According to reports from Business Standard, Sonata Software has announced the appointment of Hariprasad Rebala (Hari) as Chief AI Officer. In his new role, Hari will lead the company's end-to-end AI-led business transformation, shaping and executing the company's AI strategy across offerings, service delivery, platforms, capabilities, ecosystem, and partnerships. As per the latest regulatory filing, Hari joined from voice startup Gnani.ai, where he was the chief of AI solutions and growth. The appointment forms part of Sonata's broader strategy to embed AI across its engineering, platforms and client solutions. Rajsekhar Datta Roy, Chief Executive Officer of Sonata Software, stated that "Transforming Sonata Software into an AI-native organization is foundational to our growth trajectory. Hari brings a unique combination of AI startup and IT services expertise, with deep context of enterprise-grade AI platforms and engineering, delivering to outcome-based models. His addition to our leadership team significantly strengthens our executive team as we rapidly transform to an AI-native organization."
As reported by Business Standard, Hari's primary focus will be on driving AI-led business outcomes and AI-native delivery, helping enterprises translate AI adoption into enterprise velocity and measurable business value. His role encompasses leading the company's comprehensive AI transformation initiatives across multiple business dimensions, with building differentiated AI capabilities and platforms for clients being a key focus area. The appointment represents Sonata's commitment to becoming a fully AI-native enterprise across its operations. Hariprasad Rebala, Chief AI Officer, emphasized that "AI is rapidly moving from experimentation to becoming fundamental to how enterprises compete, operate and create value. AI alone will not define the winners — the ability to translate AI into enterprise velocity will. Sonata brings together AI engineering and modernization capabilities, deep industry expertise and strategic technology partnerships to help clients make that shift at scale. My focus will be on building differentiated AI capabilities and platforms with our customers and partners, turning AI investments into measurable business outcomes and sustained competitive advantage."
According to Business Standard, Hari brings more than three decades of experience spanning IT services, enterprise technology and the startup ecosystem. Most recently, he served as Chief of AI Solutions and Growth at a deep-tech AI startup, and earlier co-founded Forfend, where he helped build IoT and conversational AI platforms. His previous experience includes holding senior leadership roles at (erstwhile) Mindtree, Capgemini, and Wipro, where he scaled businesses, built industry practices and led large transformation programs, particularly across Banking and Financial Services. Hari's experience has been particularly concentrated in banking and financial services, an industry where deploying AI at enterprise scale can require integrating new technology with established systems, data environments and operational controls. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Sonata Software is a $1.2 billion modernisation engineering company with 6,400+ AI engineers supporting global delivery. The company operates across the US, UK, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Australia, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as the Nordic region, serving clients in Retail & Manufacturing (RMD), Tech & Telecom (TMT), Healthcare (HLS), and Financial Services (BFSI) sectors.
As reported by Business Standard, with Rebala joining the executive team, Sonata is putting a dedicated senior leader over AI strategy as it works to integrate the technology across both its internal delivery model and the services and platforms it provides to enterprise customers. The company's strategy places implementation focus within its broader modernization business, with moving from pilot to operational deployment requiring changes across data platforms, software engineering, cloud infrastructure and business processes. Sonata's approach connects AI engineering with modernization work so clients can incorporate the technology into production environments rather than treating it as a standalone initiative. The company has strategic technology partnerships with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce and Snowflake, and reports annual scale of more than $1.2 billion using its proprietary Platformation framework as part of its modernization services.
