Building Indian Mobile Banking: mChek CEO Sanjay Swamy (Part 1)

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Sanjay Swamy is the CEO of mChek, a mobile payment platform developed in collaboration with VISA. The company has enabled users to access their Indian bank-issued credit or debit card via their cell phones. It has quickly become India’s largest mobile payments platform.

SM: Tell me where your journey begins. Where were you born and raised?

SS: I grew up in India. I was born in Chennai but I am from Bangalore. I grew up in Orissa until I was ten in an area that had very little infrastructure. When my mom told me to look at the airplane, I looked at the ground because I had never seen one before. I experienced a lot of India. I traveled all over and moved to Bangalore, where I completed my schooling, when I was ten. I did my undergrad there and then had an opportunity to get a fellowship to go and study in France for a couple of years.

SM: Where in France?

SS: Toulouse, in the National Aerospace School. I actually did a masters in flight control systems in avionics. It was a high-end application of electrical engineering. All of it was done in a language which was foreign to me.

SM: Did you know any French before you went?

SS: I did study French in my school days. It is not the same thing as living in the country and trying to speak at the same pace and study in the same language as the locals do. It was an interesting opportunity, and I would recommend to anybody go study in a country where your native language is not spoken. If you do well you can say it is in spite of the language barrier, and if you don’t do well you can say it is because of the language barrier.

SM: What prompted you to go to France?

SS: I had studied French at school and was always fascinated by France. It was an opportunity I did not want to miss out on. All of my friends were going to the US and I felt that was something I could do later. In hindsight it was probably one of the best things I did. It gave me exposure to a large number of people who were in the same situation as I was, which exposed me to a lot of people from other countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and all parts of Africa.

I have since had the opportunity to go back to France quite often for my work. It is unusual for French people to see an American company send over an Indian guy who speaks French. It makes for a warm feeling of working together.

Once that experience was over, I joined my friends here in the US. That was in the late 1980s when everyone was coming to the US. I came here and did a second masters in Washington. During that time I went back to India and got married. My wife was a chartered accountant, so I brought her here and settled down and got a job in Silicon Valley. I worked here for about 12 years in various companies.

SM: What kind of companies did you work for?

SS: The first company I worked for was called Integrated Systems, which develops simulation tools for the aerospace and automotive industries. I very quickly got into a mode of going back to France and working on very high-end projects as a provider of high-end solutions rather than as an engineer designing these products. There was work being done on the space station, satellites, and fighter jets as well as work for Ford, Honda, Mercedes, and others.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Building Indian Mobile Banking: mChek CEO Sanjay Swamy
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