Falcon appoints ex-banker Chinmaya Desai as Chief Business Officer

Embedded Finance Startup Falcon has announced the appointment of Chinmaya Desai as Chief Business Officer. 

In this critical role, he will be responsible for leading sales, business development, and increasing the company’s strategic presence across the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa (APMEA) region. 

Chinmaya holds an expansive career of over 16 years across transaction banking and digital payments. As one of the core founding members of the Banking-as-a-Service business at RBL Bank, Chinmaya turned the Cards and API Banking division into a revenue center and led key fintech startup partnerships for the bank from inception, many of which are “industry-first” models.

Commenting on the appointment, Prabhtej Bhatia, Co-founder of Falcon said, “Chinmaya has been an early mover in the Fintech ecosystem and is well respected by founders and CXOs as the go-to-person for Fintech solutions. He brings rich experience in the payment processing domain and has led several projects from the ground up. He is the perfect person to establish Falcon as the de facto embedded finance platform for the APMEA region.”

Before joining Falcon, Chinmaya worked as the Director of Strategy, International Payments at FIS Global. During his tenure, Chinmaya led numerous initiatives and partnerships for Prepaid & Credit Program Management, Digital Device Innovation, and Fraud Risk Management across APMEA markets, with a focus on long-term growth and bottom-line revenues.

The appointment comes at a time when the global platform for embedded payments, cards, and lending has emerged from stealth, backed by several marquee investors from the US, India, and the Middle East.

Speaking on the joining, Chinmaya said, “Embedded Finance is a very exciting space brewing in the industry. In days to come, it will be the preferred go-to-market strategy for every kind of business that wants to be extremely agile in offering fintech solutions to match their customers’ needs. I have been an early proponent of building ecosystems that makes technology adoption simple and this is where I find resonance with Falcon.”