Avik Ganguly — Head of Engineering
View as Technical Product Manager →I build and lead teams that ship resilient financial systems.
Head of Engineering with 6 years scaling cloud-native payments & lending platforms — 10M+ annual transactions, 150M+ USD in loans, 50+ engineers led.
Core Capabilities
Skills
Solution Architecture
Cloud-native modular systems built for population-scale resilience.
- Solution Architecture
- Cloud Native Modular Architecture (Microservices, Kubernetes, Helm)
- AI-assisted Development & QA Cycles
- Security & DevOps Tooling
- User-Centric Design Approach
Engineering Leadership
Setting technical strategy and growing the teams that ship it.
- Strategic Thinking — Engineering, IT & Recruitment
- Internal Mentoring & Training
- Negotiation & Conflict Resolution
- Effective Communication (GMAT — 93rd percentile)
- External Stakeholder Management
Fintech Domain
Deep mastery across payments, lending & digital public infrastructure.
- Payments: G2P disbursements, C2B collections, store-of-value interop
- Lending: microcredit, alternative credit scoring, line of credit
- Digital Public Infrastructure & GovStack standards-shaping
- Group savings, early wage access, financial inclusion
- Mojaloop · Fineract · Payment Hub ecosystems
Engineering Leadership
8- Strategic Thinking — Engineering, IT & Recruitment
- Internal Mentoring & Training
- Negotiation & Conflict Resolution
- Effective Communication (GMAT — 93rd percentile)
- External Stakeholder Management
- Scrum & Scaled Agile Mastery
- Program Estimation & Timesheets
- Presales, Change & Vendor Management
Solution Architecture
6- Solution Architecture
- Cloud Native Modular Architecture (Microservices, Kubernetes, Helm)
- AI-assisted Development & QA Cycles
- Security & DevOps Tooling
- User-Centric Design Approach
- Open-source Best Practices (Apache Fineract, Mojaloop)
Fintech Domain
5- Payments: G2P disbursements, C2B collections, store-of-value interop
- Lending: microcredit, alternative credit scoring, line of credit
- Digital Public Infrastructure & GovStack standards-shaping
- Group savings, early wage access, financial inclusion
- Mojaloop · Fineract · Payment Hub ecosystems
Technical Product Management
9- Product Positioning & Roadmapping
- Product Lifecycle — B2B Enterprise
- KPI & Outcome Ownership
- Backlog Management
- Packaging & Pricing Strategy
- Partnership Development
- Community Development
- Social Impact
- Scaled venture to 1M USD via product-led growth
Featured Work
Case Studies
Deep dives into the systems I built and the outcomes I drove.
GovStack via Fynarfin
Led solution architecture for a reusable government payments building block, shipped as open source with 0 failures across 99 executed tests.
GovStack (ITU, GIZ, Estonia, DIAL) defines reusable digital building blocks for governments. The Payments Building Block covers government-to-person disbursements, vouchers and bill payments across banks and mobile money.
ProblemEvery country's payment rails differ, and paying someone means linking a national ID to an account without leaking beneficiary data. No generic, privacy-safe government payments API existed.
My RoleSolution architecture lead for Fynarfin's delivery team; designed the shared G2P sandbox.
ApproachExtended open-source Mifos Payment Hub EE instead of building new: an identity account mapper that keeps account details away from government systems, a bulk processor that rejects bad rows before money moves, a voucher engine and bill pay.
Metrics4 modules merged upstream (MPL 2.0) · 135 test cases, 99 executed, 0 failures · 88 requirements closed in one integration sprint by reusing the platform.
One Acre Fund via Fynarfin
Lead architect on a payment hub taking about 1.2M farmer repayments a month direct to M-Pesa, each validated against the loan ledger first.
One Acre Fund lends seed and fertiliser to smallholder farmers in East Africa and collects repayment in small instalments, almost all over M-Pesa in Kenya.
ProblemRepayments went through a third-party aggregator, and every payment had to be validated against the loan system before collection, with the workflow engine, M-Pesa and the ledger all agreeing afterwards.
My RoleLead architect: deployment in OAF's cloud, M-Pesa and loan-system connectors, production operations and payouts scoping.
ApproachBuilt on open-source Mifos Payment Hub EE: validate, collect and post as one orchestrated flow; one Helm chart instead of customer forks; immutable releases.
MetricsLive from Feb 2022 · ~1.2M repayment transactions a month direct to M-Pesa · three deployment charts consolidated into one.
Grameen Impact Ventures via Fynarfin
Architected Finseer, an agent-banking platform running fingerprint cash-out, UPI QR and bill payments on one ledger for about 2.5 years in production.
Grameen Impact Ventures (Grameen Foundation India) runs village agents who give rural customers cash withdrawals, bill payments and merchant payments.
ProblemThree partner rails (Fino AePS, Razorpay UPI/QR, BBPS) had to post into one ledger; analytics disagreed with the ledger, and production was failing almost daily in spring 2022.
My RoleArchitect and product owner; production escalation.
ApproachExtended Apache Fineract; wrapped each partner rail behind Finseer's own API; reconciled every dashboard against finance reports before publishing; fixed the batch job behind the outages.
MetricsIn production ~2.5 years · 2 forced partner migrations absorbed · daily outages ended · backups verified by restore on the money tables.
IDFC Bharat Banking via Novopay
Architect and lead engineer on a Fineract lending and wallet core behind 50,000+ agents and US$1B+ in yearly transactions.
IDFC Bank's Bharat Banking division needed rural group lending through business correspondents; Novopay needed a ledger for its retailer-led wallet network.
ProblemRegulator-grade lending rules (appropriation that switches at 90 days past due, automatic provisioning, priority-sector and FATCA tagging) plus offline biometric onboarding, on an open-source core banks were sceptical of.
My RoleArchitect and lead engineer, Apache Fineract lending engine and wallet ledger.
ApproachExtended Apache Fineract with field origination, group lending through correspondents, and provisioning and appropriation rules implemented inside the ledger.
Metrics50,000+ agents · 20+ states · 2.1M wallet clients · US$1B+ transactions a year (Novopay's figures).
Career
Experience
A decade across fintech — from open-source intern to founder of population-scale payments infrastructure.
Freelancing & Stealth Micro-SaaS
Feb 2025 – PresentMarketing Tech, Reward Programs & Payment Security · AI-native micro-SaaS founder
Independent engineering on martech, rewards platforms, and payment-security integrations — now building a stealth micro-SaaS end-to-end with AI agents.
Fynarfin
Jan 2019 – Oct 2024Founder — Program, Product, Engineering & Marketing
Pioneered open-source, population-scale digital public goods & infrastructure. Scaled the venture to 1M USD revenue. Customers: GovStack, MIFOS, Grameen Foundation, One Acre Fund, Safaricom, CoDevelop.
GovStack, One Acre Fund & Grameen case studies
Apache Fineract
Apr 2018 – Dec 2018SDE & Solution Architect (Freelance)
Loan restructuring, alternative credit scoring, scalability, line of credit, and consumer-durable loans on the Apache Fineract core.
Trustt (formerly Novopay)
Apr 2015 – Mar 2018SDE II
Designed and delivered microcredit, payments & analytics products. Introduced TDD, scalable architecture, and OS best practices to a 50+ engineer org while exceeding functional-delivery targets.
IDFC Bharat Bank case study
Finflux (acquired by M2P Fintech)
Jun 2014 – Mar 2015Software Engineer
Built extensible lending features on Mifos X — including the webhooks/hooks framework (openMF/mifosx#1063).
Google Summer of Code
Jun 2013 – Sep 2013Intern — Mifos
Built a Data Import Tool for microfinance institutions with the Mifos community.
Design & Prototyping
Designs
Three eras of building \u2014 from AI-assisted prototyping to fintech infrastructure to early product experiments.
Post-AI Era
How I prototype and ship in the AI era with Lovable, Cursor and Claude. Surfing the Prompt to Context Engineering to Agentic AI wave.
Frame Studio
Visual planner that QAs every storyboard frame — character layouts, emotions, props, and continuity side by side.
Open Frame Studio →
Image Generation
Multi-model asset studio — generate across a broad explainer supported style library while assisted by inspirations.
Open Image Generation →
Outlier Discovery
Free and open-source blend of vidIQ + TubeBuddy + ViewStats — ranks channels by breakout index and surfaces outlier videos against their baselines.
Open Outlier Discovery →
Voice Editor
AI audio integration tool — ElevenLabs & OpenVoice narration generation, prosody editing, music bed and SFX layering before handing over to free tools like DaVinci Resolve for traditional polishing.
Open Voice Editor →
Reverse Outlier Studio
Reverse-engineers explainer videos (similar to Twelve Labs) — animation taxonomy, SFX counting, and cross-modal frame analysis.
Open Reverse Outlier Studio →The outcome: a full explainer planned and rendered end-to-end on this stack.
Inside the Hidden Trade Network Sanctions Can’t Stop
Designed to Fail on YouTube — storyboarded in Frame Studio, assets from Image Generation, voiced in Voice Editor, and animated cheaply and at scale through StoryForge. Watch it here.
Fynarfin Era
Payment infrastructure products — from system architecture to user-facing dashboards.
Payment Hub
Orchestration engine for digital payments. Watch the demo walkthrough.
Payments Building Block
Reference implementation for GovStack digital public infrastructure.
Open Payments Building Block →
Fynarfin Website
The company site I built and shipped — product positioning, brand, and team. Preserved here.
Open Fynarfin Website →Other Projects
Earlier work with qualitative research annotations and design process artifacts.
JamMate
Jam-room booking, social feed, and jammate discovery app — mobile, web, and concept art.
Open JamMate →
Visualizing Lexical Novelty
Text-mining dashboard charting lexical novelty across popular fiction. Read the write-up on the blog.
Open Visualizing Lexical Novelty →
Open Fest Management System
Event-management dashboard for a college tech fest. Read the write-up on the blog.
Open Open Fest Management System →
Open Laundry Management System
Web dashboard for hostel laundry tracking and operations. Read the write-up on the blog.
Open Open Laundry Management System →Receipts
Selected Work & Samples
Evidence a skeptical hiring manager can click to verify.
Career Arc, in Commits
Contribution Wall
Eleven years of GitHub contributions — and the two transitions that reshaped how I work.
Trust Signals
Proof & Presence
Credentials
View certificate
View certificate
View certificate
View certificate
View certificateLanguages
References
Education
Bachelor of Engineering — Visvesvaraya Technological University (2010–2014) · Salt Lake School, Kolkata (1997–2010)
Get in Touch