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Deepa Mahajan

PartnerBay Area

Advises executives working in financial services, technology, and their intersection (fintech) as they set effective growth and go-to-market strategies and build new digital businesses

Deepa coleads McKinsey’s digital-payments and fintech work in North America. Working with executives, she helps companies understand the disruptive technologies that are changing the nature of business, particularly in the banking and payments sectors. She brings particular expertise in the power and potential of digital payments.

Examples of her recent client work include the following:

  • designing a new go-to-market strategy for a payment company to bring new digital-payments products to market
  • transforming sales segmentation and coverage models for a fintech company
  • leading a fintech company’s digital-transformation pilot, which included working with more than 40 cross-functional units
  • developing a digital-banking business for a midsize bank
  • designing a payments company’s agile operating model and setting up the first “lighthouse” effort for the new way of working
  • helping a global cross-border payments company be more digitally focused by designing a five-year strategy to identify acquisitions, enhance digital-product development, and establish a digital approach to customer-life-cycle management

Deepa helped lead the McKinsey Global Institute’s research on the future of work, notably that regarding the impact of the gig economy and the rise of on-demand and independent work. She has also looked at the workforce implications of the automation age.

Before joining McKinsey, Deepa worked as a product manager at a seed-funded start-up and at prominent Silicon Valley companies.

Published Work

More for less: Five ways to lower cloud costs without destroying value,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022

Ten things to know about gender equality,” McKinsey Global Institute, September 2020

Don’t let the pandemic set back gender equality,” Harvard Business Review, September 2020

US small-business recovery after the COVID-19 crisis,” McKinsey & Company, July 2020

COVID-19 and gender equality: Countering the regressive effects,” McKinsey & Company, July 2020

Which small businesses are most vulnerable to COVID-19—and when,” McKinsey & Company, June 2020

COVID-19’s effect on minority-owned small businesses in the United States,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

COVID-19’s effect on jobs at small businesses in the United States,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

How to rebuild and reimagine jobs amid the coronavirus crisis,” McKinsey & Company, April 2020

Tracking US small and medium-sized business sentiment during COVID-19,” McKinsey & Company, April 2020

Nearly one billion people have no form of legal ID: Going digital could change that,” CNN Business Perspectives, February 2019

Digital identification: A key to inclusive growth, McKinsey Global Institute, January 2019

Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy, McKinsey Global Institute, October 2016

Education

Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
MBA

Stanford University
MS, electrical engineering

University of California, Berkeley
BS, electrical engineering, computer science