Hello fintech friends,

This week, I managed to grab some time in the (very busy!) schedule of Neha Narkhede. Neha is an Indian American technology entrepreneur who is the founder & CEO of Oscilar, and co-founder and former CTO, and current board member of Confluent (CFLT NASDAQ).

As a software engineer at LinkedIn, she helped develop the open-source messaging system Apache Kafka, now used by more than 80% of the Fortune 500. In 2014, she co-founded Confluent, which helps organizations process large amounts of data to create transformative real-time products and was listed on the NASDAQ in 2021.

Neha has been listed as one of America’s Top Self-Made Women by Forbes, Forbes’s Top 50 Women In Tech, MIT Tech Review’s Innovators under 35, and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People. Neha has a Master in Computer Science degree from Georgia Tech.

We talked about everything from the founders' journey to the rise of AI to building a multinational financial risk org at Oscilar.

Enjoy the conversation!

Spotify:

Apple:

🎧Oscilar Founder Neha Narkhede: Eliminating Risk With AI

Podcast Episode · This Week in Fintech’s Podcast · 02/10/2025 · 51m

Apple Podcasts

Listen Here:

🎧Oscilar Founder Neha Narkhede: Eliminating Risk With AI

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Oscilar | AI Risk Decisioning™

Oscilar is the first AI Risk Decisioning™ Platform to manage onboarding, fraud, credit, and compliance risk.

AI Risk Decisioning™

Oscilar is an AI Risk Decisioning platform that helps fintechs, banks, and digital organizations manage risk across onboarding, fraud, credit, and compliance – all in a single risk platform.

Oscilar serves Top 50 US Banks, community banks like CCBank and Core Bank, and fintechs like Nuvei, Dave, Uphold, and Super.

With its one-click data marketplace integrations, advanced machine learning models, Gen AI Risk Copilot, and user-friendly interface, Oscilar empowers risk teams to work autonomously, design efficient onboarding flows, increase credit approvals, reduce fraud, and stay compliant.

As an example, after adopting Oscilar, Flexcar experienced a 50% improvement in risk rates, while Dibsy saw a 90% reduction in fraud rates.

Episode Highlights

Introduction and Guest Overview

• Nik Milanovic introduces the podcast and the guest, Neha Narkide, founder of Oscilar, an AI risk decisioning platform.
• Oscilar helps organizations manage onboarding, fraud, credit, and compliance risks using AI.
• Neha expresses excitement about the interview and mentions Oscilar's global presence in North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Neha's Journey from Confluent to Oscilar

• Neha shares her experience co-founding Confluent, a real-time data streaming platform powered by Apache Kafka.
• She highlights the gap in existing tools for agile, real-time fraud prevention and risk management.
• Neha discusses the rapid shift to online transactions post-COVID and the need for modern risk infrastructure.
• She co-founded Oscilar to address these gaps with a unified risk platform powered by data analysis and machine learning.