Mastercard appoints Gautam Agarwal as Division President, South Asia & Country Corporate Officer, India

Gautam takes the mantle from Nikhil Sahni, who is assuming a new regional role within the company.

Mastercard announced the appointment of Gautam Aggarwal as division president for South Asia & Country Corporate Officer, India, effective January 1. Gautam takes the mantle from Nikhil Sahni, who is assuming a new regional role within the company.

With his new remit, Gautam will oversee all of Mastercard’s activities across South Asia and India, including product management, engagements with customers and regulators, marketing and more. In addition, as head of the payment technology firm’s South Asia division, based out of Mumbai, he will lead operations across the sub-continent, covering Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan, in addition to India.

Gautam joined Mastercard in 2014, bringing with him more than a decade of experience across technology, sales and business development, product management, strategy, and M&A. Since then, he has held several leadership roles across the company, in both the United States and Asia Pacific region. Most recently, from 2019-2022, he served as Regional Chief Technology Officer for Asia Pacific, spearheading Mastercard’s $1 billion+ technology investments in key markets including India, Australia, China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

Prior to this, he focused on leading extensive global stakeholder engagement and executions around real-time payments (RTP). Forging Mastercard’s partnerships with domestic schemes and regulators, Gautam facilitated the provision of RTP technologies to economies across the Asia Pacific region, supporting governments to fulfil their financial inclusion and digitization ambitions, while also shaping Mastercard’s early thinking on digital identity.

“With more than two decades of technology, innovation, and commercial market experience, Gautam brings a strong multidisciplinary background and global perspective to addressing regional priorities. Combined with his Mastercard know-how gleaned from his eight years with the company that saw him spearheading a number of strategic initiatives and countless technology investments, he is uniquely equipped to ensure that Mastercard is poised to tackle the range of opportunities and challenges ahead,” said Ari Sarker, President, Asia Pacific, Mastercard. “As the company enters the next phase of its growth journey in South Asia, we look forward to deepening partnerships with stakeholders in India and across the sub-continent under Gautam’s leadership.”

“I am incredibly energized to steward Mastercard’s South Asia division which includes some of the fastest growing, most dynamic economies in the world. With the India growth story in particular being closely watched globally, Mastercard is committed to doing all that it can to enable the government’s Digital India vision by investing the full breadth of its resources – people, data, services, technology, philanthropy – to support the country’s long-term inclusive growth,” said Gautam Aggarwal, division president for South Asia & country corporate officer, India.

Before joining Mastercard, Gautam worked in Silicon Valley start-ups for eight years before moving on to a four-year stint at McKinsey and Company in New York, USA. He holds a MBA (with honors) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as master’s and bachelor’s degrees in computer science from Cornell University (USA) and Manipal Institute of Technology (India), respectively.