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Deepan Bafna steps up as director at Citi India
MUMBAI: Citi India has tapped a familiar hand to steer one of its most dynamic businesses. Deepan Bafna has been elevated to director, taking the reins of the bank’s local currency credit trading desk in Mumbai.
In his new role, Bafna will oversee trading across investment-grade and high-yield credit bonds, along with key rates products such as government bonds and interest rate swaps. The brief is clear and unapologetically market-facing: generate absolute trading profits while navigating India’s fast-evolving credit landscape.
But this is not just about buying and selling bonds. Bafna will also lead Citi India’s structured credit financing efforts, spanning bonds, securities financing transactions, credit derivatives and loans. A key part of his mandate is to keep the product cupboard fresh, introducing new credit structures that deepen Citi’s onshore franchise and sharpen its competitive edge.
The promotion caps a steady rise at Citi, where Bafna joined as vice president in late 2022 and quickly became a key figure in local currency credit and financing. Before that, he spent over six years at HDFC Bank, managing proprietary credit books, trading government securities and overseeing corporate bond portfolios across the rating spectrum.
His career began in the insurance and asset management world, with fixed income roles at ICICI Lombard, before expanding into market making, trading and portfolio strategy. Along the way, Bafna has built a reputation for blending macro insight with hands-on trading instincts.
With India’s credit markets growing deeper and more complex, Citi’s choice signals a bet on experience, range and an appetite for innovation. For Bafna, it is a bigger seat at a faster table, where spreads, structures and split-second decisions set the pace.
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Workday unveils Sana, a new AI tool for businesses
New conversational interface, 300+ skills and deep integrations aim to turn AI from sidekick to operator
PUNE: Workday has fired a fresh salvo in the enterprise AI race, rolling out “Sana”, a system it touts as “superintelligence for work”, designed not merely to assist, but to act. The pitch is blunt: stop dabbling with disconnected copilots and start letting AI run the plumbing of business.
Unveiled globally on March 17, Sana arrives as a three-part stack, Sana for Workday, a conversational interface; a self-service agent with more than 300 skills; and Sana Enterprise, which plugs into tools from Gmail and Outlook to Salesforce and Slack. The aim is to collapse the sprawl of enterprise software into a single AI-led workflow engine.
At its core, Sana promises four things: find, act, build and automate. Employees can query internal data, execute tasks such as updating records or contracts, generate dashboards, and trigger multi-step workflows, all within the same interface. The twist is where it sits, inside Workday’s existing systems, inheriting their permissions, compliance rules and audit trails.
“AI only works in the enterprise when it’s connected to trusted, deterministic systems,” said Aneel Bhusri, co-founder, chief executive and chair. “Sana is what brings it all together… a powerful way for people to search, reason and orchestrate work across the enterprise.”
The critique of current AI deployments is familiar, flashy pilots, little real impact. Workday’s answer is to embed intelligence where decisions are made and actions executed. Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product and technology, framed it as a shift from suggestion to execution: “AI agents take action using trusted context, not just provide suggestions… a single experience where AI is embedded directly in the flow of work.”
Early adopters suggest traction. Berner claims 90 per cent adoption within 40 days, scrapping 400 ChatGPT licences. Cheffelo calls Sana its “AI backbone”, while Telavox says the conversation has shifted from automating tasks to reimagining entire processes.
Analysts, too, see a broader play. Josh Bersin described the integration as “a major milestone”, arguing it could reshape both customer and employee experience by making AI-native workflows the default.
Sana is being bundled via Workday’s Flex Credits, no separate licence, no added paywall, a move that lowers friction and speeds adoption. Meanwhile, Sana Enterprise extends the system beyond Workday, allowing users to search documents, schedule meetings or track project tickets across multiple platforms in one conversation.
The bet is clear: whoever controls the workflow, controls the future of enterprise software. With Sana, Workday is trying to move AI from a helpful assistant to an invisible operator. If it works, the software menus may vanish, and with them, the way work itself is done.
