Gurugram: Grip, a new-age investment platform, is strengthening its senior technology team as it looks to expand its product offering and deliver the best-in-class user experience. The company appointed Varun Bhanot as Vice President of Engineering. He will be responsible for driving the vision, design, and strategy for the engineering function and help Grip scale optimally.
Commenting on the announcement of the appointment, Nikhil Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, Grip Invest, said, “Grip has always aimed at offering the best investment experience to support new-age investment products. Varun’s expertise and wealth of experience will be a great addition to our company. I look forward to working with Varun in building a strong engineering team that will help Grip shape the future of investments in India.”
Bhanot brings 10+ years of multi-industry experience in building global technology teams from scratch and has set up a global center of excellence for AI. He also has experience in designing systems like Trading Platforms and Wealth Management platforms for multiple geographies. He has also implemented AI-based projects include a “self-serving” data pipeline leveraging Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision technologies
He has previously worked with Oracle Financial Services, Fidelity International, and InterGlobe Technologies. He recently led a team of data engineers at BlackRock. He played a crucial role in co-leading a Big Data platform responsible for high volume, low latency analytics apps using Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Cassandra. He has a graduate degree in Computer Science Engineering with certifications in Cloud, Deep Learning, and Investment Foundations from the CFA institute.
Varun Bhanot, VP Engineering, Grip Invest, said, “Grip is a great platform focusing on democratizing non-market linked alternative investments which are still at a very nascent stage in India and South-East Asia in general. I am happy to be a part of a revolutionary vision with technology at its core.”
Grip also recently entered into a $5 million asset financing deal with House of Kieraya (HoK), well-known for furniture and lifestyle rental brand, Furlenco. So far, the platform has facilitated leasing of assets worth INR 125+ cr and enabled 60+ companies such as Udaan, Furlenco, Holisol, Everest Fleet, Loadshare, ChargeZone, Vogo, LetsTransport, FabAlley, BlueTokai, etc to access a different channel of growth capital.