Puri has a Ph.D. in finance from New York University and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Before her career as an academic, she was a corporate banking executive at HSBC in London and Mumbai.
She started her academic career as an assistant professor at Stanford University and was promoted to associate professor in 2000. She left Stanford in 2003 to join Duke University.
Her paper "Deposit Inflows and Outflows in Failing Banks: The Role of Deposit Insurance" (with Chris Martin and Alexander Brenden Ufier) has won the best paper award from Financial Asset Management association.
Her works have been cited more than 20,000 times according to Google Scholar.
Hellmann, Thomas; Puri, Manju (2002). "Venture Capital and the Professionalization of Start-Up Firms: Empirical Evidence". The Journal of Finance. 57 (1): 169–197.
Hellmann, Thomas; Puri, Manju (2000-10-01). "The Interaction between Product Market and Financing Strategy: The Role of Venture Capital". The Review of Financial Studies. 13 (4): 959–984.
Iyer, Rajkamal; Puri, Manju (2012/06). "Understanding Bank Runs: The Importance of Depositor-Bank Relationships and Networks". American Economic Review. 102 (4): 1414–1445.
Graham, John R.; Harvey, Campbell R.; Puri, Manju (2013-07-01). "Managerial attitudes and corporate actions". Journal of Financial Economics. 109 (1): 103–121.