Murali Vishnuvajhala

Murali Vishnuvajhala

COO/CTO
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Murali is a passionate executive with over 20 years of business, operations, and technology experience and a champion of leading by example. Over the years Murali has delivered measurable top-line and bottom-line results with effective and innovative use of technology across many organizations – both with startups and at some very large corporations. He has the ability to communicate and translate concepts between business, operations, and technology groups, and to quickly execute product and service ideas to drive innovation and transformation.
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Before joining Cognativ, Murali was the Global Head of Customer Experience and Business Engagement at Nissan Motor Corp improving and operationalizing customer experience across 150 markets, and before that he was Senior Information Officer at AIG leading digital transformation globally. He has also held senior roles in the area of big data, analytics, and products to drive new revenue with Benchmark Solutions (a startup acquired by Bloomberg L.P), Albridge Solutions (an ultrahigh-growth FinTech startup acquired by Bank of New York), as well as various technical roles at Credit Suisse, and Commerzbank NY. Murali started his career as a Database Programmer for a retail outlet in Bahrain after obtaining a Master's in Computer Management from Symbiosis Pune, India.

Amit Basu

Amit Basu

FOUNDER & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
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Amit is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of work experience that spans strategic responsibility for products, software development, high-volume transaction data processing, consulting, and big/complex data analytics.

Amit has helped to grow or turn around many small/mid-sized technology companies through successful acquisition, several of them for over $300M and one for over $2B. He has also stabilized and improved several mature companies to help investors and boards with liquidity events. He possesses strong leadership skills in the arena of software products and technology, predominantly within the financial services industry. He serves as a very successful bridge between business and technology parts of an organization resulting in improved trust and alignment of goals.

He has held CIO/CTO/MD and Head of Product roles in many companies such as MicroBank, Albridge, PNC Global Investment Services, Procurian/Accenture, InvestorForce,  Instream Wealth, Scivantage, and SPS.  He started his career as an Analyst Programmer in the UK with Lloyds of London.

Amit also brings with him significant international experience having lived and worked for many years in Europe (London), Asia (Singapore), and the USA. He has visited over 50 countries, working with international banking clients, and has a degree in Engineering from UCL in the UK.

Anil Charan

Anil Charan

Managing Director, India Operations
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Anil has almost 25 years of experience in technology mostly in the financial sector. Originally from Hyderabad India, he started his career in the USA, spending a dozen years in Silicon Valley, Dallas TX, and finally NYC in increasingly senior positions around software engineering and technology. Eventually, in 2010 he returned to Hyderabad to become manager for RealPage Inc.  He later joined Procurian as Head of Application Development and built a ‘complex’ data warehouse, related analytics, and dashboards to analyze and optimize global spending behaviors across all sectors for clients like Starbucks, GE, Zurich Insurance, Harley Davidson, Symantec. The creation of this product was instrumental in Procurian being acquired by Accenture a few years later for 30x EBITDA and replacing their internal technologies with SavingsLink for their $4Billion Accenture BPO division.

Anil stayed with Accenture for several years with increasing budgets and responsibilities and was recognized for his achievements in bringing more women into technology roles in Hyderabad. Eventually, he moved to DBS (one of the biggest banking groups in Asia and headquartered in Singapore) where he was Vice President for Institutional Banking Group Technology managing resources all over Asia. Before joining Cognativ in late 2020, Anil was the CIO for Shriram Life Insurance, which is one of the largest insurance companies in India with tens of millions of customers, where he focused on improving customer service around call centers and implementing automation like BOTS.

Christina Paledrano

Christina Palendrano

Director, Global PMO
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Christina is a multi-dimensional leader with over 3 decades of business, technology, project management, and process improvement experience driving profitability through partnerships, planning, initiating, executing, and continuous process improvement. Christina has worked with organizations of small and large primarily focused on financial services data and analytics services. She has led product implementation teams, product development, project management office, and managed and grew strategic client relationships.  

Prior to joining Cognativ, Christina was Director of Relationship Management at Bank of NY Mellon (formerly Albridge) managing fortune 100 client relationships.  She also held roles leading product development, creating a PMO, and improving the client implementations experience.  She also has extensive management consulting experience with Ernst and Young, LLC where she worked to create multiple startups as well as overhaul financial systems, data warehouses, and service solutions for clients such as Sumitomo Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Cendant.  Christina started her career as an operating systems developer while completing her master’s in management of technology from the University of Miami.

Jordi Vidal Barraquer Lerma

Jordi Vidal-Barraquer Lerma

Director, Spain Operations
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Jordi is the Director of Operations in Spain. His role is to manage all aspects of the company in Spain and to ensure its correct international integration. His goal is to lead the company to play an important role in the sector at a European level. His mastery of all areas of the company together with his clear focus on results allows him to provide innovative solutions in complex situations. He faces all challenges with commitment and teamwork because he knows the company only grows if people do.

Before joining Cognativ, Jordi has held transversal positions such as COO in the international online food retail sector, deputy to general manager in family offices and CEO in a digital health start-up that aimed to revolutionize the treatment of hypoxemic patients. This broad knowledge has led him to achieve great success and to be that person who is able to see the big picture while maintaining a clear focus on clients.

Jordi holds a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Barcelona and an Executive MBA from ESADE.

Jay Girvan

Jay Girvan

Director, Strategic Partnerships
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Jay heads up client relationship management for Cognativ. He gets to know the client and their specific needs in detail, as well as long-term strategic goals and business drivers and helps our technical teams deliver the most efficient results whether it be driven by time-to-market needs or a phased approach to gather market feedback and manage costs.

Before moving into helping clients with their business and product goals Jay originally had a very technical background having worked as a programmer for companies like BP and was a team-lead for the International Petroleum Exchange during their migration from paper-based to electronic trading in the UK.  In addition, Jay was one of the top database consultants for the European Space Agency supporting projects like the Very Large Telescope array in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Jay is based in London UK, lived for many years in Germany and is fluent in German, and has traveled extensively around the world.

Casey Bartlomiejus

Casey Bartlomiejus

Director, Data & Analytics
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Casey is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience in the world of data governance and technology. Throughout his career, Casey has disproven the adage that data teams can only be evaluated on a pass/fail basis.  Casey is a strong believer in the development of continuous improvement processes which create virtuous cycles and lead to improved outcomes., and his teams have demonstrated huge decreases in error rate whilst data growth has grown exponentially.
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Before joining Cognativ Casey held the roles of Executive Director of Data Strategy at  MSCI  and Head of Data Services at Investment Metrics. In both organizations, he was responsible for the acquisition, load, quality, and timeliness of data across the organization along with setting the vision and strategy for the data arm of the firm
Casey met Amit Basu at InvestorForce, where Casey was managed the data team loading and analyzing investment data for 3000 institutions spanning 25 custodians. Before InvestorForce, Casey worked at Advisorport (a fintech startup acquired by PFPC in 2003) and Evergreen Investments.
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Casey graduated from the University of Scranton with a B.S. in Finance.

Tony Ruggery

Tony Ruggeri

Director, Business & Tech Strategy
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Anthony (Tony) Ruggeri joined Cognativ to help with client solution definition, technology architecture, and supervising complex projects.  Before joining Cognativ, Tony served in senior technology executive roles with Investment Metrics and MSCI and was one of the founders of InvestorForce.  As Chief Technology Officer at InvestorForce, his responsibilities included software engineering, database systems, and infrastructure, as well as leading requirements analysis and solution design for customers.

His professional experience has been focused on the design and development of SaaS investment performance analysis systems for the institutional market, and his broad technology background includes a wide range of different systems and platforms, with particularly deep experience using Microsoft products. During his time with InvestorForce, MSCI, and Investment Metrics, Tony was the technology lead for due diligence, planning, and execution on numerous corporate actions, including the divestment and acquisition of multiple businesses.

Tony graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Molecular Biology and is co-author of a published paper in Entomology.  Outside of his professional work he is a composer and producer of electronic music, an avid photographer, and an enthusiastic but quite limited tennis player.

York Wong

York Wong

Director, Finance, and Administration
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York oversees the company’s financial operations and reporting, as well as conducts administrative tasks such as communicating with clients, and vendors and engaging in personnel decisions. Her responsibilities include administration over all aspects of the financial and legal operations of the business across our offices worldwide.

York’s prior work experience before joining Cognativ included global CRM manager at MicroBank (acquired by SunGard); Technical Consultant for MB Pte Ltd (a wholly-owned subsidiary of MicroBank) in Singapore; and elementary school teacher in Singapore. York graduated from the University of Tasmania, Australia with a double degree: B.S.C. (Hons) Information Technology and a B.A. in Psychology.

York Wong

York Wong

Director, Finance, and Administration

York oversees the company’s financial operations and reporting, as well as conducts administrative tasks such as communicating with clients, and vendors and engaging in personnel decisions. Her responsibilities include administration over all aspects of the financial and legal operations of the business across our offices worldwide.

York’s prior work experience before joining Cognativ included global CRM manager at MicroBank (acquired by SunGard); Technical Consultant for MB Pte Ltd (a wholly-owned subsidiary of MicroBank) in Singapore; and elementary school teacher in Singapore. York graduated from the University of Tasmania, Australia with a double degree: B.S.C. (Hons) Information Technology and a B.A. in Psychology.

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THOUGHTFUL
INNOVATION

We are the trusted partner that builds and supports your product vision with creativity and passion.

CONTACT US
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Our Services

Cognativ provides a wide variety of services to Start-ups, Enterprises, and Investment firms. Please click on each of these services to learn more.

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Advisory

Right decision-making is the difference between success and failure. With our expertise, we will help you set the right strategy and implement the technology to solve your business challenges or needs.

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Product Development

Execute your vision with custom software development by our expert software team. Our full-stack developers build Front-end(client-facing) to Backend technologies(server-side)for mobile and web applications.

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Data & Analytics

Make business decisions with operational and analytical views by creating a unified view of your data. Unlock the value of your data and build an insight-driven organization.

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Technical Services

We offer talent to support your technical needs in the areas of software and product development,  production support, and process automation.

About Us

Cognativ was initially created to provide strategic advisory services to help companies increase their valuation, define their customer journey, address issues preventing growth, and perform due diligence on potential acquisitions. The name Cognativ combines the words cognition and innovative suggesting ‘thoughtful innovation’.

Since its founding, Cognativ grew to build design, engineering and technology teams to help our clients build innovative product ideas, technology platforms, mobile and web applications, initiate data and analytics programs, and automate processes for operational efficiencies. Our goal is to always deliver solutions quickly, with high quality with an excellent ROI – all founded on trust and transparency between Cognativ and the client.

Cognativ has a presence in the USA, UK, Spain, Serbia, and India with clients across the USA and Europe.

Why Us?

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We are a team comprised of leadership with vast experience in innovation, product execution, data and operations

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We aspire to be your trusted partner and quickly increase your capabilities

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Our goal is to make you successful through due diligence, product and process improvements

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We understand the latest technologies and methods and are experts in scaling and modernizing older platforms

Our Ethos

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To always act with the utmost integrity

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To maintain our focus on the things that count

teamwork

To do whatever we can to help our partners

Our Locations

USA

PA / NY / NJ

Spain

Barcelona

UK

London

Serbia

Niš

India

Hyderabad

Our Leadership

Amit Basu

Amit Basu

Founder & CEO
Murali Vishnuvajhala

Murali Vishnuvajhala

COO/CTO
Christina Paledrano

Christina Palendrano

Director, Global PMO
Anil Charan

Anil Charan

Managing Director,  India Ops
Jordi Vidal-Barraquer Lerma

Jordi Vidal-Barraquer Lerma

Director, Spain Ops
Jay Girvan

Jay Girvan

Director, Strategic Partnerships
Casey Bartlomiejus

Casey Bartlomiejus

Director, Data & Analytics Strategy
Tony Ruggery

Tony Ruggeri

Director, Business & Tech Strategy
York Wong

York Wong

Director, Finance & Administration

Technologies

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Client Quotes

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Didn't need handholding to understand our apps, got up to speed really quickly.

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Cognativ took what I had imagined and made it a reality.

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They produce the goods and are frank don't try to hide anything.

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Didn't need handholding to understand our apps, got up to speed really quickly.

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Cognativ took what I had imagined and made it a reality.

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They produce the goods and are frank. They don't try to hide anything.

Let us make things
awesome together!

We are eager to be a part of your adventure. We are an experienced, knowledgeable, and more importantly a trustworthy group of individuals that will partner with you at every level.

+1 (215) 987-6747info@cognativinc.com