Snowflake

Forbes India presents "The Data Circle" in association with Snowflake, is an initiative that showcases top tech leaders in a thought leadership format. The selection process takes a comprehensive approach, considering their influence on both their companies and industries. The pivotal roles of these tech leaders drive innovation and breakthroughs within their respective sectors. These agile and enterprising leaders adeptly strategize to manage critical organisational conditions. The campaign aims to acknowledge and engage these exceptional professionals who are shaping the future.

Phanimohan Kalagara, CTO, Pine Labs Pvt Ltd

Inspiring Change

In his impressive career of more than 27 years in India and overseas, Kalagara has gained extensive experience in technology, having worked in ecommerce, fi nancial technology, and CAD/CAM industries. He says, “Technology is impacting the world around us, and this thought of contributing and making a diff erence in people’s lives is always super exciting for me.”

As the CTO of a large fi ntech company operating in the competitive digital payments sector, Kalagara’s key responsibility is to inspire change and foster a culture of innovation. He envisions a cashless India and aspires to accelerate this momentum of digital payments to reach Tier-III to VI cities and rural areas. Kalagara underscores the objective of delivering a frictionless omnichannel payment experience for merchants and enterprise customers, both in India and overseas.

Innovation is the core of their operations at Pine Labs, and the company advocates a culture of learning from failures and iterating for success. Kalagara believes that clearly defi ned roles and a flat hierarchy structure promote ownership and seamless communication between the various teams, fostering an innovative mindset within the organisation.

For him, deriving actionable insights from data is critical to strategise and deliver to the evolving digital payment needs of consumers and merchants. He prioritises ethical harnessing and usage of data for societal good.

In his long career, Kalagar has spearheaded many technology and product initiatives that targeted growth, customer experience, and operational excellence. At Pine Labs, he initiated the ‘Omnichannel’ platform that helped them to build a capability and leverage it across multiple payment channels including in-store and online. Under his leadership, they have taken specific and targeted initiatives to enhance developer productivity and build microservices and app frameworks to leverage across various product lines. These initiatives have yielded impressive results, enabling them to off er consistent and high-quality services.

Kalagara’s success mantra is grounded in humility, continuous improvement, and eff ective team management. He values building self-sustaining organisations and measures his success by the positive transformation he strives to bring to product development, people management, and fostering talent.