Mohua Sengupta: Bridging finance and tech

It might not be a wise idea to be a jack of all trades, master of none. But it is often worth it if you can master one trade and acquire at least one other skill. That one other skill for Mohua Sengupta, managing director at Mashreq Global Network, has been tech. Having worked at the cross-roads of tech and finance, Mohua says, “BFSI (banking, financial services & insurance) is more tech than tech itself. ”
THE BEGINNING
Mohua did a BA and MA in economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and then an MBA in corporate finance and management of financial institutions. Her first experience with tech was at the Royal Bank of Canada, where she joined in 1998 on the finance side, but started handling the management reporting system application of the bank. Back then, she says, everyone in finance was given one banking application to own. “They were a hi-tech group. Technology teams worked with us on those apps. That role was basically what people these days call a business analyst. I was one of the earliest to do that,” she says.
THE DOORS THAT TECH OPENED
That opportunity, she says, taught her how to use technology to meet business needs.
Later at Royal Bank of Canada, Mohua was asked to study impaired loans and come up with a solution for that, and brief developers. “I could understand what the business needed. The fact that I could by then read code, understand it and appreciate it, gave me an edge over my peers because I could be a bridge between business teams and tech teams. In the impaired loans case, I knew the details developers needed to craft an application,” she says.
ADDING VALUE
She was then briefly at Wipro, where she headed the PeopleSoft banking and financial services vertical. Here too, she would be called to attend client meetings to understand business needs, relay them to the team of developers, and find solutions.
Then came Accenture, Mphasis, Igate, and ITC Infotech. As she climbed the ladder, her understanding of the technical side grew, and helped her talk to clients about emerging technologies they could use to automate processes, gain insights.
SKILLING & RE-SKILLING
Today, learning is literally on one’s fingertips. Mohua learnt technology by interacting with colleagues and studying on her own. “If there was a problem, I would sit with a developer colleague and read codes. At the end of the day, the problem was mine to solve. So, my learning was the brute-force way,” she says.
Did she feel handicapped not having a software degree? No, she says.
“Techies are usually married to one technology or the other. I have no such attachments. I can give technology-agnosticsolutions. ”