Beyond Automation: The Blueprint for Agentic AI and Intelligent Enterprises

About two-and-a-half decades ago, Deepak Dastrala was a curious young engineering student at the Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Here, his early encounters with software development laid the groundwork for a lifelong passion for innovation. Even back then, Artificial Intelligence (AI) intrigued him — not merely as a technology, but as a transformative force. Today, as Partner and Chief Technology Officer at Intellect Design Arena, Dastrala stands at the intersection of enterprise AI and financial technology, helping shape the next generation of human-machine interactions.

From the beginning, Dastrala’s career has been marked by foresight and adaptability. In the early 2000s, he served as one of the core members of the Platform Engineering team at Premier Technology / EZ Data, which focused on building CRM tools for insurance advisors. What started as an enterprise-grade platform pivoted to a SaaS model in the wake of the 9/11 disruptions, as insurance advisors sought to associate with more than one company to de-risk operations. This shift proved to be a lesson in agility — a principle that continues to define Dastrala’s leadership.

In the course of his professional journey, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been a close partner. “As professionals we are really focused on our domain. In my case that is banking and financial technology. But we need the right technology infrastructure to support us. AWS has really helped us stay ahead of the curve”, he says.

Dastrala’s journey with Intellect Design Arena began in 2011. At the time, Intellect was emerging from its earlier avatar as Polaris Financial Technology, transitioning toward a product-focused strategy. With a sharp focus on banking and financial services, the company aimed to become a platform-first organization. “We wanted to create Intellectual Property (IP). We wanted to build IPs for the future — not just for India, but for the world,” says Dastrala, who is based out of Chennai.

As CTO, Dastrala took charge of strategy and innovation, identifying early on the potential of AI and data as core differentiators. The outcome of over a decade of research and development (R&D) under his leadership is Purple Fabric—Intellect AI’s flagship platform designed to accelerate enterprise AI adoption for financial institutions. “The platform is the result of almost ten years of building intelligence for highly regulated industries,” he says.

For Dastrala, AI is not merely a technological trend but a multi-dimensional enabler. Internally, Intellect Design Arena applies AI across the product lifecycle — from requirement gathering to support — through an AI-first philosophy. Externally, the approach is three-pronged: offering Purple Fabric as an enterprise AI platform, building AI-native products in insurance and lending, and embedding AI into existing platforms like trade finance and supply chain.

AWS: the backbone of innovation

The evolution of AI has reached a new inflection point. What excites Dastrala today is agentic AI — autonomous software agents that can perform complex tasks and collaborate with humans in real-time. “The current infrastructure was designed for applications, not agents,” he notes. “We’re now creating digital twins of multiple enterprise roles. That’s where the next wave of disruption lies.”

To support such rapid innovation, Intellect Design relies on AWS, which Dastrala describes as the “backbone for our innovation”. “AWS has enabled us to innovate faster by taking care of the infrastructure, allowing us to focus on what we do best — build domain-specific intelligence,” he shared. Intellect Design AI is entirely AWS-native, leveraging Amazon services like SageMaker and Bedrock to power its deep learning and LLM-based models.

What makes AWS indispensable, he adds, is its global presence, modularity, and enterprise-grade governance — key for a business operating in several countries and clients across diverse environments. “We use different models for different tasks — embedding, reasoning, LLMs — and AWS lets us do that with speed and flexibility,” Dastrala says.

AWS’ understanding of the governance model across multiple geographies including the US, Europe, UK also makes a lot of difference for Intellect Design to be in sync with local regulations and expand at a rapid pace.

It’s also about collaboration. Dastrala and his team actively engage with AWS teams on unsolved enterprise challenges in AI. “We are constantly pushing each other to solve last-mile problems — those that require 100% accuracy and precision in banking and finance,” he says. This synergy is further reinforced through global knowledge-sharing platforms and networking opportunities provided by AWS.

To keep pace with the blistering speed of AI evolution, Dastrala also collaborates with academic institutions like Columbia University, New York. The partnership enables Intellect Design to explore multi-disciplinary AI research — from operations to vision systems to human collaboration. “We don’t just look at what’s happening now, but what AI will look like five or ten years from now,” he says.

The rise of ambient intelligence

Looking ahead, Dastrala envisions two profound shifts in the AI landscape. First, the rise of ambient intelligence—systems that understand context and user intent without explicit commands. “Applications today are built with user friction—tabs, screens, data fields. That whole model will be challenged. The future will be natural and immersive,” Dastrala predicts. Whether it’s voice, vision, or multimodal inputs, the interface will dissolve, and AI will become an intuitive layer between humans and information.

Second, enterprise operations will shift from task-based workflows to agentic collaboration. “AI agents won’t just automate tasks; they will co-pilot judgment-heavy decisions alongside humans,” Dastrala points out. In this paradigm, machines won’t just assist — they’ll understand, anticipate, and evolve.

But how does one stay balanced while constantly peering into the future? For Dastrala, the answer lies in two key practices: sports and travel. A regular badminton player, he believes physical activity is essential to clear the mind and manage the intensity of work. Travel, meanwhile, offers serendipitous learning. “The best knowledge often comes from positive accidents — people, places, culture. They give me a unique lens on problems,” he shares.

At the heart of Dastrala’s philosophy is the belief that AI should amplify human potential — not replace it. His mission is not just to build better systems, but to reimagine what technology can do when powered by empathy, imagination, and intelligence.

As he wraps up the conversation, Dastrala reflects on his journey. “AI is changing faster than we can predict. But if there’s one constant, it’s that innovation thrives when people, platforms and partners like AWS come together to solve meaningful problems.” Dastrala isn’t just shaping the future of AI in banking — he’s crafting a blueprint for intelligent enterprises everywhere.