Bhasker Rao

Bhasker Rao, known widely as Baz, built his career across two decades in risk, compliance and financial operations at some of the most significant fintech and financial institutions in the world. Beginning in compliance and risk roles at American Express, he subsequently joined Square (now Block), where he developed expertise in merchant risk management that gave him early insight into how financial crime compliance was being structured — and where it was failing. He later joined SumUp before moving to Revolut Business, where he and co-founder Paulo Guichard met and began developing their shared thesis about compliance infrastructure.

At Revolut, Rao saw first-hand how compliance processes that were designed for slower-moving institutions became acute bottlenecks in a high-growth fintech environment. Manual KYB checks, outdated datasets and periodic review cycles meant compliance teams were perpetually catching up — never anticipating. The cost of that structural lag was visible in two directions: operational drag for businesses trying to onboard and grow, and escalating enforcement risk as regulators around the world increased the intensity of AML scrutiny. Rao recognised that fixing compliance required rebuilding its data foundation, not just automating its workflows.

In May 2023, Rao co-founded Condukt with Paulo Guichard to do exactly that. As co-founder, Rao leads the compliance domain expertise and institutional relationships at Condukt, drawing on the trust he has built with Chief Risk Officers and Chief Compliance Officers across European financial services over two decades. His reputation within the compliance community gave Condukt credibility and access to national data registries that would otherwise be difficult for a new entrant to obtain, and the company's first customers include Wise, Tide, Mollie and Rakuten.

Condukt raised a £7.5m seed round in November 2025 led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and MMC Ventures. MMC's investment memo described Rao as the anchor that makes Condukt credible from day one — a trusted confidant to multiple Chief Risk and Compliance Officers navigating a regulatory environment in which global AML fines reached more than $6 billion by mid-2025. The company operates from London and Porto, with an engineering team drawing on talent from Revolut and Meta.