From his early interest in technology to working at Intel and Goibibo, Kausal Malladi, CTO – Investments at INDmoney, is applying his engineering experience to make digital investing faster, more reliable, and easier to navigate.

When investors open a stock market app, they expect prices to load quickly, charts to respond smoothly, and orders to be processed reliably. These actions may appear simple, but making them work consistently requires complex systems operating behind the scenes.

For Kausal Malladi, CTO – Investments at INDmoney, this is one of the central challenges of building investment technology. The goal is not just to create an application that works, but to ensure it remains dependable when markets become busy and users need timely information.

His journey into technology began by watching his uncle, Sastry Malladi, who sparked his early interest in the field. From Bachelors and Infosys to graduate studies at IIIT Bangalore, Intel, and Goibibo, Malladi built experience across different areas of technology before moving into fintech.

Today, at INDmoney, he is involved in building investment platforms for Indian and US stock markets, where engineering decisions directly affect how users access financial information and manage their investments.

From an Early Interest in Technology to Building at Scale

Malladi’s interest in technology developed early, encouraged by his parents to chase this path. That curiosity eventually led him to pursue engineering and build a career across technology-driven organisations.

His experience at Infosys, followed by graduate studies and work at Intel, introduced him to different aspects of software and engineering. At Goibibo, he worked on scalable web platforms, gaining experience in building digital products that could support growing user demand.

Moving into fintech brought a different set of challenges. Investment platforms must handle rapidly changing market data, support time-sensitive transactions, and provide information that users rely on when making financial decisions.

At INDmoney, Malladi has helped establish and scale the company’s Indian and US stock platforms. The work involves balancing the technical demands of a large-scale system with the need to make investing accessible to everyday users.

His decision to join the company was influenced by its personal-finance mission, Ashish Kashyap’s leadership, and the opportunity to solve challenging engineering problems in a competitive fintech market.

Building an Investment Platform That Can Handle Market Pressure

In stock trading, speed matters, but it cannot come at the expense of reliability. Investors need timely price information, dependable services, and accurate order execution with limited slippage.

During the interview, Malladi explained that maintaining this experience requires optimisation across multiple layers of the technology stack.

The application, network, content delivery network (CDN), backend services, and underlying infrastructure all influence how quickly information reaches users. When market activity increases, these components must work together to prevent delays and maintain consistent performance.

For INDstocks, the focus has been on making the product simple, fast, and reliable. These priorities shape everyday interactions, from checking stock prices and viewing charts to navigating the application and placing orders.

Malladi reported that almost 80% of price ticks are delivered in under 50 milliseconds to client devices. The figure reflects the company’s stated focus on reducing delays in market-data delivery.

However, delivering prices quickly is only one part of the challenge. Investors also need useful information to understand their holdings and make informed decisions. The platform must therefore combine performance with dependable data and a straightforward user experience.

Making Investment Products Easier to Understand

Financial products can become complicated when users have to deal with multiple data sources, portfolio calculations, and different measures of investment performance.

Malladi highlighted the importance of designing products around what users want to accomplish. Rather than making people navigate technical complexity, platforms should present relevant information in a clear and accessible way.

Portfolio management is one example. A simple portfolio view may require considerable computation behind the scenes, particularly as users accumulate investments and the amount of data increases.

The challenge is to keep that information accurate while ensuring the application remains responsive.

For Malladi, simplifying an investment product does not mean removing important information. It means making complex financial data easier to understand without compromising the accuracy of the underlying calculations.

Supporting Indian and US Stock Markets

Building products for different markets introduces another layer of complexity. Although Indian and US stock platforms can share certain technical components, their catalogues, workflows, and user requirements are not identical.

Malladi described how INDmoney uses a shared technology stack to support stock catalogue services across both markets while retaining the flexibility to address their differences.

This approach allows the company to reuse common components instead of building every service independently. At the same time, the architecture needs to accommodate changing product requirements and compliance expectations.

Security is another continuing responsibility. As financial products evolve, engineering teams must ensure that their security practices and systems remain suitable for the changing environment.

For Malladi, building a platform for the long term means creating technology that can adapt to new requirements without repeatedly rebuilding its foundations.

Adopting AI Without Overusing It

Artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities for technology teams, but Malladi believes organisations need to be thoughtful about how they use it.

During the conversation, he discussed structured workflows, spending considerations, and token efficiency when incorporating AI into business processes.

The idea is to identify where AI can genuinely improve productivity rather than using it indiscriminately. Without clear workflows and evaluation, experimentation can increase costs without delivering meaningful benefits.

Data protection is equally important, particularly when personal information is involved. Organisations need appropriate safeguards to ensure that AI adoption does not compromise privacy or security.

Malladi’s approach reflects a practical view of the technology: AI will be useful, but its adoption should be supported by clear processes, cost awareness, and responsible data handling. One needs to know where to start and when to end.

The Engineering Work Behind Reliability

For users, a well-functioning application may seem effortless. For the engineering team, maintaining that experience requires continuous monitoring, testing, and optimisation.

Malladi discussed observability as part of the work involved in understanding how systems perform and identifying issues when they arise. Engineering without metrics is blind engineering and will be counterproductive to growth as the product scales.

This becomes especially important during periods of heavy market activity, when delays or failures in one component can affect the overall experience. Engineering teams need visibility into how different services behave so they can identify bottlenecks and address problems.

Security, infrastructure, and compliance also require ongoing attention as the platform evolves.

Building an investment product, therefore, is not simply about launching new features. It involves making sure that the existing systems continue to perform reliably as usage grows and requirements change.

What the Future of Investment Technology Demands?

Malladi’s professional journey, from his early interest in technology to working on scalable consumer platforms and investment products, has brought him into a field where performance and reliability directly affect the user experience.

At INDmoney, the work involves making financial products easier to use while managing the complexity of market data, portfolio calculations, infrastructure, and security.

His perspective highlights the importance of getting the fundamentals right. A fast application needs reliable systems behind it. A simple interface must still provide accurate information. And new technologies such as AI need to be adopted with appropriate safeguards.

As digital investing continues to develop, these engineering decisions will remain important to how platforms serve their users.

For Malladi and his team, the work continues behind every price update, chart, and order placed through the application. The objective is to make those interactions feel simple for investors, even when the technology required to support them is anything but simple.

Interview By: Palak