Board of Directors

Arun founded Intellect Design Arena with the dream of delivering world-class IT Products, Platforms and Technologies from India for the global Financial Sector. The experience of working with global leaders in this space for over three decades as Co-Founder of Nucleus Software and Founder of Polaris Software provided him with the domain expertise which was blended with superior technology in realizing this vision.

Intellect is an enterprise FinTech company serving the Banking, Insurance, Wealth, Capital Markets, Procurement Industry and Retail Sector, selling enterprise-grade products and platforms in 57 countries, covering 270 leading Global Banks and Financial Institutions worldwide.

Arun is a proponent of Design Thinking and champions its adoption and practice across Industries, Academics, Government, and the Social Sector. He is passionate about Design Thinking as a science and philosophy to create a significant impact on individual and organisational performance. Integrating his deep FinTech expertise and Design Thinking passion, Intellect on February 2023 launched its “First Principles” technology suite, eMACH.ai, an embedded AI-led most comprehensive and innovative open-finance platform that empowers global banks to compose their own signature solutions.

Arun as an Institution Maker has founded socially empowering entities.

School of Design Thinking focusses on shifting the mental model of young minds and professionals across different sectors through Design The Thinking® philosophy to create meaningful and immersive experiences and to bring a Design Thinking revolution in the country.
Mission Samriddhi is a social impact enterprise dedicated to holistic development of rural India, through the design and development of projects that are sustainable and capable of scale to positively impact the larger population.
Ullas Trust focuses on recognising academic excellence in students from economically challenged sections of our society and encourages the ‘can do’ spirit in them to chase their aspirations.

Arun has authored three books on mindset, Design Thinking and its application, “UnMukt: Science and Art of Design Thinking”, “Digital: The Art of The Possible” and “From Teenager to Achiever: The Power of 5 Minds” are the books. Couple of them are currently recognized as prescribed textbooks in some of the premier institutes in the country.
He also leads/participates in Government Forums and Startup Ecosystems to enhance the spirit of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the FinTech space viz (i) Chief Mentor of FinBlue (A Financial Technology Center of Entrepreneurship by Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) in association with ELCOT, Govt of Tamil Nadu), (ii) Member of National Software Product Mission (NSPM) of MeitY, Govt of India, (iii) Member of STPI Chennai’s Standing Executive Board and Advisory Council for Incubation Facility (iv) He also served Chairperson of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Ranchi from 2020 to 2023.

He has been honoured with many awards… prominent amongst them are Dronacharya Award by TiECON Chennai, Lifetime Achievement Award by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Amity Excellence Award by Amity Education Group.