CO-FOUNDER & CTO · HABILELABS · JAIPUR, INDIA
Shankar Morwal
I build cloud and AI systems for organisations that cannot afford to get it wrong — NBFCs, banks and insurers, and the regulators reading over their shoulder.
I was supposed to be an electronics engineer. I read Electronics & Communication at MNIT Jaipur, graduated with the 2011 batch, wrote Java for about a year — and then the mobile boom hijacked me into web and mobile development. Fifteen years on I still think in systems: what breaks, what scales, and what you can actually put in front of an auditor.
In June 2016 Ankit Dhir and I signed the incorporation papers for HabileLabs. A decade later we are still the only two names on the register. I own the technology side of it.
“Our vision for the cloud practice is to make it invisible. When architecture, automation and security are woven into business DNA, technology stops being an overhead — it becomes the nervous system of growth.”
Now
HabileLabs
habilelabs.io ↗A Jaipur-born technology partner that helps enterprises adopt cloud, data and AI without betting the business on it. The company's own purpose statement is one line — make it easy to adopt and trust — and my job is the half of that sentence that has to hold under load.
- 2016
- Incorporated, 10 June
- 200+
- Clients served
- 15+
- Countries
- 7
- Offices, 4 countries
- 95%
- Client retention
- 10
- Products shipped
- AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner
- AWS AI Services Competency
- AWS SMB Services Competency
- 9 AWS Service Validations
- Microsoft Solutions Partner
- Salesforce Partner
- ISO 27001 · ISO 9001:2015
Ten products, shipped alongside the services business
- FinHubAPI marketplace for BFSI — verification, compliance, onboarding.
- OzooAn all-in-one AI teammate that eats repetitive work.
- RefineFree AI-powered AWS cost optimizer. Finds hidden spend, turns it into savings.
- DocuSwiftEnterprise document management built to store, manage and scale.
- Habile iYEAI video monitoring that sees, hears and acts.
- ISV InsightsApp analytics for Salesforce ISV partners.
- LearnifyCorporate training and certification management.
- Event NerveEnd-to-end event management.
- Corporate CMSEnterprise website control without depending on IT.
- Smart BellAn IoT school bell that replaces the one on the wall.
What I think about
Most of my recent work sits where regulated data meets cloud scale. Six positions I keep arriving at, and keep being asked to defend:
- 01
Identity as the perimeter
In a cloud-native environment there is no edge to defend, so the perimeter moves to identity. Verify explicitly, apply least privilege, assume breach. Access starts at zero and is granted by role and actual need — nothing more.
- 02
Compliance you can measure continuously
The real shift is that compliance stops being periodic and becomes something you can monitor and measure continuously. An annual audit tells you about last year. Continuous controls tell you about this morning.
- 03
AI assists, humans own
AI speeds up data discovery and classification enormously. It does not take ownership of it. Governance teams still own the classification, masking and retention rules — and deleting a document from one system doesn't help if copies still exist elsewhere.
- 04
Two production environments, not one and a spare
In an active-active infrastructure the replication environment is a production environment, not a backup. Two parallel productions, indistinguishable. And none of it means anything without failover, failback, cyber-recovery and operational drills.
- 05
Cloud does not automatically reduce cost
Without financial governance, cloud spend fragments and becomes hard to control. FinOps is the discipline of measuring unit economics — technology cost per loan application, per customer served — rather than per instance.
- 06
Move each workload at the right time
The objective is not to migrate everything quickly. It is to move each workload at the right time, for the right business reason, and with controlled risk.
On the record
Verbatim, from print. Each one links to where it was said.
“Depth wins — anyone can plug in a tool, but very few can architect a transformation.”
THE TIMES OF INDIA · JUN 2026
“Behind every identifier stands a real individual whose dignity deserves care. Privacy is not just about data. It is about people.”
THE ECONOMIC TIMES · JUN 2026
“In a cloud-native environment, identity becomes the new perimeter.”
CXO TODAY · AUG 2026
“A collections executive may view limited borrower data but shouldn't download a full portfolio. A credit approver might approve loans under a threshold but shouldn't be able to modify underwriting rules.”
CXO TODAY · AUG 2026
“The greater challenge is not gaining access to AI models. It is deploying them responsibly within a regulated financial environment.”
TECH ACHIEVE MEDIA · AUG 2026
“Reliability, compliance, and cost control are not the outcomes of cloud transformation. They form the launchpad for continuous innovation.”
TECH ACHIEVE MEDIA · AUG 2026
“Our task is to clean up the tech mess, calm the situation, and make sure that SMBs can move to the cloud with confidence, not with anxiety.”
ZEE BUSINESS · JAN 2026
“MNIT is not just where my professional journey began — it is where my values were shaped.”
ON RECEIVING THE OUTSTANDING SERVICE AWARD · DEC 2025
“छोटे शहरों में प्रतिभा की कोई कमी नहीं होती। जरूरत सिर्फ सही दिशा और आत्मविश्वास की होती है।”
Small towns lack no talent — only direction and self-belief.
DAINIK BHASKAR, IN HINDI · MAR 2026
“Earning the AWS AI Services Competency reflects what our teams have been building for years: AI that works in production, not just in demos.”
ANNOUNCING THE AWS AI SERVICES COMPETENCY · SEP 2025
The decade
mine HabileLabs'sThe origin, as I told Dainik Bhaskar's Wall of Fame column: government schools in Rajasthan, then MNIT. The dream in 2016 was one sentence — build a technology company from Jaipur that works internationally. No outside investors, no big name, and early deals lost simply because customers preferred firms from Bengaluru or Hyderabad. My biggest inspiration through all of it was my mother, who trusted my decisions in every difficult stretch.
- Habilelabs Pvt. Ltd. incorporated in Jaipur on 10 June. Two directors on the register — Ankit Dhir and me. Still the only two.
- Top 10 Best Startups — Silicon India. The first outside recognition.
- First runner-up, Amazon Sambhav Mahakumbh.
- Published “Why Ethics First in the Software Services Industry?” — the closest thing I have to a company constitution.
- AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner.
- The Aadhaar-masking work goes public — 25 million legacy documents masked for Aavas Financiers, forty-plus terabytes processed.
- AWS Partner: Generative AI Sales — Specialized, July.
- Facilitated the GenAI fintech panel at the CXO Empowerment Summit — CTOs of Aavas Financiers, Kogta Financial and AU Small Finance Bank at the table.
- Winner, “Game On: Accelerate Demand with AWS”, November. The prize was re:Invent, Las Vegas.
- Best Cloud Initiative of the Year at the ETBFSI Exceller Awards; Best Startup in Healthcare from The Economic Times, Rajasthan; recognised at India Mobile Congress.
- Tech Titans of Rajasthan — The Times of India honours HabileLabs, presented by the Deputy Chief Minister.
- Senior Management Programme begins at IIM Ahmedabad, October.
- PTI syndicates “India's Next Cloud and AI Powerhouse” across Business Standard, The Week, the Tribune and The Wire, November.
- Outstanding Service Award from MNIT Jaipur at the 5th Alumni Awards, 24 December — handed back to the department where this all started.
- HabileLabs completes a decade. The Times of India runs the retrospective.
- C-Suite Social with AWS runs Jaipur → Mumbai → Gurugram → Udaipur; the last edition on agentic AI.
- Corner Office interview in CXO Today on zero trust and continuous compliance for NBFCs, August.
Built
npm ↗Ten packages on npm, and a public GitHub that is mostly a fossil record of JavaScript's last decade — CoffeeScript and Backbone in 2014, Node and Mongo in 2015, React Native and Expo monorepos by 2020. The current work lives in private repositories with my team's names on the commits, which is exactly where it should be.
Writing
all writing & press →Interviewed
Before this
Contact
Building something that has to be fast, compliant, and still standing in five years? That is the conversation I enjoy most.
When I am not doing any of the above: travelling, playing cricket, and reading Nifty50 charts far more closely than is good for me.