Religare Broking

Amit Bhatia: A Technocrat Creating A Better Tech Environment With His Accumulated IT Experience

This time we shine the light on the profile of a technopreneur who has been able to leverage technology to remold business cultures, build values, facilitate expansion and establish an ambiance of constant improvement. Yes, it is none other than Amit Bhatia who is Sr VP & Chief Information Security Officer at Religare Broking.

This whole narrative has been formed based on the tete-a-tete with the leader where we explored different dimensions of his leadership which is the core focus of this success story. He is a corporate individual with a result-oriented attitude and competence to conceptualize and deliver tech solutions that are in line with the organizational needs.

He has been accoladed for his demonstrated career history of offering strategic guidance concerning enterprise-wide tech initiatives. He is known to have pioneered significant IT initiatives that gave new directions to organizational practices and introduced tangible and intangible benefits to the associated organization.

THE CAREER TRAJECTORY

His first step towards a remarkable career trajectory began when he was associated with PepsiCo India Holdings concerning support for business applications- be it virtualized applications or SAP as a journey from the usersperspective. Initially, for four years, he served at the organization as the resident engineer, later on; he was promoted to the civil-side engineer- taking care of corporate/business applications.

Consolidating the data centers, he managed to explore the possibilities of the technologies in business process improvement. Later, he joined Dell Technologies regarding Tier-3 support for an international project from the US to India. At that time, Dell lacked the support of Windows to Linux as an operating system. It was a pilot project with 30 professionals who were to facilitate the transition of this tier-3 support from the US to India.

He dedicated around 3 years to the organization in terms of knowledge transfer and knowing the three critical verticals of the business and the overall process of transforming the tier-3 healthcare business with the key partners into building the Indian team and bringing all the integrations back to India.

Later, he joined Innodata which is the Data Transmission Company. Here, his job responsibilities as the Assistant Manager were to handle the infrastructure as a whole. Starting his work with Innodata was a bit challenging for him due to several reasons. The business model was quite complex there but, owing to his business acuity, Amit was able to make a major difference to the organization.

He formulated a globally acknowledged set of professional teams that were divided into managing the first-level support at the offices and the product development process complications differently. This consolidated step proved to be quite beneficial for Innodata which brought seamlessness in the administrative functions. The biggest roadblock at Innodata was the lack of Data Consolidation.

To this, he implemented a holistic approach that proved his intrinsic expertise in Big data to improve business processes. It allowed him to sail all the unfavorable tides effortlessly. Undeniably, his strategic approach was able to improve the company’s data points, and CRM applications, solidifying the practices into one single zone where customer data had been stored in the US while production-related data had been kept in the Philippines.

This centralization of the data helped to manage data in the most efficient ways for Innodata. After he ensured to solve the major issues with Innodata’s business, the management promoted him to an HOI. During his stint with Innodata, he was later promoted to the position of AVP to handle infrastructure and applications. The first thing that he came up with was M&A, to handle a merger and acquisition which was not their area of expertise as Innodata had never been into healthcare. He was asked to perform the merger & acquisition of a US-based healthcare provider company.

From transforming their application to changing stringent control, it was a lot of transition to do. Needless to mention, he managed to perform each task outstandingly making a difference to the businesses. Later, for the period of 4 years in 2015, he joined RateGain as the Senior Vice President- IT & Data Protection Officer (DPO). The company had a well-established presence in Noida, the US, Germany, and Singapore.

At the time, he joined the company as per the PCI DSS compliance to facilitate payment gateways. They didn’t have any data classification policy and the security control systems were pretty basic. No control over the application state despite being working on AWS or cloud infrastructure. The first thing Amit did after entering the organization was to discuss the policies and suggest enhancements in the data classification as per his expertise. After protecting the data, he went on to protect the infrastructure by implementing Firewalls, IPS and IDS security layers, URL filtering, etc.

The next step was to analyze the data access management as the company worked on the FTP transmission model. Performing intense security handling processes at the company, he was asked to supervise two acquisitions on behalf of RateGain. His technological stint here made him ensure automation in the cloud itself. He also got an opportunity to implement a multi- clouds strategy. He happened to run a few applications on AWS and some others on Google- GCP- mingling them to function in better ways.

Journey with Religare Broking

Now, accumulating a considerable amount of experience and expertise in the tech space working on different models, Amit was offered the role of SVP and CISO at Religare Broking. By this time, he already had enough financial resources and multiple clients from the broking industry from his experience. As the CISO, he was given the task to operate on corporate governance.

Religare Broking is one of the four LOBs in the Religare Group. As all the LOBs thrive on the same infrastructure, policies and process, he first builds an in-built AWS infrastructure as SEBI guidelines restrict the exchange model to be operated on the cloud structure. Being a trading unit, they are compelled to maintain certain core locations and data centers with them. Hence, the back offices are in transition to AWS, and trading applications remain in core locations.

The data needs to be end-to-end encrypted to save transactions in the broking space. Corporate compliance, CRMs, policies etc had to be reshaped again as per the SEBI guidelines under the leadership of Amit Bhatia. For Religare Broking, he happened to start from data classification to security control to physical control to SOC level to 2- factor authentication to cyber security layers to crafting incident management response for SEBI to be used for C-level reporting.

Later, his team started building DRs for the critical applications- Hot SDRs/ Cold SDRs, back-up as a process, and timelines for inspective application governance. He managed to alter the whole framework into a seamless workflow based on his tech expertise.

About the REL and RBL

Religare Enterprises Limited (REL), a prominent Indian diversified financial services firm, owns Religare Broking Ltd. (RBL) as a wholly-owned subsidiary. With more than 1 million subscribers, RBL is one of the securities companies listed on the Indian stock exchange. Religare Broking provides services in equity, currency, commodities, and depository participant, with a broad network spanning more than 400 cities.

RBL participates as a depository participant with NSDL and CDSL and is a member of the NSE/BSE. Religare Enterprises Limited (REL) is a holding company for one of India’s top diversified financial service organizations. Through its underlying subsidiaries and operating companies, REL provides a comprehensive range of financial services, including loans to SMEs, Affordable Housing Finance, Health Insurance, and Capital Markets.

REL is traded on the Indian National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Religare as a whole serves nearly all market segments, from mass retail to the wealthy, HNIs, mid-size corporations, SMEs, major corporations, and institutions. The group, which employs over 7000 people, is present in more than 1450 locations throughout India. The group company stands firm on its four-leaf clover symbol that comprises hope, trust, care and good fortune which are the cornerstones of the company’s overall structure.

Modernizations opted in the past two years

Two major initiatives implemented by Amit at Religare Broking ensure better productivity at the company. First was shifting from waterfall technology to Agile Technology. This is the sheer result of in-house integration and development. Second, the introduction of BI that effectively integrates with CRM for the client’s benefit while ameliorating the sales rate.

The back office is already in transition to moving to cloud technology- resulting in the establishment of hybrid technology. From an application perspective, they have included cross-platform technology where they are writing for Windows, Python, Linux, etc. making them adaptable to different environments.

The ‘IT Leadership’ insights

“When it comes to IT leadership perspective, the leader needs to create a multicultural environment for the development of the organization,” says the tech evangelist. Also, he firmly asserts that one needs to choose the right product and services that offerings that are covered need to be costly as well as time effective.

Every product delivery needs to be agile as well as aggressive for growth in the IT space. He is also into the inclusion of open-source technologies when it comes to product development. As an IT virtuoso, he suggests considering cyber security and corporate compliance significant as they both go hand-to-hand. Emphasizing security not as an option but as a mandate is the need of the hour to build a robust security environment.

Amit Bhatia is a highly experienced professional in the field of cyber security. He possesses a deep understanding of the latest technologies and trends in the industry, including IT modernization and cloud computing. This individual is responsible for leading the development and implementation of an organization’s cyber security strategy, ensuring the protection of sensitive data and systems from cyber threats.

He is skilled in risk management, incident response, and compliance, and possesses strong leadership and communication skills to effectively manage and lead a team of cyber security professionals. With his knowledge and experience, this CISO & SVP-IT can provide expert guidance to the organization’s leadership on all matters related to cybersecurity, IT modernization & Cloud computing, helping to mitigate potential threats and minimize the impact of any security breaches that may occur.

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