Sanchit Johari

Himanshu Tiwari is Sr. Lead Tokenization at National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a position he has held since August 2022 and is based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. His work sits within the tokenization domain, with stated skills spanning EMV, tokenization, and product design.

Prior to joining NPCI, Tiwari served as Manager at Capgemini from May 2019 to August 2022, and before that as Technical Manager at Smart Card IT Solutions Limited from January 2017 to May 2019, where his focus was in engineering and technical functions related to card manufacturing and solutions. He holds a Master of Computer Science and Applications (MCA) from Ajay Kumar Garg Engineering College, with a focus in Computer Science. His total professional experience spans approximately 15 years.

Hrishikesh Nashikkar is Head - Blockchain at National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a position he has held since December 2022, based in Hyderabad. In this role, he is building the Unified Markets Interface (UMI), described as India's regulated asset tokenisation platform. UMI was launched by the RBI Governor at Global Fintech Festival 2025, with the first tokenised asset — a Certificate of Deposit — settled using wholesale CBDC.

Prior to NPCI, Nashikkar served as Associate Director - Blockchain Innovation at Novartis from May 2019 to December 2022, where he led three teams covering Blockchain, an Innovation Task Force, and Enterprise Data Analytics. He played a global programme manager role in the PharmaLedger consortium, coordinating cross-industry blockchain collaboration with pharmaceutical firms including MSD, J&J, Bayer, Takeda, and GSK. He also led the establishment of an Innovation Task Force to build proofs of concept using emerging technologies and set up a cloud-based Enterprise Data Analytics Platform. He participated as a panelist and speaker at international blockchain conferences including the European Blockchain Research Group 2020, Pharma Innovation Congress 2021, and TCS Virtual Blockchain Roundtable. His total professional experience spans over 21 years.

Jagadeesh Pattaparla is Technical Lead Blockchain at National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a position he has held since August 2021. In this role, he implements scalable and interoperable blockchain solutions using Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, and Corda within NPCI's engineering function.

His technical focus spans distributed ledger technologies including Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, Quorum, Corda, Hashgraph, Solana, and Polkadot, with domain expertise in banking and financial services, insurance, and payment systems. He is also exploring zero knowledge proofs, quantum computing, and cryptography. Prior to NPCI, Pattaparla held blockchain roles at Accenture, where he worked as a Senior Analyst and subsequently Technical Lead Blockchain between July 2017 and August 2021, developing proofs of concept and solutions in Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, and Corda. Before Accenture, he spent five years at Tata Consultancy Services as an IT Analyst from June 2012 to July 2017, focused on mainframe development and production support for core banking processes serving a US-based banking client. He has approximately 14 years of professional experience across enterprise technology, with his career concentrated in banking, financial services, and payment infrastructure. No educational details are available in the source content.

Sarathy Muralidharan is Lead Blockchain at National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a position he has held since July 2024. His LinkedIn profile describes him as a Payments Architect and CBDC/Blockchain Lead with specialisations in cross-border payments, design, implementation, and cyber security. He carries a manager-level designation within NPCI's Engineering and Technical department.

Muralidharan has been with NPCI across multiple tenures. Prior to his current role, he served as Application Architect at NPCI from July 2022 to June 2024, also within the Engineering and Technical department at senior level. His earlier NPCI tenure spanned May 2014 to November 2021, during which he held the roles of Assistant Manager–Technology, Deputy Manager–Technology, and Senior Associate–Technology. Between his two NPCI stints, he worked as IT Business Analyst at Citi from November 2021 to June 2022, within the consulting function at manager level. Before joining NPCI initially, he was Associate Consultant–Technology at Nelito Systems Ltd from February 2012 to April 2014. His total stated experience across roles is approximately 14 years and 10 months. No educational background is included in the available source content.