Pawan Kumar is Co-Founder and CEO of Spense, a Bengaluru-based fintech startup building bank-native infrastructure for asset-backed credit in India. He is a product, data science, and internet entrepreneur with over a decade of experience building data-driven consumer products.

Pawan previously served as Head of Applied Science at Uber India and held key roles at LinkedIn and Mu Sigma, where he earned recognition for his growth mindset and ability to translate complex data insights into product impact.

Pawan believes India's credit challenge is fundamentally an infrastructure problem, not a risk problem, and that every individual with a valuable asset deserves access to modern credit. He envisions the next generation of banking being built on two pillars: asset-unlocking infrastructure and AI-powered intelligence.

Under Pawan's leadership, Spense raised a $2.8M Seed round led by Arkam Ventures, with participation from Razorpay Ventures, GrowthCap Ventures, and Atrium Ventures, alongside angels including Kunal Shah of CRED. The company works with 7 major banks across India and issues over 40,000 cards every month.

Spense's platform powers over 2 lakh active cards, representing nearly 8% of India's monthly credit card issuance, and delivered 256% revenue growth in FY25.