Kalyani Ramadurgam is an Indian-origin tech professional who moved from a corporate job to building her own startup. The Indian-origin co-founder of Kobalt Labs, alongside former Affirm software engineer Ashi Agrawal, have made it to the Forbes 30-Under-30 United States List for 2026 in the finance category. She works in the area of financial technology and artificial intelligence.

Kalyani Ramadurgam Education

Kalyani studied computer science and developed a strong interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Her education gave her the basic technical skills needed to work with data, software systems, and automation. Over time, she continued learning through work experience rather than just formal education.

Kalyani Ramadurgam Experience

Her role at Apple was highly sensitive, focusing on preventing the misuse of Apple Pay by terrorist networks. During her tenure, she noticed that even at a company of Apple’s scale, compliance systems carried risks due to slow, manual, and outdated processes.

While working there, she noticed that most compliance work was slow and depended heavily on manual checking. Even large companies were using outdated methods to review documents and manage risk. This made the process time-consuming and stressful for teams handling compliance.

After seeing these problems closely Kalyani thought about better solutions. She realized that many compliance tasks could be handled faster with the help of artificial intelligence. This idea led her to co-found Kobalt Labs, which is a startup focused on improving how financial companies manage risk and compliance.

The company builds tools that help banks and fintech firms review policies, contracts, and other documents using AI. What earlier took several days or weeks can now be done much faster. The goal is not to replace people but to reduce repetitive manual work.

Kalyani’s work matters because financial rules are becoming more complex every year. By using technology to simplify compliance, she is helping companies work more efficiently and avoid serious mistakes. Her journey shows how practical experience can lead to useful innovation, especially when technology is used to solve real problems. (FE Tech Bytes)