Mehul Desai has spent almost 25 years in the areas of intellectual property, product development, business development, strategy and international operations, focusing on ICT (or Information Communication Technologies) and related applications worldwide. Mehul has done pioneering work in the field of secure personalized transactions, with focus on finance, retail, healthcare, and government services for mobile phone users, evolving the Digital Wallet, to a Mobile Wallet, to a Lifestyle Container.

Mehul co-founded C-SAM with Sam Pitroda in 1998, a mobile technology platform that allowed users to make payments using NFC, or by scanning a QR-Code, make payments from a wallet stored in the cloud, created customized wallet solutions for payments such as movie ticketing, value added services, receipts and even for use as an id proof. C-SAM powered many commercial mobile payments services in India, Japan (DNP), Mexico, Singapore (Starhub), the United States (ISIS) and Vietnam. MasterCard had tied-up with C-SAM in in 2012 to offer mobile wallet service PayPass in the Middle East and also made a minority investment in it before acquiring it in 2014 to use C-SAM’s technology to speed up launch of its MasterPass wallet service internationally.

Mehul Desai is founder and CEO of DeZai providing strategic advisory services in areas related to ICT, Payments, and Innovation as well as providing angel investments to ventures focused on Commerce 2.0, IoT, and Media 2.0. He is focused on fostering innovation in the areas of Technology, New Media and Social Entrepreneurship, thru mentorship, investment, and cross-pollination across sectors and markets. Mehul is an expert-in-residence at the Chicago Innovation Exchange.

Mehul Desai co-authored a book – March of Mobile Money, The Future of Lifestyle Management – which was published by Collins Business in 2010. Mehul has authored a new book – August of Money, The Quest for Cashless Society – which was published by Let’s Talk Payments in August 2015.

Mehul has been involved with several industry forums focused on developing standards for secure mobile transactions, including the MPIW or Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup, an industry task force convened by the US Federal Reserve as well as participating in Many Conferences such as Money 20/20, IMTC and others where he speaks on topics related to mobile commerce, payments, cash usage & evolution, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Mehul Desai is the co-inventor of issued patents and pending applications. He holds a B.S. in Telecommunication Engineering from Bangalore University (1993) and a M.S. in Engineering Management from Marquette University (1998)