IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews

Rajiv Bhat, CEO, martini.ai Describing itself as the world's broadest and fastest risk engine, martini.ai aims to redefine how financial professionals access and interpret credit risk data through a free, platform. CEO Rajiv Bhat is leading a movement toward open, transparent credit data as investors and lenders around the world seek real-time visibility into risk. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intellig...

In this episode of The Big Interview, Raja Debnath, MD, and Chairperson of Veefin Group, discusses the evolving future of working capital management, where AI and automation are becoming central to financial stability. He highlights how Veefin is leading AI-driven risk control and multi-lender orchestration to transform liquidity management for MSMEs. He also shares key lessons from scaling Veefin...

As artificial intelligence continues to make waves in the banking sector, this episode dives into how it’s reshaping working capital management. We discuss how AI, APIs, and automation are unlocking new efficiencies in liquidity, supply chain resilience, and sustainable finance. The conversation covers AI’s transformative role in improving credit scoring, fraud detection, and operational agility....

Navigating Bank Partnerships - A West Asia FinTech Guide: The latest from IBSi Perspectives, offers a strategic view of how FinTechs must navigate geopolitical uncertainty while strengthening their relationships with Banks in the region. It provides practical insights on how FinTech firms can work with banks, focusing on partnerships, regulatory considerations, and evolving priorities shaping the...

Bhavana Mallesh, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Gieom Business Solutions Private Ltd.  As regulatory expectations shift from periodic compliance to continuous supervision, financial institutions are rethinking how they manage operational resilience, risk governance and regulatory accountability. Against this backdrop, Puja Sharma speaks with Bhavana Mallesh, Chief Technology Officer an...

Vaibhav Tambe, Co-founder & CEO, TransBnk What happens when money becomes programmable? In this edition of The Big Interview, we spotlight how TransBnk is re-engineering transaction banking from the ground up. Speaking with Co-founder and CEO Vaibhav Tambe, we explore how programmable finance allows businesses to embed logic directly into payments - releasing funds on milestone verification, a...

Hari Padmanabhan, Founder – Chairman, Uncia The discussion moves beyond buzzwords like AI and cloud-native, arguing that most institutions are still in early transformation stages. True AI-driven lending, he suggests, will emerge only when every transaction continuously trains the system. Uncia’s Zero Implementation and Self-Serve model challenges traditional, time-heavy deployments - shifting con...

Brajesh Khandelwal, EVP and Head – Lending Intellect Consumer Banking, Intellect Design Arena Limited As artificial intelligence reshapes the future of lending, financial institutions are rethinking how credit is assessed and delivered across underserved sectors. Against this backdrop, Puja Sharma speaks with Brajesh Khandelwal, EVP and Head – Lending at Intellect Design Arena, about embedding AI...

Sundararajan S., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of i-exceed technology solutions i-exceed explores the future of digital banking through three key pillars: AI-powered personal financial management, real-time risk mitigation, and unified customer profiles. By leveraging predictive AI and low-code platforms like Appzillon, banks can modernize quickly while maintaining transparency, enhancing...

Raj MKK, CEO of CreditNirvana.ai, discusses how agentic AI is reshaping the credit and collections cycle by replacing manual, fragmented workflows with autonomous, hyper-personalised recovery processes. Focusing on India and Southeast Asia, he highlights the role of multilingual voice intelligence in overcoming regional language barriers, improving compliance, and enhancing borrower experience. Ra...

Ashish Lath, Founder & CEO, SaveSage Loyalty programmes and credit card rewards promise value, but for many consumers, the reality is complexity, fragmentation, and missed opportunities. As digital finance evolves, technology is beginning to change how users track rewards, optimise spending, and make more informed credit decisions. In this episode, Vriti Gothi speaks with Ashish Lath, Founder...

Debiprasad Sarangi, Founder and CEO, iServeU From soundboxes in small-town kirana stores to APIs running national banks, India’s FinTech stack is quietly rewriting how participation scales. Puja Sharma speaks with Debiprasad Sarangi of iServeU, on the infrastructure powering this shift.

Piyush Bagaria, Co-founder, SalarySe   Salary-linked finance is reshaping how Indian employers think about retention, responsibility, and financial wellbeing. Puja Sharma speaks with Piyush Bagaria, Co-founder, SalarySe, on how salary-linked finance is pushing financial wellness from the HR desk to the boardroom. 

Kevin Flood, Director of Payments Ecosystem Strategy, FIS For years, banks have been pouring money into app development, yet the next revolution in customer interaction may not happen in an app at all. A global shift is underway towards conversational finance – where relationships begin and end in a message thread. Consumers don’t want to download another app, they want to chat, ask and act. Robin...

Siddharth Ugrankar, CEO & Co-Founder, Qila.io Blockchain has long been associated with hype and experimentation, but its real value is now emerging in highly regulated environments like banking, insurance, and financial services. As institutions prioritise security, compliance, and transparency, enterprise-grade blockchain is becoming a practical foundation for next-generation financial infras...

Anar Qasem, Vice President of MENA, Cleareye.ai Trade-based money laundering is how criminals move dirty money across borders disguised as legitimate trade. Banks are spending millions but are still missing most suspicious activities, in part because 80% of global trade operates on open account terms with minimal documentation. So, what can be done? Anar Qasem, Vice President of MENA for Cleareye....

Jeeja Gopinath, Managing Director, Zentis AI & Techvantage.ai Artificial Intelligence is moving beyond experimentation to become a core driver of transformation across banking, financial services, and FinTech. But as institutions grapple with legacy systems, regulatory scrutiny, and the need for responsible innovation, translating AI vision into real-world impact remains a challenge. In this e...

Pedro Arnt, Chief Executive Officer, dLocal dLocal simplifies cross-border transactions in emerging markets, connecting global enterprise merchants with billions of emerging market consumers across APAC, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Through the "One dLocal" concept (one direct API, one platform, and one contract), global companies can accept payments, send payouts, and set...

Veena Nair, Head of Content, Humanity Protocol Humanity Protocol aims to verify people, not passwords through palm biometrics converted into zero-knowledge proofs so platforms can block bots and fraud while keeping biometric data private and off-chain. It works on a smartphone and is already rolling out to users and enterprise pilots in finance. The firm is backed by Animoca and was most recently...

Chandrasekhar Somasekhar, Chief Technology Officer, cleareye.ai The business of trade finance is traditionally exhaustively documented but mix in a large language model (LLM) and that business can suddenly become much less of a challenge for those who must review the documentation. Chandrasekhar Somasekhar is CTO of cleareye.ai and also leads the firm’s Product Engineering team. He discusses the a...

Prabhakar Reddy, Founder & CEO, OpenFX OpenFX is building a real-time, open and transparent FX network, aiming to solve the last-mile problem in international money movement by using stablecoins as an intermediary – bringing FX transactions kicking and screaming into the 21st century! Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence discusses the future of FX, and how spreads and fees are already being compres...

Mahesh Shukla, Founder & CEO, PayMe India’s digital lending space is shifting toward trust, compliance, and responsible growth. Puja Sharma speaks with Mahesh Shukla, Founder and CEO of PayMe, on building a sustainable, AI-enabled lending model for Bharat. The conversation unpacks instant credit access, data-driven underwriting beyond CIBIL, and what responsible FinTech scale looks like in 202...

Casparus Kromhout, Managing Director & CEO, Shriram Life Insurance Life insurance in India is undergoing a pivotal shift from traditional, agent-driven models to digitally enabled, inclusion-led experiences. Rural and emerging India, once underserved, has now become the next frontier for financial protection and long-term security.  In this episode, Vriti Gothi sits down with Casparus Kromhout...

Buddhadeb Das Gupta, EVP & Global Head of Payments & Digital Solutions, Yethi Consulting Increasing architectural complexity and ever-changing regulatory demands have left the global payments ecosystem at a critical inflection point. Transformation and compliance are now a matter of business survival. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence talks to Buddhadeb ‘Deb’ Das Gupta of Yethi Consulting ab...

Kunal Bhasin, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, 1West Small businesses in the US now have more choice in financing but closing the lending gap comes at a price. Small loans don’t make economic sense to the banks, At the same time bank loans are still taking too long to arrange.  Addressing both those issues allows alternative lenders to carve out a profitable niche and provides SMBs with solu...