From the Thar Desert
to the trading floor

Beginnings in Rajasthan

Dilip Pungliya was born in Dhorimanna, Barmer — a remote corner of Rajasthan — into a family whose construction business would later become Vishnu Prakash R Punglia Ltd, a listed infrastructure company. Growing up around a working enterprise, and later in Jodhpur, the Blue City, he absorbed business the way most people absorb language: early, completely, and by living inside it.

His formal path began with a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical from SSGMCE College, Amravati University, completed in 1997 — a training in systems, circuits, and the discipline of things that must simply work.

Markets, first-hand

After early years as a technology leader at Softsol ENT, Dilip joined NSE / NSE.IT in 2001 — the technology heart of India’s national stock exchange. It was there that two threads of his life fused: capital markets and data. At Ness Technologies from 2004, he added the craft of delivery — planning, design, coding, and database management for international customers across the world.

The London decade

In 2007 Dilip moved to the United Kingdom, and from 2008 stepped into the engine rooms of global finance. As an Enterprise Data Architect at HSBC, BNP Paribas, ICBC Standard Bank, and Deutsche Bank, he worked where the stakes are highest: regulatory data, policy-making, financial and non-financial risk, and the instruments that move markets — FX, derivatives, fixed income, bonds, and metals.

In banking, a data model is not documentation. It is the difference between a clean regulatory filing and a headline.

After 2021, he deliberately widened the aperture — bringing the same architectural rigour to Shell, one of the world’s largest energy companies, and to DEFRA, the UK government department responsible for environment, flooding, agriculture, and international trade.

Builder and backer

Alongside the corporate career, Dilip has been a promoter and technology advisor to VPRPL since 2014, guiding business transformation, digital strategy, and development for the family company. Along the way he has explored and backed startups across fintech, food tech, service tech, data tech, and electric vehicles.

Since 2023, he has been an investor, co-founder, and significant shareholder of ztudium Group — serving as VP and Chief Business Officer of a company building fourth-industrial-revolution technology: AI-driven solutions, Web 3.0, blockchain, metaverse, and a global family of knowledge platforms including businessabc, citiesabc, fashionabc, and IntelligentHQ.

The thread that holds it together

Before any of it, there was service. As a child, Dilip helped his family carry food to remote villages during the droughts of the 1980s. In Mumbai in 2005, he organised food distribution after devastating floods. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, he coordinated food procurement and relief, and ran a charity podcast to keep his community connected and positive through lockdown.

His stated ambition is simple and unfashionable: to build socially responsible business on compassion, fairness, and integrity — and to prove those values scale.