Nikhil Gnaga

Enterprise Resiliency Executive with 7+ years driving IT Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Management (BCM) across BFSI environments. Leads a 16-member technical team executing enterprise-wide Business Impact Analyses (BIA), DR strategy, and live multi-application failover drills for critical financial systems. Cut recovery time by 50% by re-engineering failover playbooks, automated 21+ enterprise applications end-to-end, and directed DR programs covering 50+ applications simultaneously with zero business disruption.

Trusted by senior leadership and external/RBI auditors as the primary technical authority on enterprise resilience, regulatory compliance, and cyber-resilient recovery architecture — backed by strong Excel-based reporting, CMDB governance, and executive presentation skills.

Manager – BCP-IT & Disaster Recovery Projects - L&T Finance

(2024-10)

• Lead a 16-member technical team delivering corporate-level Business Continuity Planning (BCP) governance across the entire IT ecosystem.
• Direct annual, organization-wide Business Impact Analyses (BIA) and risk assessments across multiple business units, mapping application dependencies into a Tier-1/Tier-2/Tier-3 recovery inventory and setting realistic RTO/RPO targets.
• Own the enterprise DR strategy, policies, standards, and technical runbooks, aligned to organizational risk appetite, RBI regulatory requirements, and ISO 22301 / ISO 20000-1 standards.
• Spearheaded end-to-end planning and execution of live DR drills for core financial applications, coordinating a continuous 3-day production-to-DR site failover with zero data loss.
• Improved overall application recovery time by 50% by identifying bottlenecks during simulation testing and optimizing failover playbooks.
• Directed full-scale, controlled data center power down/up exercises, validating backup infrastructure and UPS readiness; planned and led tabletop, walkthrough, simulation, and full-failover DR tests through to gap remediation closure.
• Maintain CMDB records and Excel-based DR compliance trackers across 50+ applications, ensuring data accuracy for BIA, RTO/RPO, and audit reporting datasets.
• Prepare and deliver executive presentations and audit decks for senior leadership, RBI examiners, and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Serve as central coordinator during DR activations and live incidents, directing recovery efforts across technical teams, including out-of-hours on-call response.
• Managed the migration of the Perpetuuiti Technosoft Services Pvt ltd (Continuity Patrol) enterprise DR platform from v4.5 to v6, governing POC, configuration, live testing, and post-migration stability.
• Automated 21 critical enterprise applications within the DRM tool across application, web, and database layers, and implemented air-gapped, immutable backup architecture to protect recovery data against ransomware.
• Orchestrated integration of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and other security layers within core DRM tools to strengthen recovery environments.
• Acted as prime technical lead for internal/external audits and RBI regulatory examinations, maintaining quarterly DR calendars and change management tracking.
• Designed and delivered DR training and awareness programs, ensuring recovery teams execute procedures flawlessly under pressure.

Deputy Manager – DR Projects - Axis Bank Ltd

(2022-01 - 2024-07)

• Served as core administrator for DR projects, driving configuration, patching, and scaling of the DRM automation suite alongside PostgreSQL database systems.
• Developed, documented, and tested technical runbooks for manual and automated switch-over/failover procedures, significantly reducing RTO metrics.
• Performed data validation and collection across production and DR environments, maintaining accurate CMDB and RTO/RPO records in Excel-based trackers.
• Monitored real-time system alerts and data synchronization between production databases (MS-SQL, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL) and downstream applications.
• Led incident management and root cause analysis using enterprise monitoring suites, coordinating fixes across siloed application teams.
• Participated in high-level UAT deployment calls with development teams to review code changes and execute unit and sanity testing.
• Managed audit readiness by preparing business requirements documentation (BRD) and ensuring DR workflows complied with change management policy.

Technical Support Engineer / QA Tester - Perpetuuiti Technosoft Services Pvt. Ltd.

(2018-10 - 2021-12)

• Served as primary implementation engineer deploying and configuring "Continuity Patrol" DR automation for high-profile banking and enterprise clients.
• Delivered operations and infrastructure support for major clients including LIC, Reliance Industries (RIL), Reliance Jio, Yes Bank, and ICICI Bank.
• Supervised and executed live DR failover drills for 50+ applications simultaneously, managing Oracle Data Guard (ODG) and MS-SQL mirroring replication.
• Integrated automated OTP alerting and NetApp storage systems into the Continuity Patrol framework via SOAP and Postman API protocols.
• Monitored mixed Windows/Linux server environments and niche financial platforms (e.g., Murex), using JIRA to track and resolve client defects.
• Supported presales technical discussions with live product demonstrations and led post-deployment training for system administrators.
• Generated post-drill execution reports, mapped architectural gaps, and drafted runbooks aligned with RBI disaster recovery guidelines.

Full Stack Developer - MyRaidCara Info Tech

(2018-04 - 2018-09)

• Built responsive, scalable web applications, implementing full-lifecycle testing frameworks (white-box structural and black-box functional testing).
• Owned daily sprint tasks, maintained a centralized codebase via GitHub, gathered stakeholder requirements, and structured project task breakdowns.

Bachelor of Computer Science - Information Technology - RD & SH National College and SWA Science College (2017)

Higher Secondary Certificate - SIWS N.R. Swamy College of Commerce & Economics (2014)