The PhonePe CTO believes that as AI makes building and delivering products easier, data-driven distribution at scale will emerge as the strongest competitive moat
Chari was speaking at the third edition of Inc42’s AI Summit in Bengaluru
About the current AI talent landscape, PhonePe’s chief technology officer believes the role of an engineer is becoming an architect or thinker, rather than a developer.
As AI makes building and delivering functionality easier, PhonePe
cofounder and CTO Rahul Chari believes that the distribution and the power to distribute data at scale more intelligently become a strong moat.
“I believe that in the AI world, where the barrier to entry has been further reduced, distribution and data will continue to be the largest,” he added.
Chari was speaking at the third edition of Inc42’s AI Summit in Bengaluru during a fireside chat with Inc42 Cofounder and CEO Vaibhav Vardhan on the topic, “How PhonePe Is Rebuilding The Financial Superapp Around Intent, Automation, And Trust”.
He highlighted that in the next three to four years, PhonePe will look at more aggregation areas, including daily platform payments, financial services and other related distribution categories. This will be a continuous evolution of the product to make it simpler for users to find what they’re looking for.
Talking about the AI talent pool, the PhonePe CTO said that the role of an engineer is transforming into an architect or a thinker, rather than a developer.
“The skill set needed for robust system design will be very critical. Software engineers should look at how to leverage hardware. The skillsets needed for first principles and design thinking will come to the fore as AI levels the playing field,” he said.
Answering a question about whether PhonePe has AI-first teams or AI is an organisation-wide mandate, Chari said that having a team for AI alone is not a great approach. “If one believes that AI is transformative, then the goal should be to leverage this to enable everyone in the team to grow. We do have a core AI team, but it is responsible for allowing everyone in the company to leverage the power of AI.”
Sharing his two cents with young software engineers, Chari said they should start looking at how to leverage hardware for better cost optimisation.
During his chinwag with Vardhan, Chari also discussed building AI systems for population-scale fintech, focusing on balancing latency, privacy, accuracy and reliability. He elaborated on the internal AI stack powering PhonePe’s automation journey, including Agent Hub, workflow orchestration and AI governance frameworks.
IPO-bound PhonePe continued to dominate the UPI market in April, processing more than 1,033 Cr transactions during the month. According to the NPCI data, the fintech major processed transactions worth ₹14.31 Lakh Cr in April 2026. While transaction volumes dipped slightly from 1,050 Cr in March, the company’s market share increased to 47.07%, up from 46.70% in the previous month.
Source: Inc42 - Startups
