Sameer Leekha: Blending Technology With Innovation To Craft Impeccable Leadership Solutions
Sameer Leekha
CTO
An NIT Graduate from NIT Kurukshetra, Sameer Leekha is having exposure to Technology evaluation, Product management, Software development & Delivery across startups, medium and large scale corporations like fintech, banking, social media, retail, entertainment, transport, telecom, enterprise architecture etc in his 22 years of career so far. An Architect Developer, and India Certified SAFE Agilist, Sameer Leekha has Invented 2 Patents which are registered at US Patent Office. Currently he is focusing on launching Innovative business capabilities building, migrating & deploying for cloud environments, Automation Organization wide agile transformation& many other strategic initiatives.
Sameer Leekha engages in an exclusive interaction with the CEOInsights magazine.
Throw some light on your professional journey so far.
I started my career as a developer and transitioned to the technical lead & architect which consists of my initial six to eight years. Then I worked in Infosys followed by Bank of America and I consider my Infosys journey & journey at the bank of America to be the most critical mile stones which put me on the track of C suite profile.
At Infosys, I connected myself with the SaaS, Cloud & Platform Building Concepts with a focus on the exponential growth with SAAS-based offerings whereas, at the Bank of America, the experience was a tremendous value addition to my journey strengthening my business vision, technology vision, leadership communications,Process Centric approaches, speaker in Innovation & Risk forums and so on.
And currently, I have been part of the CTO leadership team & built a fintech platform with my focus on strategy, roadmaps, culture transformation, product & process
innovation, building & deploying new teams, collaboration with regulatory, business, and technical partners for various capabilities & solutions building.
Tell us about the fintech landscape in Nigeria. What’s the kind of impact NowNow is creating? What are the USPs of the company?
The opportunity for Fintech in Nigeria is huge which is because of the fact that a large Nigerian Population is excluded from the financial ecosystem. The lack of banking centers, ATMs & financial institutions, etc. is the opportunity for fintech to create an ecosystem and offer financial services digitally with just a simple click on the smartphone.
Having the vision to empower Nigeria with technology, NowNow joined this journey over the last four years. Committed to bringing every Nigerian into the financial ecosystem NowNow has been helping realize the financial inclusion goals of Nigeria by bringing the entire financial services at the user mobile device. NowNow offers a couple of services like money transfers, mobile topups, bill payments, loans, insurance, entertainment, health & much more.
The USP of the company is variety across channels, culture, innovation, success rate, customer delight, ecosystem, robust technology delivery, and user experience.
As cloud migration is extremely time and cost sensitive, how do financial organizations ensure that they get cloud migration right for the first time? Also, how would you describe the latest technology trends and innovations in the finance industry?
For any organization that would like to leverage the benefits of the Cloud, migrating to the cloud is a critical journey. This can be considered as another organization program/project and it has to be executed with proper planning in place.
Understanding of the organization’s current infra (software and hardware) data & other network components, cloud based platform offerings across the landscape of services like network, servers, services & specialized purpose based services, migration frameworks & recommendations from the Cloud provider, putting a full plan in place and executing it in phases are a couple of factors that I think would ensure a first time right approach.
Tell us about the fintech landscape in Nigeria. What’s the kind of impact NowNow is creating? What are the USPs of the company?
The opportunity for Fintech in Nigeria is huge which is because of the fact that a large Nigerian Population is excluded from the financial ecosystem. The lack of banking centers, ATMs & financial institutions, etc. is the opportunity for fintech to create an ecosystem and offer financial services digitally with just a simple click on the smartphone.
Learning never ends and so is Technology Learning. Technology leaders should never stop learning new technologies, tools, frameworks, products & solutions
Having the vision to empower Nigeria with technology, NowNow joined this journey over the last four years. Committed to bringing every Nigerian into the financial ecosystem NowNow has been helping realize the financial inclusion goals of Nigeria by bringing the entire financial services at the user mobile device. NowNow offers a couple of services like money transfers, mobile topups, bill payments, loans, insurance, entertainment, health & much more.
The USP of the company is variety across channels, culture, innovation, success rate, customer delight, ecosystem, robust technology delivery, and user experience.
As cloud migration is extremely time and cost sensitive, how do financial organizations ensure that they get cloud migration right for the first time? Also, how would you describe the latest technology trends and innovations in the finance industry?
For any organization that would like to leverage the benefits of the Cloud, migrating to the cloud is a critical journey. This can be considered as another organization program/project and it has to be executed with proper planning in place.
Understanding of the organization’s current infra (software and hardware) data & other network components, cloud based platform offerings across the landscape of services like network, servers, services & specialized purpose based services, migration frameworks & recommendations from the Cloud provider, putting a full plan in place and executing it in phases are a couple of factors that I think would ensure a first time right approach.
Some of the key modern technologies being adopted by the finance industry are cloud, mobile, web, APIs, AI/ML, data analytics, micro services, block chain, automation, and others. The Finance Industry has witnessed tremendous mobile penetration and thus the financial organizations are offering the entire business on mobile devices.
What’s the technology roadmap of NowNow? What are its short term and long terms goals?
Implementing best-in-class technology infrastructure across the landscape of technologies, tools, frameworks, libraries & products & solutions, we have made the best choices aligned to the current & upcoming vision of the NowNow Business Strategy. We would like to solve an extremely critical gap of including every Nigerian to be part of the financial ecosystem and our leadership team is committed to devising the business strategies accordingly.
Our long and short term goals are to focus on providing a robust fintech platform that translates to our customers’ delight & best experience.
What is the kind of role that CTOs play in organizations? What would be your advice to budding technology leaders in the industry?
Some of the CTOs' roles are like collaborating with various stakeholders like businesses, partners, regulators to help create business & technology strategies, create, implement, track and deliver roadmaps, hire SME’s & drive them for building focused capabilities, and others.
Proper know how is very important in at least the trending technologies and the deeper you know you always have the advantage to add value across forums. Always remember, You will always be in a better shape and position to build and add value to your organization with your knowledge.
Sameer Leekha, CTO, NowNow Digital Systems
Having 22 years of experience across multiple domains, Sameer Leekha is responsible for driving technology strategy aligned to business strategy and he is passionate about transforming NowNow into a completely digital organization.
•Hobbies:Love bike riding, Playing outdoor games Learn leadership, business, technology
•Favorite Cuisine:Indian, Italian
•Favorite Travel Destination: Greece, Maldives, Disneyland and Paris
•Favorite Book:How to Remain Ever Happy
•Awards & Recognition:
Sun Certified Java Programmer Infosys Certified Software Architect, Sun Certified Enterprise Architect, SAFE Agilist, Gold, Silver @ Bank of America, US Patent Inventor
What’s the technology roadmap of NowNow? What are its short term and long terms goals?
Implementing best-in-class technology infrastructure across the landscape of technologies, tools, frameworks, libraries & products & solutions, we have made the best choices aligned to the current & upcoming vision of the NowNow Business Strategy. We would like to solve an extremely critical gap of including every Nigerian to be part of the financial ecosystem and our leadership team is committed to devising the business strategies accordingly.
Our long and short term goals are to focus on providing a robust fintech platform that translates to our customers’ delight & best experience.
What is the kind of role that CTOs play in organizations? What would be your advice to budding technology leaders in the industry?
Some of the CTOs' roles are like collaborating with various stakeholders like businesses, partners, regulators to help create business & technology strategies, create, implement, track and deliver roadmaps, hire SME’s & drive them for building focused capabilities, and others.
Proper know how is very important in at least the trending technologies and the deeper you know you always have the advantage to add value across forums. Always remember, You will always be in a better shape and position to build and add value to your organization with your knowledge.
Sameer Leekha, CTO, NowNow Digital Systems
Having 22 years of experience across multiple domains, Sameer Leekha is responsible for driving technology strategy aligned to business strategy and he is passionate about transforming NowNow into a completely digital organization.
•Hobbies:Love bike riding, Playing outdoor games Learn leadership, business, technology
•Favorite Cuisine:Indian, Italian
•Favorite Travel Destination: Greece, Maldives, Disneyland and Paris
•Favorite Book:How to Remain Ever Happy
•Awards & Recognition:
Sun Certified Java Programmer Infosys Certified Software Architect, Sun Certified Enterprise Architect, SAFE Agilist, Gold, Silver @ Bank of America, US Patent Inventor