About Us
Meet the executive team that takes fraud prevention to a whole new level

Meet the executive team taking fraud protection to a whole new level.
Simility provides a holistic, end-to-end fraud and decisioning platform to empower businesses battling to contain fraud in a digital-first world. It’s a powerful, highly usable platform which enables organizations to make data-driven decisions and grow faster. Simility helps provide businesses with the flexibility to adapt as fraud evolves, ensuring that those on the frontline always have the information they need to make the right decisions.
Simility has become a trusted partner for some of the world’s best known and most innovative financial institutions and e-commerce firms. And as part of the PayPal family, Simility is now on a mission to help build next-generation secure payment and commerce solutions for businesses everywhere.
Our Team
Our Team
Tushar Shah
VP Enterprise Services Platform at PayPal
Tushar is VP of Enterprise Services Platforms, and leads Product and Engineering for the Global Risk, Regulatory, and Operational Platforms at PayPal. Tushar focuses on the performance, scalability, and availability to ensure the platforms support PayPal’s growth. A seasoned leader, Tushar leverages technology and business process management to effectively deliver desired business case outcomes. His international experience enables him to view and support various business units to deliver strategic objectives.
Rahul Pangam
VP, Risk Strategy
As a fraud detection industry veteran, Rahul founded Simility to empower front-line fraud fighters with bleeding-edge tools without the need to code. Under his leadership, the company grew to serve customers in six continents by providing unparalleled fraud prevention services, ultimately culminating in its acquisition by PayPal. Prior to founding Simility, Rahul spent over seven years as a director at Google, where he led a global team of 200, responsible for fighting fraud. Prior to Google, Rahul was the Lead Project Engineer at GE Energy.
Kedar Samant
Senior Director, Risk Platform
Kedar is a seasoned technologist and a fraud and risk management expert. Kedar co-founded Simility and crafted the vision for Simility’s disruptive approach to fraud management. He has been key in establishing Simility’s product superiority and driving innovations leading to Simility’s acquisition by PayPal. Kedar brings a wealth of experience from his prior stint at Google, where he built the platform for fighting fraud and abuse across Google’s products. Prior to Google, he held technology leadership positions across industries including banking and online services.
Uttam Phalnikar
Senior Director, Risk Architecture
Uttam brings to Simility an extensive track record in the successful development and deployment of client-specific software solutions for large organizations. Before co-founding Simility, he worked at Jive Software where he was responsible for the creation of the Jive Apps Market cloud service.
Swastik Bihani
Head of Products & GM, India
Swastik is a seasoned Silicon Valley business leader with more than a decade of experience in the high-tech industry. He has a long, successful tenure in cyber security and is an expert in technologies used to thwart cyber attacks including fraud, spam, malware, DDoS and hacking.
Mick Martin
Director, Outside Sales
Mick brings in deep expertise in the areas of Big Data, Analytics, and Software. He bears the responsibility of growing Simility’s top and bottom lines. Prior to joining Simility, Mick was a Vice President of Sales for FICO. He earlier served as SVP of Sales for Experian’s consumer information and decision sciences divisions, and VP General Manager for Trans Union. Mick has also worked as VP Sales for two start up organizations SecureKey based in Toronto and Earnix which has it’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel. Mick is a seasoned sales leader who excels at building and managing high performing sales teams.
Eric Newman
Director, Outside Sales
Eric brings to Simility a rich experience in the fraud and cybersecurity industries. Eric has held executive roles and advisory positions at both early stage and publicly traded companies. Within Simility, Eric is responsible for all international sales as well as global pre-sales and post-sales support. With twenty years of sales and operational leadership experience in fraud prevention and information security, Eric brings deep expertise in driving and managing high growth. Previously, Eric was the COO for the fraud and risk intelligence division at RSA, and held executive roles at Pindrop, Silver Tail Systems, Phoenix Technologies, and TrustedID, amongst others.
Jayan Tharayil
Director, Risk Service Product
Jayan leads teams that are responsible for building and taking PayPal’s integrated risk product portfolio to market. He also held roles previously at Simility overseeing the growth and management of the Data Analytics team responsible for deploying Simility’s solution for all its customers and played an instrumental part in building the core Simility product offering. Prior to Simility, Jayan served as Manager, Trust and Safety at Google for over eight years where he built and managed fraud-fighting and abuse prevention teams.
Ravi Sandepudi
Director, Decision Science & Data Science Engineering
Ravi is a Director of Software Development at Simility, A PayPal Service. A fraud-fighting veteran, Ravi previously served in leadership roles in Google’s Trust and Safety department and was instrumental in building several of the company’s large scale offline click fraud detection/prevention systems. He worked extensively on big data using MapReduce, GFS, Bigtable and many other Google technologies. In addition to his current role at Simility, Ravi serves on the board of directors for the Sri Sarada Educational Society. Ravi holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree with Honours in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.
Ritesh Arora
Director, Data Science
Ritesh is Director, Data Science at Simility, and is responsible for managing the key customer portfolio that ranges from eCommerce merchants to top financial institutions that use Simility’s risk platform. Ritesh joined Simility in early 2016 as the only data scientist on the team and has since built a team of research and applied data scientists across the US, London, and India. Ritesh brings extensive industry experience in fraud and risk management. Prior to Simility, he was a part of Inkiru, later acquired by Walmart, where he helped build a real-time fraud detection platform to tackle eCommerce fraud. At Inkiru, he built predictive models for marketing campaigns and flash sale sites to predict customer intent. After Walmart eCommerce acquired Inkiru, Ritesh built systems to predict customer lifetime value, chargeback forecasting, and transactional fraud monitoring with stakeholders from the Product, Engineering, and Marketing teams. Ritesh holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from the University of Missouri, Rolla.

Tushar Shah
VP Enterprise Services Platform at PayPal
Tushar is VP of Enterprise Services Platforms, and leads Product and Engineering for the Global Risk, Regulatory, and Operational Platforms at PayPal. Tushar focuses on the performance, scalability, and availability to ensure the platforms support PayPal’s growth.A seasoned leader, Tushar leverages technology and business process management to effectively deliver desired business case outcomes. His international experience enables him to view and support various business units to deliver strategic objectives.

Rahul Pangam
VP, Risk Strategy
As a fraud detection industry veteran, Rahul founded Simility to empower front-line fraud fighters with bleeding-edge tools without the need to code. Under his leadership, the company grew to serve customers in six continents by providing unparalleled fraud prevention services, ultimately culminating in its acquisition by PayPal. Prior to founding Simility, Rahul spent over seven years as a director at Google, where he led a global team of 200, responsible for fighting fraud. Prior to Google, Rahul was the Lead Project Engineer at GE Energy.

Kedar Samant
Senior Director, Risk Platform
Kedar is a seasoned technologist and a fraud and risk management expert. Kedar co-founded Simility and crafted the vision for Simility’s disruptive approach to fraud management. He has been key in establishing Simility’s product superiority and driving innovations leading to Simility’s acquisition by PayPal. Kedar brings a wealth of experience from his prior stint at Google, where he built the platform for fighting fraud and abuse across Google’s products. Prior to Google, he held technology leadership positions across industries including banking and online services.

Uttam Phalnikar
Senior Director, Risk Architecture
Uttam brings to Simility an extensive track record in the successful development and deployment of client-specific software solutions for large organizations. Before co-founding Simility, he worked at Jive Software where he was responsible for the creation of the Jive Apps Market cloud service.

Swastik Bihani
Head of Products & GM, India
Swastik is a seasoned Silicon Valley business leader with more than a decade of experience in the high-tech industry. He has a long, successful tenure in cyber security and is an expert in technologies used to thwart cyber attacks including fraud, spam, malware, DDoS and hacking.

Mick Martin
Director, Outside Sales
Mick brings in deep expertise in the areas of Big Data, Analytics, and Software. He bears the responsibility of growing Simility’s top and bottom lines. Prior to joining Simility, Mick was a Vice President of Sales for FICO. He earlier served as SVP of Sales for Experian’s consumer information and decision sciences divisions, and VP General Manager for Trans Union. Mick has also worked as VP Sales for two start up organizations SecureKey based in Toronto and Earnix which has it’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel. Mick is a seasoned sales leader who excels at building and managing high performing sales teams.

Eric Newman
Director, Outside Sales
Eric brings to Simility a rich experience in the fraud and cybersecurity industries. Eric has held executive roles and advisory positions at both early stage and publicly traded companies. Within Simility, Eric is responsible for all international sales as well as global pre-sales and post-sales support. With twenty years of sales and operational leadership experience in fraud prevention and information security, Eric brings deep expertise in driving and managing high growth. Previously, Eric was the COO for the fraud and risk intelligence division at RSA, and held executive roles at Pindrop, Silver Tail Systems, Phoenix Technologies, and TrustedID, amongst others.

Jayan Tharayil
Director, Risk Service Product
Jayan has leveraged his deep expertise in product, operations and fraud prevention to build the core Simility product offering. He is responsible for the growth and management of the Data Analytics team. He also bears the responsibility of deploying Simility’s solution for all its customers. Prior to Simility, Jayan served as Manager, Trust and Safety at Google for over eight years where he built and managed fraud-fighting and abuse prevention teams. He is proficient in working with big data, advanced analytics, statistical models and is a subject matter exper t on a variety of online fraud and abuse.

Ravi Sandepudi
Director, Decision Science & Data Science Engineering
Ravi Sandepudi is a Director of Software Development at Simility, A PayPal Service. A fraud-fighting veteran, Ravi previously served in leadership roles in Google’s Trust and Safety department and was instrumental in building several of the company’s large scale offline click fraud detection/prevention systems. He worked extensively on big data using MapReduce, GFS, Bigtable and many other Google technologies. In addition to his current role at Simility, Ravi serves on the board of directors for the Sri Sarada Educational Society. Ravi holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree with Honours in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.

Ritesh Arora
Director, Data Science
Ritesh is Director, Data Science at Simility, and he is responsible for managing the key customer portfolio that ranges from eCommerce merchants to top financial institutions that use Simility risk platform. Ritesh joined Simility in early 2016 as the only data scientist on the team and has since built a team of research and applied data scientist across US, London, and India. Ritesh brings extensive industry experience in fraud and risk management. Prior to Simility, he was a part of Inkiru, later acquired by Walmart, where he helped build a real-time fraud detection platform to tackle eCommerce fraud. At Inkiru, Ritesh built predictive models for marketing campaigns and flash sale website to predict customer intent. Post-acquisition by Walmart eCommerce, Ritesh spent few years building the systems to predict customer lifetime value, chargeback forecasting, and transactional fraud monitoring working with various stakeholders from Product, Engineering, and Marketing team. Ritesh holds a Master degree in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from University of Missouri, Rolla.