Board of Advisors

Our Board of Advisors comprises accomplished leaders with diverse backgrounds in technology, financial services, financial markets intelligence, and academia. Board members bring with them domain expertise and technical skills gained from global and regional organisations such as IBM, Citigroup, Standard & Poor’s, ANZ and Singapore Management University.

After completing M.Tech from IIT Kanpur, Ram Bhagwat, 68, started his career with IBM (1968-1978) where, between 1975 & 1978 he managed IBM-India Products Development Group. He was the recipient of “IBM Chairman’s Professional Excellence Award” in 1974. In 1978, Ram Bhagwat joined the Thapar Group (Ballarpur Industries) as CIO for the next eight years.

In 1986, Mr. Bhagwat joined Citibank as the Technology Director (CIO) for Consumer and Credit Card Businesses and soon after that, for all businesses, covering India and South Asia for 14 years (1986- 2000). In 1994, Citibank’s India Technology, under Bhagwat’s leadership, was the recipient of “Smithsonian Institute (Washington) Recognition” for architectural excellence.

In addition, Mr. Bhagwat was a director at iFlex (1992 to 2000) and eServe (1992-2002), the CEO of Citicorp Software Services Ltd., then MD of OrbiTech Solutions Ltd. and on the VISA international’s Asia Pacific Technology Advisory Board.

From 2002 to 2004 Mr. Bhagwat was the President & Executive Director at Polaris Software. In December 2004, Mr. Bhagwat returned to Citibank as the Head of global outsourcing efforts (BPO & Technology services), reporting into Citigroup New-York. He retired from Citigroup in May-2007, and since then is a free-lance consultant in Banking Technologies. Since 2010 he is also a member of the Technology Strategy Board of HDFC Bank.

At present he is spending a lot of time on creating platforms for “Memory Data Warehouses “ and BeeLine Techniques…To speed-up backend processing and online access.

He lives in Mumbai with his wife. His son and Son’s family are settled in California.

Senior advisor to Percipient’s Curate project, Ken has extensive experience in financial services and wealth management. Ken began his career in Chemical Bank (predecessor of JP Morgan Chase), where among his other roles, he was CEO of the Chemical Investment Group from 1985 – 1991.

He headed Cowen & Company’s asset management business prior to joining Citigroup as Head of Global Consumer Group Investments, a position which he held from 1999 – 2007, after which he continued in Citigroup as Senior Advisor for Consumer Group Wealth Management until March 2009. Ken subsequently joined StoneRiver Insurance Holdings, a portfolio company of Stone Point Capital, as its Chief Administrative Officer, completing his responsibilities in July 2014. He currently provides independent financial services consulting.

Ratikant is a technology leader with over twenty years of experience in leading strategic transformation at global banks. His expertise and experience spans digital transformation, core banking transformation, multi-channel CRM / sales and service platforms to customer-centric enterprise-wide analytical platform; leading and managing them from concept to implementation.

Asian Banker recognised him as a “Leading practitioner of Technology and Innovation” in Asia for 2016.

He is currently the Head of Digital Delivery(APEA) at ANZ Singapore and is responsible for delivery of next generation digital solutions to ANZ clients. Before this role, he was a director at Citigroup with seventeen years of experience where he was responsible for conceptualization, development and deployment of customer facing digital banking solutions. Prior to that he led the creation of the next generation Data analytics/BI systems with global coverage of 30+ countries (Asia, EMEA, LATAM).

Ratikant is a graduate of Electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology and holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management.

Surinder Kathpalia is a member of the Board of Governors of the United World College of South East Asia (including Member of its Audit and Governance Committees), an independent director of The Silent Foundation (also Chairman of its Audit Committee), RHT Rajan Menon Foundation and member of the Advisory Council of the Indian Institute of Finance. He is also involved with several start-ups in Singapore and India as co-founder, mentor or advisor.

Surinder was, until December 2014, Managing Director and Head of ASEAN & South Asia at Standard &Poor’s, having co-founded its Singapore office in October 1996. At the end of 2014 Surinder stepped down as a member of the Executive Committee of the Investment Management Association of Singapore, and the boards of directors of S&P’s subsidiaries in Singapore and Malaysia. He was previously a member of the advisory board of the Corporate Governance & Financial Reporting Centre at the National University of Singapore and sat on the board of Standard & Poor’s Fund Services (HK) Ltd.

Prior to S&P, Surinder worked as an investment banker with HSBC and as a Principal at EY.

Surinder is a UK Chartered Accountant, a FCA of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Singapore and holds a Masters degree in Management (Sloan Fellow) from the London Business School.

Dr. Srinivas K. Reddy is Professor of Marketing and Director, Center for Marketing Excellence, Academic Director, LVMH-SMU Luxury Brand Initiative, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University. He served as the Associate Dean of General Management overseeing the MBA and the Executive MBA programs. Previously, he was the Robert O. Arnold Professor of Business and the Director of the Coca-Cola Center for Marketing Studies, Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. He holds M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees in Business Administration from Columbia University. Dr. Reddy was on the faculties of New York University’s Stern School of Business, Columbia University, University of California, Los Angeles and the Stanford Business School. ,

Dr. Reddy’s expertise is in innovation, new product development, marketing and competitive strategy involving new brands and services. Dr. Reddy’s research on innovation, brand and marketing strategy has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Social Networks, Statistical Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Marketing Letters, Journal of Retailing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Decision Support Systems and Journal of Business Research. In 2006, he has been awarded the IBM’s presitigious SUR grant to study corporate innovativeness and innovation conversion. He has consulted and taught executive programs for IBM, CocaCola Company, United Parcel Service, Miller Brewing, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Satyam Computer Services, Chase, Turner Broadcasting, Cox Interactive Media, Equitable, Ford Foundation, Price Waterhouse Coopers, MasterCard, Unilever. He has been recognized for his outstanding teaching and was the recipient of Award for Teaching Excellence in 1994. He was nominated as the MBA Teacher of the Year in 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2005. In 2014, Dr. Reddy was one of 3 at SMU to be nominated for Teaching Excellence in Executive Development. He is the recipient of MBA Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014. Dr. Reddy’s case (Gillette’s “Shave India Movement”: Razor Sharp Against the Stubble) was one of the winners in the 2013 Emerald Emerging Markets Case competition. Two of his cases (Oreo in China and Gillette in India) have been feautured in Financial Times in 2013.

Dr. Reddy along with Professor Krishna Palepu of Harvard Business School was the advisor to the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh (Mr. Chandrababu Naidu), India on the state’s Vision 2020 program for economic development. Professor Reddy was the founding director of Quantum National Bank, Atlanta in 1995. He was also the co-founder of enLeague, a startup company involved in developing technolgical solutions for enterprise peer-to-peer networks. enLeague was the first startup to be funded by the CocaCola’s incubator Fizzion. He was on the advisory board of Navigauge, a radio audience dynamics/telematics company, and Panacea, an electronic medical practice company. He was a Director of MRII (Marketing Research Institute International 2001-2007) and is currently an Advisory Board member of GfK Academy, Germany.

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Percipient Partners Pte. Ltd.

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