Q: Bartending? Tell us what inspired you to go to bartending school.
Sankar: I was fascinated with the way in which you can combine different liquids and produce a
better outcome . In all honesty, I was not as fast as the younger kids who continue to impress me even today. Remember the mobile phone was not omnipresent as it is now, so you had to commit the various cocktails to memory and not get it wrong.
Q: At KeeperAI, the new digital work landscape and new ways of working and of helping people connect are top of mind. How early on in your career did you start to think about the concept of the digital workplace and or “new ways of working”?
Sankar: I first got introduced to the concept of a digital marketplace during the ERP revolution in the early 90’s where the world was supposedly going in the direction of marketplaces. We were all envisaging a vertical auto marketplace , an energy marketplace, a retail marketplace and so on and Citi had a brilliant strategy then on how to be in the “intel inside” inside these marketplaces and so a lot of work on payment gateways and such was done . These initiatives did not take off then and we are back in 2021 talking about marketplaces and how financial services will serve the marketplace except that with the likes of Amazon this is closer to reality now than ever. Also with the fall of the Taliban (the first time) and the financial sector reform that followed you almost thought if the marketplace was a reality then one can help with Post war reconstruction effort in several countries around the World.
Fastforward all of that to today where digital natives are increasingly only transacting in digital marketplaces for esports to egaming to telemedicine to etherapy to ticketmaster to rideshare to grubhub – especially post covid we clearly see that a digital workplace is front and center to survival. There is no other way.
Q: Your passion for digital solutions shines through in your book “The Power of Mobile Banking.” The book was written during the advent of mobile banking. What lessons do you think still apply now that mobile banking has come a long way?
Sankar: Mobile has moved from being a “disruptor” to an “essential” to life to go on , it is a need and not a want. Increasingly given the convergence happening cross industry the mobile is an enabler of life as we know it. Mobile will continue to transform life as we know it.
Q: Today in your role at Capgemini, you serve as a thought leader and advisor to some of the largest financial institutions in the marketplace. Can you give us a sampling of the advice you give your clients?
Sankar: I am fortunate to work at at Capgemini which is playing a critical role in enabling clients build the future they want. Our main advice is to keep the future digital state simple and technology proof that for clients at the same time reducing the cost of their legacy technology. To do this we deploy an optimum combination of people, process and technology. As you can see our CEO and his leadership have made “People” as front and central to anything we do.
