Karnataka Bank has appointed Sughosh Nagendra as its Chief Technology Officer, effective October 30, 2026. A graduate of the National Institute of Engineering, University of Mysore, he brings nearly three decades of technology experience to a 102-year-old institution built on trust, at a time when banking and technology have become almost the same conversation.
Sughosh’s journey began in 1996 in IT services, where he spent over thirteen years across HCL Technologies, Wipro and TCS. Working from Bengaluru, Phoenix and Seattle, he moved from application development and maintenance into leading IT delivery, managing cross-continental teams of 500+ people and running 24×7 application and infrastructure support for clients in banking, financial services, asset management and retail.
In 2009 he moved to the banking side, joining Barclays in Pune as Area Leader for Technology and Infrastructure Operations. There he built multiyear digital application roadmaps, shifted the model from “pay to build” to “pay to use,” and led work on private cloud and utility infrastructure. At Allstate in Bengaluru, he headed technology, infrastructure, architecture and operations, building greenfield teams and moving the organisation from “running to fix” to “running to build.”
His global experience deepened at UBS, where he was Head of Technology and Production Operations across Singapore, Pune and Zurich. He served as Regional Responsible Officer for shared services and technology operations, and was deputy for a $30 million departmental budget with cost reduction targets. He then returned to India as CTO of RBL Bank, leading the team responsible for the integrity of its production environment, before taking on a larger role as Group Head of Technology Operations at First Abu Dhabi Bank, one of the world’s largest and safest financial institutions.
At YES BANK, he led IT strategy and technology transformation as Chief of Staff of the Tech Transformation Office. He worked on legacy modernisation, business-aligned IT strategy, governance, risk and compliance, cybersecurity, cloud, FinOps and talent transformation. Most recently, as Chief Digital and Information Officer at Agilus Diagnostics, he led the effort to modernise the technology backbone of India’s largest diagnostics network, with 400+ labs and 4,000+ collection centres. His team replaced legacy platforms with cloud-ready applications, moved to a modern ERP unifying finance, procurement, HR and inventory, consolidated data centres, and rebuilt connectivity so even remote collection centres had secure, high-speed access.
What stands out across these roles is a belief that real technology is about people. He speaks often about culture as the key to using technology well, and about end-user experience as a must-deliver, not a nice-to-have. At Karnataka Bank, which serves 14 million+ customers across retail, agri, MSME, corporate and treasury, that outlook will shape how the bank modernises its legacy stack and rolls out AI in a regulated, sustained way.
We congratulate Sughosh Nagendra on his appointment as Chief Technology Officer of Karnataka Bank and wish him a rewarding journey ahead.
