Headline

Engineering Leader | Trading & Wealth Tech, AI/Data Platforms, Payments at Scale | CTO, Kotak Securities

About

2+ decades building cloud-native platforms in regulated financial services — across capital markets, retail banking, payments, and consumer fintech. Currently CTO at Kotak Securities, where I lead technology across the Kotak Neo trading platform, the firm's wealth management technology stack, and shared data and AI infrastructure. Previously, as Head of Technology for Payments & Consumer Propositions at Kotak Mahindra Bank, I led the engineering charter that drove a 100x improvement in payments success rate. Earlier roles: data platform leadership at Ola; built JPMorgan's first public-cloud big-data pilot for the Investment Bank; led core banking transformation programs at RBS for 6 years. What I care about: regulated-fintech platforms that are reliable, observable, and built on sound architecture; AI deployed responsibly with proper guardrails; teams that ship.

Location

Mumbai

Work experience

Chief Technology Officer at Kotak Securities, Feb 2026 - Present · 8 mos, Mumbai, Leading the technology organisation at one of India's largest broking firms — accountable for engineering, infrastructure, data, and AI across trading, wealth, and operations. Strategic priorities: Modernising the trading and broking technology stack — front-end platforms, core systems, and the infrastructure that runs them — for resilience, latency, and scale. Building Kotak Securities' next-generation data and AI platform, with a vision of an AI-native workforce: AI deeply embedded in how we research, trade, serve customers, and run operations — deployed responsibly, with proper guardrails and audit trails appropriate to a regulated environment. Strengthening the engineering foundation: observability, platform engineering, IT service management, and infrastructure resilience — so the technology organisation can ship faster, more safely, and at lower cost. Working closely with the business to align technology investments with regulatory expectations under SEBI's Cyber Security and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) and India's DPDP Act 2023.

Head of Technology - Payments & Consumer Propositions at Kotak Mahindra Bank, Dec 2023 - Jan 2026 · 2 yrs 2 mos, Bengaluru, Owned the technology charter for payments and consumer-facing platforms at Kotak Mahindra Bank. Headline outcome — UPI: Drove a 100x+ improvement in UPI payment success — reducing technical decline rates from 1.78% to 0.01%, placing Kotak among the best in the Indian banking industry on UPI success metrics — through a systematic re-architecture of the payments stack, observability hardening, and tightened API governance with switch and PSP partners. (Source: NPCI Top 50 Member Performance, Apr 2024 → Jan 2026.) Other key initiatives: Integrated a new acquirer switch — delivered end-to-end in 3 months. Rebuilt and scaled the billpay platform across consumer and affluent customer segments. Drove industry-first systemization of reconciliation controls, including UPI-Lite — strengthening operational integrity and regulatory posture. Engineering culture & people: Established a developer productivity practice including a library of reusable engineering "skills" and an internal skills marketplace. Introduced "Show 'n Tell" demo days across the technology organisation, driving cross-team visibility and engagement. Built and ran a multi-disciplinary platform engineering organisation spanning Mobile, Web, Backend, SRE, and Data across consumer-facing journeys.

Head of Digital Engineering & CX at IDFC FIRST Bank, Nov 2020 - Dec 2023 · 3 yrs 2 mos, Bengaluru, Led the engineering charter for IDFC FIRST Bank's flagship consumer mobile app — the bank's crown-jewel customer-facing product — alongside the broader Customer Experience Platform. Stabilised legacy channel and partner integrations while building a greenfield, cloud-native stack to support the bank's evolving consumer journeys. Led platform engineering across the bank, driving a "3P" strategy of People, Platforms, and Programs. Established Centers of Excellence for Cloud, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, and Database Engineering. Built foundational platforms across containerisation, cloud, streaming, and low-code. Co-authored the bank's three-year technology strategy and roadmap with the CTO and Head of Product.

Principal at Skylo Technologies, Jan 2020 - Nov 2020 · 11 mos, Bengaluru, Led the Skylo India platform team responsible for delivery and reliability of the platform and infrastructure underpinning Skylo's geo-satellite IoT network. Built the backend, infrastructure, and data platform from scratch — designed to scale to millions of connected devices, ingesting downlink telemetry from geostationary satellite base stations into cloud for streaming, analytics, and ML. Personally built Skylo's Location Intelligence Platform — including geofencing capabilities for connected assets — and the Chat-over-Satellite service enabling messaging across satellite-connected devices in remote and offshore environments.

Principal Engineer at Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd), May 2018 - Jan 2020 · 1 yr 9 mos, Bengaluru, Owned Ola's data platform serving the CXO leadership, used by 400+ analyst community, and engineering organisation across all Ola business lines. Maintained >99% availability as SRE lead for data infrastructure. Led Ola's full infrastructure migration from AWS to Azure. Drove infrastructure cost optimisation by leveraging spot instances — reducing capex by approximately 60%.

Education

B.Tech, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University