Rajiv Sainani

Rajiv Sainani is a FinTech leader, specialising in trading systems and digital strategy, with more than 35 years of experience in international markets. He is currently the Europe Growth Lead of MakerDAO, an unbiased global financial system. 

Rajiv is a Bachelor’s in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Bath and a Master’s in Control System Engineering from the National Higher School of Toulouse. 

Rajiv has worked extensively with global players like JPMorgan, Refinitiv, Wirex, and Luno with a track record of driving innovation, growth, and market share. 

Rajiv was also a member of the advisory board of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance with a focus on its international expansion. As a leader, he is focussed on Business Development, Product Strategy, and Partner Management with his outstanding skills in Data & Analytics, Trading Systems, RegTech, Digital Strategy, Digital Payments, and Digital Assets & DeFi protocols.

Rajiv led WIREX Limited to be awarded the Best PayTech Partnership Award 2018 and was also included in the 2018 FINTECH POWER 50 list.

Rajiv Sainani did his Bachelor’s in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Bath in 1992. He, then, did his Master’s in Control System Engineering from the National Higher School of Toulouse in 1993. 

He joined JP Morgan as an Associate of the Corporate Technology Group, where he was responsible for technical support and relationship management of the Emerging Markets & Commodities trading desks. He became the Product Manager for Latin America Market Data Services, where his team partnered with regional development groups to deliver innovative solutions leveraging real-time APIs.

He joined iConexa S/A a specialised software provider focussed on supporting Brazil-based corporations with digital solutions, including online exchanges and e-commerce sites, in 2000. During this time, he led the team responsible for incubating and launching www.superbid.com.br, a leading Latin American e-commerce site. 

For the next decade, he served Thomson Reuters in various roles. During this period of more than 14 years, he made significant contributions to Latin American markets. As a VP, Head of Product Management between 2012 and 2015, he led the successful launch of the market-leading Thomson Reuters Eikon for LatAm regional desktop variant, WorldCheck Risk Solution at the LatAm Regulatory Summit and LatAm Starmine Analyst Awards. 

Rajiv was also the VP of Emerging Markets and Head of Market Development, Equities, and Investors during 2015-2016 at Thomson Reuters. As a member of the Senior Leadership Team of the Global Financial and Risk business, he was responsible to drive the growth of the Equities, Wealth Management, and Asset Management business segments across the Emerging Markets, which yielded ~$220mi revenue. He also delivered an accelerated growth rate for 2016 (particularly in Africa, India, and China) through focussed sales & partnership strategy on mid-tier desktops (Eikon Research and Advisory), content feeds for redistribution and enterprise data management solutions.

Rajiv was a member of the advisory board of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance which focussed on international expansion from 2017 to 2018. He joined Wirex Limited, a platform to make cryptocurrency accessible to all. Here, he was responsible for the product vision, strategy, and delivery of the Wirex Digital Payments Platform, consistently driving monthly transactional volume to new records. His efforts leveraged Wirex in the TOP10 of the AppStore Financial Apps category, was awarded the Best PayTech Partnership Award 2018, and was included in the 2018 FINTECH POWER 50.

In 2019, Rajiv joined Luno, where he focussed on developing the Luno for Business offering with an initial focus on business clients ( corporates ) using the Luno Exchange, and developing the Luno B2B offering allowing for partners to build crypto solutions leveraging Luno's underlying infrastructure. Under his leadership, Luno Exchange was recognised as a category A and global Top 10 exchange on the CryptoCompare exchange benchmark from q3 2019 onwards.

Rajiv is the BD lead for Europe at MakerDao, the leading DeFi protocol and industry leader for trailblazing the DAO “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” governance model since 2021.

Rajiv has an extensive experience with Data & Analytics, Trading Systems, RegTech, Digital Strategy, Digital Payments, Digital Assets & DeFi protocols. He is strongly connected with his network of senior-level connections across leading CeFi and DeFi projects in the crypto sector as well as TradFi Digital Asset teams.

Rajiv is passionate about emerging technologies and financial markets. This led him to create MakerDAO: an integration of traditional finance with decentralised finance (DeFi), built on the robust foundations of blockchain technology. 

Although he brings an immense wealth of knowledge and experience with himself, but he insists on learning throughout the journey. In a recent interview with Dinis Guarda, Rajiv said:

“Always be humble and seek that learning opportunity, because it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have in an area, it doesn't much apply everywhere. Even though I have much experience in financial markets, but I'm still learning in the DeFi space from the younger generations, because of their difference in perspectives.”

His trajectory of work is persistent even during the market downturns. In his own words:

“The builders keep building every time, and it's not just the kind of crypto native protocols that keep building, you also see more and more institutions involved in education. Ultimately, that's the kind of efficiency applied not just to financial markets, but also to other use cases. This will keep on evolving. And this is proof of a long-term sustenance.”