About two-and-a-half decades ago, Deepak Dastrala was a curious young engineering student at the Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Here, his early encounters with software development laid the groundwork for a lifelong passion for innovation. Even back then, Artificial Intelligence (AI) intrigued him — not merely as a technology, but as a transformative force. Today, as Partner and Chief Technology Officer at Intellect Design Arena, Dastrala stands at the intersection of enterprise AI and financial technology, helping shape the next generation of human-machine interactions.