TookiTaki team
Have you seen someone quit their high-paying investment banking job, say no to an MBA from an elite business school, and take up the hard path of entrepreneurship instead? Meet Abhishek Chatterjee, an engineer-turned-investment banker, who set out to reform the functioning of banks.
Having worked at J.P. Morgan during and post the financial crisis of 2008, Abhishek realized that the back-office comprises a major chunk of the workforce at banks yet it operates rather inefficiently. Abhishek decided to build a tool using cutting-edge AI that could easily integrate with the banks’ existing data and pre-empt any untoward incident. Rejecting an offer to pursue his MBA from a top notch B-school in USA, Abhishek launched TookiTaki in 2013.
Taking the plunge turned out to be the easiest part. The next few years were replete with challenges. Having spent two years building the product, Abhishek and his team were confident while approaching banks. The long sales cycle and banks’ resistance to changing the status quo put enormous pressure on their cash flows. The team’s enthusiasm and gusto also began to flag. At this stage, Abhishek improvised and pitched his product to players in other industries such as e-commerce and retail. This bet paid off and TookiTaki’s product was soon adopted by biggies like PayTM and Quikr.
Eventually, the team’s persistence in trying to crack the banking sector bore fruit. Société Générale came onboard. A couple of local banks followed suit and several big wins followed. Tookitaki’s clientele soon included bigwigs such as Standard Chartered, Nomura etc. They even landed Facebook, thus becoming the behemoth’s first South-East Asian technology partner. They were also accredited by Singapore Government; this accolade paved the way for TookiTaki taking up government projects in the country.
“Understand the market and speak to customers before you launch your idea. Validation before launch is the key to success.”
Abhishek Chatterjee — CEO of TookiTaaki
Abhishek has evolved tremendously as a person, during the whole process. He now jests about his initial wariness in making sales calls. Patience wasn’t one of his core traits and he has been tested severely on this. He has passed this test too with flying colours. This understanding of his strengths and weaknesses has allowed him to find the perfect co-founder in Jeeta, a childhood friend who brought to the table a set of complementary skills in the areas of opera- tions and marketing.
While Tookitaki has already won many accolades, many more laurels are on their way. And Abhishek, with a single minded focus, is determined to get them home!
About the Company:
TookiTaki is providing enterprise software solutions that create sustainable compliance programs in financial service industry. They aim to innovate the regulatory compliance space by moving beyond rules based applications and introducing software solutions to maximize efficiency and reduce risks in these processes. TookiTaki’s mission is to provide machine learning powered regulatory compliance solutions that are auditable, scalable and actionable.