Co-Founder & CEO at Nativ
Ashish Ranjan Jha
Hi! I'm Ashish. I grew up in India, studied at IIT Roorkee, clearing the prestigious IIT JEE exam, ranking 999 out of 400,000 students. Wrote my first computer program at age 13 - a soccer game on FoxPro. I scored a distinction studying ML(AI) at EPFL - a top-5 world-class Swiss University. I declined a 5-year PhD fellowship offer from the Head of the Computer Vision Department at EPFL to work at a Belgian tech startup. 6 countries, 5 startups & 2 unicorns later, I have developed Tractable's automotive language model, built Revolut's automated KYC platform onboarding 40K+ daily customers from 70+ countries, led fraud detection teams saving £50mn+ in FinCrime losses, authored 4 published books on AI - ranging from PyTorch to Fraud Detection, and advised a drone-tech startup from 0 to pre series-A. I am currently building my dream company with my dream co-founder: Nativ.
Questions & Answers
Can you share a distinctive achievement or highlight from your career?
I have headed the auto-KYC and anti-Fraud divisions at Revolut saving over $70M in dev and fincrime-risk costs over 4 years, by deploying multi-modal AI models, processing 40,000 users daily, signing up from 134 different countries.
What sets you apart from others in your industry?
I have a unique experience of living around more than 20 different languages and cultures over the past 20 years of my life, coupled with a deep expertise in Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence rooted in 11 years of experience working at companies like Revolut, and 4 published books on AI that have sold over 20000 copies.
How is your team uniquely positioned to solve the problem you're tackling?
At Revolut, we've built computer vision systems that have onboarded more than 20M customers from 40+ countries. We've witnessed the impact of going global there, and that was one of the best decisions Revolut made to become what is. On top of this, we’ve had the chance to live in India, Tunisia, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. Each country has added a new layer to our understanding of how culture shapes our digital experiences. The combination of professional and personal history with this problem drives us every single day.
What's a memorable 'aha' moment you've had while building your startup?
When we signed our first long term contract, Amar Chitra Katha (2nd largest comics publisher of India) asked us to localize their 600+ English comics into top 10 Indian languages. These are the comics that I read as a child growing up in India, and I wish they were available in Hindi rather than English, as Hindi was my native tongue. And today, its possible all of a sudden, almost at a click of a button, to take these comics from 130 Million Indians that can read English, to the 1.3 Billion Indians that can read the other 10 languages. I feel thrilled to be making this possible for all those millions of kids, as I see myself in them!
What's the story behind your company?
I met Ahmed in late 2019, when he was an intern at Revolut onboarding me as a new Machine Learning Engineer. Within months, I felt the synergy with him that I hadn't felt in my 5-6 years of working life prior to that. Originally raised in different parts of the world, then living in London, we bonded at a different level. Ahmed left Revolut in 2021, and we tried building a company but nothing landed at the time. In 2024, I left Revolut to head AI at an AR startup, where I hired Ahmed in my team. After a few months, we couldn't resist thinking of building something new together again. Reflecting on what we'd built together at Revolut, enabling it to expand into 134 countries, we started building ideas around localization and culturalization. 100 user interviews and 1 product prototype later, we were convinced to leave our jobs and build Nativ full time.
