Kaushalya Somasundaram

Kaushalya Somasundaram is a General Partner at Fintech Growth Fund. She is also a non-executive director at Hampden and a member of the audit, risk and digital committees. She is also a Venture Partner and core member of the Investment Committee at Tomorrow Capital.

In addition to advising and investing in startups and scale-ups across the UK and emerging markets, she is also a member of the World Trade Board and an advisory member of a select few portfolio companies of accelerators across Fintech, AI, Web3, DeFi & Crypto.

At Square, Kaushalya was the UK Head of Payments, Industry Relations & Partnerships. She oversaw corporate governance, regulatory matters and relationships with industry partners. Kaushalya often took part in industry panels and public fora, as a key speaker, representing Square UK and the merchants it supports.

At HSBC, Kaushalya held senior roles across Fintech Partnerships & Ventures, Corporate Development, Strategy & Planning, and Group Audit. In her most recent role, she was the Global Head of Fintech Partnerships & Strategy for the Corporate & Institutional Digital group. She led the partnerships & corporate venturing for HSBC's core businesses.

Kaushalya also served as a director in the HSBC Strategic Innovation Investments team and led the investments into, and sat on the board of, several portfolio companies, including Tradeshift, LiquidityMatch and R3. Within Corporate Development, she led HSBC's investment into Markit and subsequent IPO, as well as investments into consortiums such as Acadiasoft, OTCDeriv, LCH/LSE and LiquidityMatch.

Kaushalya also led HSBC's efforts in Distributed Ledger Technology, including the investment in and partnership with R3 and HSBC’s participation in major industry initiatives such as the Utility Settlement Coin.

Kaushalya was invited to participate on the World Trade Board, BAFT Innovation Council, Tech City - Fintech Delivery Panel, Fintech Circle Institute and Whitechapel Think Tank.

Kaushalya has been recognised in The Female FTSE Board Report - 100 Women to Watch 2022, Brummell's list of the most inspirational women innovators in London in 2016; top 100 Women in Fintech by UK Innovate Finance in 2022, 2017 and 2018; London's top 100 Women in Fintech by Business Insider; top 100 Women in Fintech by Global Lattice 80 and short-listed for Women in Technology by Banking Technology Leadership Award 2017. Kaushalya has also been quoted in many industry publications and thought leadership articles. Kaushalya grew up in Botswana and holds an MBA from Australia. She moved to the UK in 2006.