than obligation, has kept him engaged. “When I joined the industry in 2011, the world was just coming out of the global financial crisis. Insurance and risk transfer mechanisms were really coming into their own in the emerging markets.” That exposure to new economies shaped both his world view and leadership style.

“Looking at the way emerging markets possess opportunities, my attention was drawn towards getting deeper into this business,” he explained. India’s competitive intensity, combined with rapid global shifts in climate risk, technology and innovation, created what he describes as a constant learning environment. “The Indian market is very competitive and very challenging. It is running all the time. Something is always happening in the country.”

Leadership, for Boda, has been forged as much by family influence as by disruption and he attributed his father “who has spent more than 45 years in the industry” as one of the most motivating influences in my career. He also credits his grandfather as “the biggest motivator of the leader material”. Watching earlier generations navigate competition, expansion and cultural change helped define his own approach, particularly around people. “For me, people are very important,” he said, noting that leadership today requires thinking ahead, not simply reacting.

That mindset translated into early bets on technology, and in 2014, he helped set up and develop an in-house reinsurance platform. “We started working on a project called Protect,” he recalled. “We got coders and programmers on board, then built it all by ourselves.” The process was demanding, taking several years, but deeply formative. “It’s one of the most fantastic learning experiences from my early days, and it’s up and running now.”

Experimentation did not stop there. Post-pandemic, the company explored blockchain applications in marine insurance. “We try to track claims in real time on blockchain and bring that back into the underwriting manual,” he explained. While adoption remains gradual, Boda is convinced of its long-term relevance. “Blockchain is a very long-haul technology. The use case in the world of insurance is there, and it is taking shape.” His belief is reflected personally as well, through investments in blockchain and health technology companies, which he sees as extensions of his own learning curve, rather than purely financial plays.

That philosophy of learning through building culminated last year in the launch of a new venture. “We are building a company called 0910 Holdings,” Boda revealed. Officially established in July 2025 and based in Dubai’s DIFC, the firm focuses on mergers and acquisitions across brokers, MGAs and portfolio companies in emerging markets.

“We take majority stakes, or invest and acquire brokers, purely from a strategy point of view.” For Boda, the platform represents both growth and education.

He views inorganic expansion not as optional, but inevitable. “I do believe the inorganic way of growing is not only a survival strategy, but also a growth strategy,” he said, pointing to long-term planning horizons. “We do have a 15-year strategy in place and look at reverse engineering things to keep learning, we call is VISION 2040.

When it comes to talent, Boda is candid about the industry’s challenges. “Globally, there might be a talent crunch, but I believe this can be reduced by engaging people from other industries,” he said. Insurance, in his view, can no longer depend solely on traditional career paths. “Only relying on people with an insurance background is no longer the future,” Boda stated. Instead, he advocates blending industry expertise with outside perspectives, particularly as insurance expands into cyber, climate, renewables and technology-driven risks.

Culture, however, remains non-negotiable. “Your brand is built up by people and can be destroyed by people,” he said. While AI and machine learning dominate current conversations, Boda said leadership must retain a human core. “I firmly believe the next generation has to bring in an element of empathy,” he explained. “You can develop skill sets, but developing your moral behaviour and understanding how you position a legacy brand is extremely important.”

Despite its global importance, Boda is frank about insurance’s image problem. “I jokingly say I am in the business of insurance because I was born into it. I would never have chosen insurance as a career,” he said. He believes the industry has failed to communicate its economic reality and “has not done enough in terms of building talent”.

“People do not believe insurance and reinsurance distribution can make money,” he said. “That perception has to change. Our company has survived for more than 80 years in this business.”

For young professionals entering the market, his advice is direct. “Insurance is not like stock market. Hold your horses,” he said. “You are making money for generations. The reward, he argues, lies in exposure. “The finest part about entering the world of insurance is you learn something about every industry.” But long-term success requires discipline, foresight and humanity. “Stay focused, stay extremely disciplined and keep your thinking ahead of your time,” he said, before adding, “Somebody has to bring at least 5% of empathy back into the balance sheet and think from a different perspective.”

Boda often returns to a self-penned personal mantra: “The sky was never the limit. Everything that lies beyond the sky is yours - the future,” he quotes.

For a leader balancing legacy with entrepreneurship, that outlook continues to shape how he learns, builds and grows.

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