The Business of Access — The CEO of Arta Finance wants to make wealth a right, not a privilege

In a crowded classroom in Delhi, a young Caesar Sengupta sat among children whose lives spanned the full spectrum of privilege. Millionaires’ heirs, middle-class dreamers like him, and the son of the school’s security guard all shared the same worn wooden desks. It was a rare leveller, a melting pot where ambition and humility coexisted. The school, an Irish-Catholic institution run by Christian Brothers, was a crucible where values were forged. “Some of my best friends today are people I’ve known since kindergarten,” the CEO and co-founder of Arta Finance reflects. “But more importantly, the school’s ethics, its culture of selflessness, and the devotion of the Catholic Brothers were deeply impactful.”

Textbooks and exams formed a large and expected aspect of education here, but just as important was the quiet influence of teachers who saw potential where others might have seen just another face in the crowd. “I remember one brother in particular — when I was in Class 8 or 9, he pulled me aside and said, ‘I think you could be very good at maths.’”

That simple belief held sway, but the Brother sweetened the deal even further — one that a young Caesar could not resist. “He made me a deal: if I committed to extra maths classes, he’d let me use the school swimming pool on weekends,” he recalls with a chuckle.

But Caesar was not only shaped by school; his very name, he tells me in this conference room on the 12th floor of Arta Finance’s office at the UIC building, carried weight. In a country of over a billion people, the name is a rarity. “My grandfather, a doctor, named me. Growing up with a name like that, you either shrink away from it, or you embrace it. For me, it became something I leaned into.”

The name first became an identity, then a responsibility. “I felt like I had to live up to it. It sounds pretentious, I know,” Caesar admits, “but when you’re a kid, these things matter.” 

While his childhood was defined by the egalitarian air of the school and the anchor of his name, his family played an equally significant role. His mother, in particular, bore Caesar’s potential on her shoulders. “When she had me, she thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to pour everything I can into this kid.’” A teacher by profession, she saw education not merely as a path to success but as armour against life’s uncertainties.

Still, Caesar’s intellectual awakening didn’t occur fully until college. Enrolled in Delhi College of Engineering, he initially studied electrical engineering. But then came the internet.

“Somewhere during college, I discovered computer science. Something about it just clicked.” These were the days of dial-up connections, message boards, and painfully slow downloads. Yet, for Caesar, it was magic. “I remember downloading these notes from MIT off some bulletin board system, and it just blew my mind. These were things I had only heard of, and suddenly, they were right there in front of me.”

That dial-up hum soon became the soundtrack to his nights, the flicker of his monitor a lighthouse guiding him towards something larger. It was this obsession, this clarity, that took him across the world to Stanford University.

At Stanford, Caesar was immersed in a culture of unbounded ambition. “By my second year, most of what I was doing was essentially PhD-level work — hardcore research,” Caesar remembers. In those years, between the long hours in computer labs and the quiet reflection of dorm rooms, Caesar began to realise something profound: technology was as much about lines of code and sleek interfaces as it was about power — the kind of power to level playing fields, bridge gaps, and create opportunities where none existed.

The seeds of that realisation, planted in a Delhi classroom and nurtured in the digital glow of early computers, were now ready to bloom on a global stage.

Googliness

When Caesar first walked into Google’s Mountain View campus, he was stepping into a space where ambition wasn’t a dirty word — it was the baseline. The air buzzed with the hum of restless ideas, conversations about moonshots, and the promise of technology changing the world. For the techno-optimist, it felt like home.

At Google, Caesar became a key player in one of the company’s most transformative projects: ChromeOS. At a time when the world’s most widely used operating systems were expensive and resource-heavy, Caesar and his team asked a deceptively simple question: What if a computer could be cheap enough for every child in the world to own one?

“The driving motivation was the impact we’d seen from initiatives like the One Laptop Per Child project at MIT. Although it was such a powerful idea, it wasn’t scalable — it remained a research project.”

With Sundar Pichai as his boss, Caesar embarked on the journey to make ChromeOS grow beyond mere software. “Sundar and I would constantly discuss how we could take everything we knew about operating systems and figure out a way to make computers so cheap and accessible that every child could have one.”

Years later, that vision became reality. Today, Chromebooks are ubiquitous in classrooms across the globe, serving as bridges to digital literacy, creating access for millions of children worldwide. One need not look far to see these humble machines in action.

In Singapore, when the Ministry of Education launched the National Digital Literacy Programme in 2020, aiming to equip every secondary school student with a personal digital device by 2021, many schools chose Chromebooks for their affordability, ease of use, and seamless integration with educational platforms. It’s an initiative that bridged the digital divide and ensured equitable access to digital education, aligning with MOE’s EdTech Masterplan 2030.

But Caesar didn’t stop at Chromebooks. His next major project was Google Pay, an initiative that would soon revolutionise digital payments in emerging markets, particularly India. “Back in 2016–2017, India was still largely a cash economy. But when we launched Google Pay in partnership with the government, the shift was incredible.”

The adoption was, in a word, explosive. From bustling urban markets to remote villages, digital transactions became a lifeline. “Hundreds of millions of people were using Google Pay,” Caesar notes, a blend of pride and astonishment in his voice.

If anything, these projects proved that technology does not exist in isolation; they live in the messy, vibrant context of human lives. Both ChromeOS and Google Pay were proof that market share and profit margins can sit alongside access. These were tools that didn’t fit conveniently and effortlessly into lives but changed them in ways no one saw coming. “My life, in many ways, has been about figuring out how to enable equality of opportunity for people. A lot of my professional work has aligned with that idea.”

At Google, Caesar was beginning to see glimpses of his calling: “I have this ability to see technology, to understand how products are built, how they function, and how they make sense for people. And I want to use that to open more doors, to create more opportunities, to enable access for as many people as possible.”

A brush with access

After 14 years at Google, Caesar decided to leave. His departure wasn’t a retreat — rather, it was a return to something deeply personal. After years of building products that connected people to knowledge, money, and opportunity, he saw another gap: financial tools designed only for the elite. The systems that governed wealth were like exclusive clubs, their doors guarded by gatekeepers of privilege.

“I think that was part of why I started Arta. As I was rising up at Google, and at some point, we started using a private bank, I had this big realisation: Wow, this stuff is powerful. Why didn’t I know about this 10 or 15 years ago?” Caesar reflects.

His frustration was also with the outdated systems the world inhabits, perhaps a job hazard after more than a decade working at one of the world’s most technologically driven institutions. “Even when you have access, you realise it’s still very old-school. You have to talk to a banker for everything, fees are high, and the minimums are exorbitant. I kept thinking: Why? It doesn’t make sense,” he adds, slightly frustrated.

This disconnect sparked the founding vision of Arta Finance in 2022 — a platform built to democratise wealth management using AI and technology. Caesar saw the inefficiencies embedded in traditional wealth management: the reliance on manual processes, the opaque fee structures, and the exclusive nature of access.

“The only reason it’s like that is because... (Read the rest of the story here)