Experience

Since February 2019, Pinaka Consulting Ltd has been providing Blockchain Technical Advisory services to the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB); contracted to manage deliverables in the development of a blockchain based, private permissioned CBDC.

Pinaka works closely with ECCB’s FinTech Group to ensure the Technology Solutions Provider meets stipulated requirements of the project. We provide overall Programme Management & Technical oversight in the design, development, testing and implementation of the CBDC, DCash, now live in 5 Eastern Caribbean territories.

Our work continues to assist in extending DCash services and expanding to all 8 EC territories.

Team

Shiva Bissessar, Managing Director & Principal Consultant

Shiva Bissessar has over 20 years experience and posses B.Sc. Computing & Information Systems (Hons.) (UoL), MBA (UWI) & M.Sc. Information Security (University College London, UK) qualifications.  His work in Digital Financial Services began with his M.Sc. thesis examining Bitcoin transaction flows. He later conducted socio-economic research into the advent of digital currency in the Caribbean, as published by the United Nations in 2016. In 2016 and 2017 he worked with the International Telecommunications Union to develop capacity building workshops for Caribbean policy makers on Fintech & DFS. He advocates for responsible adoption of blockchain and DLT assisting to bridge the gap between policy makers and market entrants. He has served as a program committee member for the Blockchain Research and Application session at the IEEE 2018 World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI).  He also served as researcher and co-author of the report Understanding the Role of Fintech Companies and Regulations in Enabling Caribbean MSMEs to Innovate and Grow.  He currently serves as Programme Manager on the ECCB’s DCash project.

Javed Samuel, CBDC & Blockchain Technical Lead

Javed has over 15 years of relevant experience in computer security industry. He obtained a Masters in Engineering (MEng) and BSc in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  where he completed a number of computer security and cryptography classes. He also has a BSc in Management Science with a concentration in Operations Research and minors in Economics and Mathematics from MIT. He was the recipient of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and completed a Masters in Science (MSc) in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Oxford University. Javed’s professional computer security experience has been across a range of industries and he has worked with startups to Fortune 500. His work has included assessments on Blockchain platforms and involves reviewing functionality, such as smart contract execution environment, consensus protocols for nodes on the network, transaction processing or secure crypto-currency token storage. He also devotes some time to research interests and have presented at various security conferences and workshops including Blackhat, AT&T CyberSecurity, BlueHat, SecureWorld, InfraGuard, Voice of Blockchain,and OWASP. He currently serves as Technical Consultant on the ECCB’s DCash project.

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