Mastercard’s New Head for Asia Pacific Tech Hubs, Drives Talent Development and Inclusive Workforce Strategy in India and Australia

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Rajesh Mani, Senior Vice President and Head, Asia Pacific, Tech Hubs Mastercard

• Tell us about your new leadership role at Mastercard and the initiatives that you will be driving?

Mastercard’s Tech Hubs across the globe play a vital role in bringing the company’s cutting-edge payments solutions and technologies to life. In my new role as Senior Vice President and Head Asia Pacific, I am leading our technology hubs in India and Australia. I aim to leverage best practices across our tech hubs and bring in expertise, learnings, and networks that I have built over years in various leadership roles across businesses. With the goal to drive tangible business impact through the work we do at our tech hubs, my focus will be on identifying and facilitating engagement and collaboration opportunities with key players in the local tech and business ecosystem, such as academia and industry bodies. I will also be focussing on enhancing culture and engagement at the workplace, improving talent attraction and strengthening our technology brand.

• Elaborate on Mastercard’s Tech Hub in Pune and the journey so far.

Mastercard’s Tech Hub in India is a great success story. The journey so far has been inspiring and the biggest highlights for me have been the encouraging growth in employee strength, gender diversity and how we’ve been able to consistently expand our tech capabilities that support the development of technologies to make payments faster, smarter and safer across the world. In less than a decade the India Tech Hub as grown 20X, from a humble 250 member team in 2014 to now over 5000 technologists working across businesses.

The Tech Hub in Pune represents the company’s largest technology hub in a single city, globally. It is home to more than 95 tech programs supporting on processing, networks, software engineering, enterprise network operations, strategic business operations, commercial & digital products and many more. Over the years, Mastercard has invested over 2 billion USD focussing on building digital payment infrastructure and expanding presence. India remains a strategic location for Mastercard where it continues to make investments to develop the talent base.

• Mastercard has been playing a vital role in India’s digital payment ecosystem. Can you please elaborate on that and the cutting-edge technologies that the company uses?

Our long-standing relationship for over three decades has allowed us to be an important part of India’s growth story. Through our strong partnerships and collaborations we have been able to contribute to India’s digital payment ecosystem in several ways:

• Ensuring safety and security: We are constantly working around the clock to ensure that the entire payment ecosystem is as strong and secure as it can be. By leveraging AI-powered security tools we saved more than $35 bn being lost to cybercriminals globally in the past three years alone. Additionally, we continue to monitor risk across the global digital ecosystem – equipping customers with the information they need to detect fraud vulnerability. Through Riskrecon, one of the world’s largest cyber assessment providers we are able to cover around 13 million entities. We are also constantly advancing our behavioural technology solutions to assess data through Nudata that simplifies the user experience by leveraging unique behavioural and device insights, to ensure better risk scores and improve user experience from login to logout. Through Safety Net we help identify unusual behaviour and potential attacks even before the bank, processor, or merchant is even aware.
• Strengthening Digital Payment Ecosystem: We have been constantly working towards contributing to the government’s vision of Digital India and the country’s evolution to cash less society. In collaboration with Axis Bank and Worldline, Mastercard has introduced Soft POS, the first-of-its-kind financial payment service in India to transform everyday smartphones into merchant Point of Sale terminals. The solution comes with various features for the merchant community. Merchants who have traditionally accepted cash payments, now have a simpler and more secure way to manage transactions.
• Enhancing Financial Inclusion: Through our Centre for Inclusive Growth (CFIG) we are driving equitable and sustainable economic growth and financial inclusion around the world. In India, the flagship program focuses on a combination of evidence-backed digital training, in-person skills-building, and interventions that enable access to markets through digital platforms and adoption of digital financial services for MSMEs, famers etc.
• How is Mastercard supporting the women in technology and addressing the skills gap?

The tech industry today is faced by several challenges related to the need for skilled talent and bridging the gender gap. And to address these, companies must take several approaches not only inside organisations but also outside. With the growing demand for specialized roles and skills, the need is to invest in upskilling programs that equip candidates with the right knowledge and experience to work on the latest in tech.

At Mastercard, we invest significantly in orientation and training programs with a special focus on project-based learning and mentoring. Our AI-based learning system Unlocked allows employees to connect signup for a global stretch project of their interest.

We believe an equal representation of talent barring gender is the key to developing tech industry. And to ensure this, we support women-in-tech at the workplace through consistent upskilling, mentorship and career development and strive to create engaging workplace for women through our various initiatives. Our ‘Women in Tech’ program is designed to upskill and groom existing women in technology at Mastercard while our ‘Return to Work’ program focuses on empowering mid-career women with an opportunity to re-enter the workplace. Moreover, to ensure representation of women leaders across levels, we have the Leadership Mentorship Program that enables opportunities for mid-career women employees to be mentored by senior leaders. Inclusion is integral to our culture and our employees are actively involved in these initiatives. A case in points is the Women’s Leadership Network (WLN) – an employee led business resource group that focuses on gender diversity and career growth for women at Mastercard and beyond.

Apart from encouraging more women-in-tech at the workplace, we also realize it is crucial to make a difference to the society and help ensure a strong pipeline of women in STEM education and careers.  We believe that the best way to reduce gender gap when it comes to STEM is through educating and motivating girls at an early age. Our signature STEM program Girls4Tech aims to help young girls become tech leaders of tomorrow. Having reached out to 1 million young girls globally, Mastercard has set a new goal of inspiring 5 million girls by 2025.

• Tell us about Mastercard’s inclusive workforce strategy and D&I goals for Tech hub in India?

We believe in an equitable world where humanity unites, prosperity is shared, and opportunity is open to all. We are guided by our commitment to decency, which permeates everything we do. Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work is grounded in our broader commitment to empowering people, preserving the planet, and fostering prosperity.

For us, diversity is not restricted to just gender and race. We strive for diversity of thought, background, experiences, and abilities. These strongly held beliefs form Mastercard’s core values, inspiring us to craft solutions to break down the barriers which hinder equity, fairness, and diversity. This commitment is embedded in our policies, benefits and the way to design employee experiences. Besides, with a strong leadership and employee-led Business Resource Groups, we are able to drive on-ground events and initiatives across locations to enhance awareness, foster inclusion, and support our diversity hiring objectives.

Through our inclusive hiring and workplace policies we’ve been able to increase gender diversity from 15% in 2014 to now over 32%. While this is significant, we realize there’s a long way to go and we remain committed on our DE&I objectives. Over the years reputed bodies like the Great Places to Work Institute®, AVATAR, Zinnov, JobsForHer and many more and have recognized Mastercard as one of the best and most inclusive workplaces in India, in recognition of our continued commitment towards DE&I and fostering a culture that unlocks priceless possibilities for everyone.