Ex-Paisabazaar executive Dhiraj Kalra joins Fundamento as AI startup expands in India, US

Fundamento AI has appointed former Paisabazaar executive Dhiraj Kalra as its Chief Business Officer (CBO), strengthening its leadership team as the company looks to expand its Agentic AI platform for financial institutions in India and the US.

The move comes as the AI startup scales its enterprise business after crossing 10 million monthly customer conversations and growing its client base to more than 50 financial services companies.

Based in New Delhi, Fundamento develops Agentic AI solutions for banks, lenders and insurers, enabling them to automate customer journeys across acquisition, onboarding, servicing, collections and customer growth through autonomous AI agents.

The company recently launched its platform for lenders in the US and says it now manages over 10 million customer interactions every month across banking, lending and insurance.

Kalra brings more than 25 years of experience across banking, insurance and fintech. Before joining Fundamento, he held multiple leadership roles at Paisabazaar, including Chief Business Officer, Chief Operating Officer, CHRO, and Head of Customer Service & Training. During his tenure, he led a team of more than 3,500 customer-facing professionals across customer acquisition, servicing, collections and people transformation. He has also worked with Kotak, Aviva Life and MakeMyTrip.

At Fundamento, Kalra will lead business growth, strategic partnerships, enterprise expansion and customer success as the company accelerates its AI-led offerings for financial institutions. The appointment also reflects a wider shift in the financial services sector, where firms are increasingly investing in AI systems that can manage end-to-end customer journeys and deliver measurable business outcomes at scale.

Commenting on the appointment, Ankit Durga, Founder & CEO of Fundamento, said, "Financial services has reached an inflection point. We now have ample data to surgically pick channels for each use case of customer journeys and see human in the loop AI native systems far outperform just AI or traditional contact centre outcomes. Dhiraj has spent decades building in this space and understands the realities of financial services better than most. His decision to join Fundamento validates our conviction that the future belongs to deeply embedded AI solutions capable of delivering measurable business outcomes—not just automating isolated tasks. Together, we're building the intelligence infrastructure that will power the next generation of financial services."

Speaking about his new role, Dhiraj Kalra said, "AI is no longer a technology conversation — it is a business transformation conversation, and the organizations that will lead the next decade will be those that embed AI deeply into every step of the customer journey. What makes this genuinely powerful, however, is pairing that AI capability with a ground-level understanding of how BFSI customers think and where they get stuck — and that is precisely what Fundamento has built. The proof is already visible in the outcomes their clients are seeing. But if I am being honest, it was the founders and the remarkable team around them — that made this decision easy. They have laid the foundation for something that could redefine how BFSI institutions engage with their customers, and I couldn't be more excited to help scale it."

Over the past year, Fundamento has positioned itself as an Agentic AI company focused exclusively on financial services. As financial institutions continue to rethink customer engagement, the company says it is expanding its leadership, technology and enterprise partnerships to help organisations build AI-native customer operations that improve business outcomes rather than simply automate workflows.