Vasa Krishnan, the Chief Technology Officer of FinResults, Inc., is a leader known for his expertise in technology, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. His journey in the tech world began with a Master’s degree in computer science and management.
Starting out as a systems engineer in Research & Development, Vasa worked on tuning operating systems and optimizing large-scale solutions. This early experience paved the way for senior architecture roles at leading financial institutions, where he built advanced enterprise solutions. Vasa says, “While architecting these solutions, I recognized significant opportunities to disrupt the legacy business models through innovative solutions.”
This recognition of opportunity led him to pursue holistic solutions that drive revenue growth, improve customer experience, and enhance operational efficiencies while meeting complex regulatory demands. His success in these ventures propelled him into senior technology leadership roles, where he now advises executive leadership and corporate boards on technology strategies to enable business transformation and innovation.
Leading FinResults has been a particularly exciting chapter in Vasa’s career. He teamed up with former colleagues and friends from IBM and other financial service organizations to develop cutting-edge, innovative products in the digital onboarding and payments domain. As the CTO, Vasa is responsible for building products, driving innovation, and shaping the company’s technology and product strategy. “It’s been an exciting time working with a close-knit group of highly talented team members creating disruptive products,” he shares.
Vasa’s vision for FinResults is ambitious. He aims for the company’s products to become the most used platforms on a global scale. “Continuing to innovate, fostering the best ideas, and building cutting-edge products that drive the best user experience,” he states, outlining his goals for the future.
Leading with Innovation and Collaboration
Throughout his career, Vasa has led large technology and data initiatives that revolutionized business practices and enhanced customer experiences. At FinResults, he applied the same principle: start with the user experience and work backward. “I directed our focus on user journeys,” Vasa explains. He prioritized creating an environment that fostered collaboration, encouraged innovation, and rewarded great ideas and execution.
Vasa’s ability to build and lead diverse teams is one of his core strengths. He has successfully established local, regional, and global teams across multiple institutions, managing groups ranging from 10 to 200 members with varying skill levels and experience. His knack for identifying, growing, and retaining talent is evident in his approach to leadership. “I love to mentor, coach, and grow careers while building an inclusive, safe, and open work culture,” he shares. By promoting collaboration and open communication, he ensures a healthy and productive work environment.
Innovation is a cornerstone of FinResults under Vasa’s leadership. He fosters a culture of curiosity throughout the organization, encouraging his team to constantly seek creative ideas that advance and differentiate their product offerings. The team participates in continuous learning programs, using lab environments to evaluate new trends and technologies, ensuring their suitability for product development. “We provide an environment where our team can thrive, continuously learning and adapting to new technologies,” Vasa says.
Driving Innovation with Advanced Technology Solutions
Vasa’s vision for FinResults centers on driving business strategy through cutting-edge technology solutions. The company utilizes multi/inter-cloud master/master real-time architectures and a cloud-neutral approach. This innovative framework supports the development of custom intelligent AI models that cover the entire ecosystem, with configuration and metadata-driven, self-healing systems. “Our deployment models and technologies ensure zero downtime,” Vasa notes. FinResults employs a stateless API gateway architecture with connected resources, deployed across clusters in multi-cloud environments. They also offer state-of-the-art reporting, analytics, and an AI platform.
Vasa’s commitment to bringing advanced, modern platform solutions to smaller players is evident in his work with nFiniti.AI. Unlike large institutions, small and midsize institutions often lack the resources and capabilities to build AI-driven intelligent platforms for digital onboarding that meet regulatory compliance requirements. “nFiniti.AI was created to level the playing field,” Vasa explains. The platform allows smaller institutions to digitally onboard businesses, perform required underwriting tasks, deliver complete transparency throughout the process, and provide a seamless digital experience.
Navigating Challenges and Innovating Solutions
One of the key challenges with a startup is the limited time for experimentation. Precise architecture blueprints and technology decisions must be made from the outset. Vasa emphasizes the importance of agility in this environment: “We need to learn to ‘fail fast and recover faster’ during the early days since we don’t have the luxury of having a lot of time or resources at our disposal.”
The dynamic landscape of regulations and compliance also poses significant challenges. FinResults addresses this by involving industry experts for in-depth guidance, engaging external auditors, conducting gap assessments, completing remediation, and acquiring necessary certifications.
Building a robust security framework from the ground up is another crucial aspect of FinResults’ strategy. Vasa explains, “We create a clear strategy, implement appropriate technologies, and conduct extensive testing to ensure our information security and protect our overall product ecosystem.” This proactive approach helps the company stay ahead of security-related threats and issues.
Another challenge in the industry is the availability of highly skilled resources and like-minded team members. FinResults leveraged partnerships and professional networks to build an “A-Team” capable of delivering on business commitments.
Throughout his career, Vasa has found that business-driven programs achieve greater success and yield better results. At FinResults, they don’t chase new technology for its own sake. Instead, they constantly assess how new technologies fit into their ecosystem to deliver better, faster, and more scalable technical solutions that drive business outcomes. “Having a product created for a business purpose allows us to stay funded, demonstrate value, and incorporate new technologies where applicable,” Vasa notes.
FinResults uses continuous evaluation in a lab environment, building small, modular components, and solving integrations at an elemental level before scaling. This approach ensures that the technology adopted is well-suited to the company’s needs and contributes to its success.
Cultivating Leadership and Building High-Performing Teams
Vasa understands that leadership approaches must be tailored to each organization, with organizational culture playing a significant role in how teams operate, technologies are selected and implemented, and innovation is fostered. As a senior executive leader, Vasa has encountered a variety of organizational cultures and personalities. “Each time, I had to understand the nuances, the challenges, evaluate possible solutions, and most importantly connect with the right people to ensure success,” he explains. Leadership, according to Vasa, relies on bringing together diverse personalities under changing and often stressful circumstances to work in a unified way toward success. Key success factors for leaders include transparency, the right level of empowerment to teams, sharing the vision, constant motivation, and decisive action.
Building and maintaining high-performing global tech and ops teams involves many small but crucial aspects. Leveraging his professional network has allowed Vasa to access great talent quickly. Setting a clear vision and sharing it with the leadership and senior team members helped establish trust. “Autonomy and freedom to operate with the right balance of accountability and shared responsibility has resulted in a team that is constantly working to ensure high performance,” he notes. Clear and frequent communication with local and global teams ensures that issues are escalated and addressed promptly. Vasa also emphasizes the importance of planning and provisioning for changing technologies, creating lab environments where new technologies can be tested.
In a startup, everyone is hands-on, meaning everyone has equal ownership and responsibility. Vasa has fostered a trust-based, collective ownership culture where everyone has something at stake. This approach has yielded a high-performing team. Providing constant motivation and ensuring each team member understands the criticality of their contribution creates a growth mindset and great team chemistry. “This allows for a sustainable team that runs itself,” Vasa says.
Shaping the Future of FinTech with Innovation and Security
In the rapidly evolving fintech industry, key trends include increased speed and volume of transactions, heightened security, and competitive costs. Vasa understands these dynamics well. “A well-thought-out architecture that scales while keeping operating costs low allows FinResults to provide an optimized platform that caters to emerging trends,” he explains.
FinResults’ platform is designed with business processes at its core, featuring a heavy focus on data and analytics, a robust security approach, and a commitment to providing a unique and invaluable customer experience. This strategic design enables their product offerings to capitalize on market demands, adapting to changing business models and added regulations.
Security is a top priority for FinResults. Their robust security approach ensures a secure environment that can quickly detect and address emerging threats. Vasa emphasizes, “Our platform’s security measures are crucial in maintaining trust and reliability in a field where threats are constantly evolving.”
The focus on data and analytics is another cornerstone of FinResults’ strategy. By providing various stakeholders with powerful analytics tools, the platform helps businesses improve their operations and offer a superior customer experience. “Having a strong analytics foundation also allows us to prevent losses due to fraud, which is a significant risk in the fintech and payments industry,” Vasa notes.
Advice for Aspiring FinTech Leaders
Vasa offers valuable advice to aspiring technology leaders who want to make a significant impact in the fintech industry. His first piece of advice is straightforward: “Know the business. If you want to make an impact, know what you want to impact.” Understanding a few new technologies is not enough. Aspiring leaders need to take the time to grasp the nuances, the problem statements, and what they are trying to solve.
“Be quick to assess and don’t shy away from new technologies,” Vasa advises. He emphasizes the importance of being curious and a constant learner. “Learn something new every day,” he says. This continuous learning mindset is crucial for staying ahead in the fast-paced fintech industry.
Vasa also encourages experimentation and not being afraid of failure. “Experiment and don’t be afraid of failing,” he shares, adding the important caveat, “Just make sure you can quickly adapt and be willing to change your approach and even strategy if necessary.”
By understanding the business, being open to new technologies, constantly learning, and embracing experimentation and adaptability, aspiring technology leaders can position themselves to make a significant impact in the fintech industry. Vasa’s career is a roadmap for those looking to navigate and succeed in this dynamic field.
For More Info: https://www.finresults.com/