The Overnight Success That Took Forty Years
How UPI Became the World’s Biggest Payment Platform
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Speakers
India’s UPI success was not the result of a single grand design.
This discussion, based on the book Cashless Nation, traces the complex symphony of deliberate choices that built the world’s most consequential digital payments system and reshaped its relationship with money. If no one designed it, how did it come to work so well?
With perspectives from both the technology and banking sectors, the conversation promises rare insights into the transformative changes in India’s payments landscape. The authors bring years of work with NPCI and IDRBT, as well as boards and committees across the financial sector. Over decades and across successive governments, the RBI, the NPCI, banks, fintechs, telecoms, think tanks, and industry bodies all contributed, one decision at a time.
Venue: Seminar Halls
Speakers
Santanu Paul
Santanu Paul is a computer scientist and entrepreneur drawn to big, messy problems where technology and innovation meet public good. From start-ups to global firms, he has worked across edtech, fintech and regtech. As founding CEO of TalentSprint and a board member at NPCI and BSE, he has helped steer India’s digital transformation journey from the inside. He holds a B.Tech. from IIT Madras and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
B. Sambamurthy
B. Sambamurthy is a chartered accountant whose journey spans the arc of India’s banking transformation, from branch floors to boardrooms. A career banker who embraced technology early, he has led financial inclusion and digital change at scale. As head of IDRBT and later at NPCI, he played a quiet but defining role in shaping India’s modern payments and governance backbone.
Narayan Ramachandran
Narayan Ramachandran is Chairman of TeamLease Services Ltd., co-Chairman of Unitus Capital, and Chairman of Vivriti Group and UC Inclusive Credit. He served as Chairman of RBL Bank from its inception through its listing. He spent over three decades on Wall Street, mostly with Morgan Stanley, after beginning his career at Goldman Sachs. He co-founded the Takshashila Institution and holds a B.Tech. from IIT Bombay and an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan. He writes a fortnightly column,“A Visible Hand,” for Mint and serves on the Strategy Council of the Centre for Wildlife Studies.
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