Jyoti Bansal, Founder & CEO of Harness, Traceable, and Unusual Ventures, joins host Mudassar Malik to discuss the ideas and lessons that have shaped each of his companies. He begins with the transition from engineer to founder, describing how a “burning passion” to solve a specific engineering challenge pushed him toward building a product, and ultimately a business. Jyoti also shares the investor question that led him to quit his job and commit to AppDynamics, along with the early rejections that forced him to refine his pitch and validate the problem.

From there, he explains why product excellence is only half of the equation, and why matching that with a strong go-to-market is essential. Jyoti outlines how both AppDynamics and Harness expanded: first by winning a single, focused use case, then by adding new capabilities once the foundation was proven. This leads into his view that platforms work only when every module is best-of-breed, and why customers won’t accept integrated but mediocre tools.

Jyoti and Mudassar then dig into Harness’s “startup within a startup” model. Each module operates like an internal venture with its own product leader as “startup CEO,” responsible for product quality, revenue, and customer success. Jyoti explains why Harness avoids bundling, how internal startups are funded, which signals guide new investments, and how small teams, increasingly AI-enabled, allow for faster experimentation at lower cost.

He closes with the lessons he carried forward from earlier startups, including building impressive technology without business justification, hitting growth limits when the addressable market stays narrow, and watching strong products struggle under high sales costs. His final advice: solve a problem you care about, make sure the market cares as well, and focus relentlessly on delivering solutions that work for customers.

Jyoti digs into topics like:
- The investor question that changed everything
- Product greatness vs. go-to-market reality
- Turning one use case into a platform
- A startup-within-a-startup operating model
- Why small teams build faster (especially with AI)

Visit mobilelive.ca/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Mohammad Yousaf, Chief of Operations and Technology at National Mortgage Insurance Corporation, joins host Mudassar Malik to discuss how trust, alignment, and disciplined technology choices drive lasting transformation in financial services.

Mohammad traces his path from telecom engineering into banking and mortgage finance, explaining why he moved from building technology to shaping business strategy. He highlights how lessons from team sports shaped his leadership style, where trust and alignment aren’t just cultural values but the foundation for effective execution.

The conversation turns to transformation in operations and technology. Mohammad cautions against chasing trends and stresses the importance of the first 90 days, identifying the right processes to change, involving underwriters and processors early, and co-creating solutions. He shares a practical example of a middleware upgrade that unlocked revenue growth once reframed around speed and customer impact, showing how technology decisions gain traction when tied directly to business outcomes.

Closing the discussion, Mohammad outlines how leaders can build cultures that adapt quickly while managing legacy resistance, and why AI adoption must stay anchored in transparency and borrower-first principles. Throughout the episode, he offers a clear, grounded guide to balancing innovation with responsibility.

Mohammad also explores:

• Trust and alignment in execution
• Defining transformation beyond buzzwords
• The first 90 days of change
• Turning middleware upgrades into revenue
• Why AI must stay borrower-first

Visit mobilelive.ca/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Rohit Prabhakar, Global Head of Experiences & Capabilities at Visa, joins Mudassar Malik on Behind the Growth to explore how leaders can move from AI add-ons to AI-native marketing ecosystems that deliver hyper-personalized experiences at scale. With a career spanning technology, product, and marketing, Rohit grounds the discussion in two priorities: customer obsession and business enablement.

He outlines a two-track AI adoption model: use AI as a partner to incrementally improve existing systems, while also reimagining processes from the ground up to remove legacy constraints. At the core is unified, high-quality data, breaking down silos so machine learning and large language models can work with accuracy and relevance.

Rohit pinpoints content creation as the long-standing blocker to personalization at scale and explains why recent advances in generative AI make on-demand, context-specific assets achievable. He distills three essential building blocks for AI-native systems: connected data, robust machine learning, and LLMs.

The conversation closes on leadership and change management. Rohit shares how small, empowered teams can drive transformation, why human oversight must remain in the loop with AI, and what marketing leaders should prioritise as expectations, speed, and productivity demands rapidly increase.

Rohit dives into themes like:
- Building AI-native marketing ecosystems
- Overcoming personalization’s content bottleneck
- Unifying customer data for scale
- Structuring change through small wins
- Keeping humans in the AI loop

Visit mobilelive.ca/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.