Akhil Handa
Former President & Chief Digital Officer
Operator · Capital Allocator · Board Advisor · Public Infrastructure Architect
Two decades at the front lines of how a global Top-10 bank gets built, integrated, digitized, and partnered. Equally at home in the boardroom, the policy committee, the M&A war room, and the fintech founder's first pitch.
Welcome to FirstHand — my ongoing chronicle of real-world experiences from inside India's financial transformation: the wins, the mistakes, the experiments that worked, and the pivots that didn't.
The Decade of Indian Fintech, 2015–2025
I had the privilege of helping shape — and being shaped by — India's defining fintech decade from inside its second-largest public sector bank. A few markers of that journey:
Alongside: 100+ fintech partnerships across lending, payments, KYC, AI, wealth, and insurance; 25+ international markets managed under a unified digital lens; and a quiet rewrite of what a public-sector bank could become.
Digital, done right, is the flywheel engine of franchise value.
What I built and ran
Direct P&L, platform, and operating ownership across the largest digital banking estate in Indian PSU banking.
bob World
Built and scaled India's 2nd most-downloaded digital banking app — 33M+ registrations in the first ~18 months, 227+ services on a single super-app surface.
Digital lending from zero
USD 10 bn+ annual disbursement run-rate across personal, SME, and co-lending; ~84% of retail loan volume sourced digitally at peak.
Digital payments at scale
UPI innovation, tokenization, wearables, and a USD 1 trillion+ annual settlement run-rate.
Co-lending platform
India's first PSU digital co-lending stack, onboarding multiple NBFCs and HFCs at scale.
TReDS
First PSB to go live on all three TReDS platforms (RXIL, M1xchange, Invoicemart) — public-sector anchorage to India's MSME invoice-discounting rails.
Conversational banking & AI
Natural-language banking integrated into daily customer journeys; WhatsApp Banking deployed at PSU scale.
Startup Banking vertical
India's first; banked ~10% of all eligible Indian startups at peak.
Account Aggregator
Among the earliest large banks live as a Financial Information User on India's consent-based data rails.
CBDC / Digital Rupee
Anchored the bank's participation in the RBI's first CBDC pilot cohort; launched bob World Digital Rupee.
Digital Analytics Centre of Excellence
Cloud data lake, ML-driven decisioning, and risk analytics.
Digital marketing engine
Performance-driven user acquisition, lifecycle, and retention — full-stack.
ATM and Cashpoint network
10,000+ touchpoints — modernized and operated.
Digital Banking Units
Pioneered the phygital branch concept for Indian PSU banking.
Fraud Monitoring Unit
Built ground-up for digital payments prevention and detection at scale.
24×7 backend operations
Lending, payments, onboarding, and embedded finance.
M&A and integration leadership
Led the digital integration workstreams of India's first-ever 3-way public-sector bank merger — the amalgamation of Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank, and Dena Bank (effective April 1, 2019) — which created India's second-largest public sector bank.
Owned the digital integration agenda end-to-end — three legacy core banking stacks, payments rails, mobile and internet banking platforms, customer onboarding, and channel orchestration — consolidated without a single day of customer disruption.
A first-of-its-kind precedent for digital-led integration in Indian PSU banking, since referenced across subsequent public-sector consolidation playbooks.
Capital allocation
Active deployment of bank capital, consortium capital, and franchise weight into India's fintech and digital-public-infrastructure stack.
IBBIC Ltd
Co-led the formation of the 15-bank blockchain consortium with IBM and Infosys; board representation.
Online PSB Loans Ltd (OPL)
Board director; backed by SIDBI, NABARD, HSBC, Experian — India's flagship public credit marketplace.
ONDC
Early institutional participant; drove the bank's onboarding and use-case design on India's open commerce stack.
Venture capital LP positions
Anchored the bank's exposure to early-stage fintech via select fund commitments.
Direct fintech equity and strategic JVs
Across credit, risk-tech, and conversational AI.
Baroda Global Shared Services & Sun Tech
Board director; oversight of the bank's captive tech and shared-services entities.
Public policy and infrastructure
Hands-on in shaping the rails the country now runs on.
Board and governance
IBBIC Ltd
Indian Banks' Blockchain Infrastructure Co. — 15-bank consortium with IBM and Infosys.
Online PSB Loans Ltd
India's public credit platform — backed by SIDBI, NABARD, HSBC, and Experian.
Baroda Global Shared Services Ltd
Digital operations and enterprise platform delivery.
Baroda Sun Technologies Ltd
Captive technology arm of Bank of Baroda.
Mitra Microfinance
Entrepreneurial microfinance venture.
Currently advising boards and founder teams across fintech, AI, and infrastructure.
Recognition
Today
Building an AI-native venture at the intersection of intelligent capital allocation, embedded finance, and digital infrastructure.
Co-author of Transformational Leadership in Banking. Host of the FinTalk podcast.