Dr Prag Sharma addressing students and mentors at Citi upStart 2025/26 

On November 19th, 2025, National College of Ireland in collaboration with Citi proudly announced the official kick-off of the Citi upStart programme for the 2025/26 academic year. The initiative, designed to foster innovation and entrepreneurship among postgraduate students, saw Citi organisers, mentors, NCI students, academics, and new partners gather for the launch event. 

Activate mentorship 

This year’s programme features 165 NCI postgraduate students who took part in a series of rigorous in-house idea-development workshops facilitated by NCI academic staff. This intensive process saw 60 students progress to team formation, advancing the most promising proposals which were then presented via elevator pitches at the event.  

Addressing participants and mentors, Dr Prag Sharma, Director, Future of Finance Think tank, former Global Head of AI CoE at Citi expressed his admiration for the nascent ideas, and provided crucial advice on AI’s role: “AI is a tool for you to use, alongside the other tools you have acquired through college and your working life. AI augments our skills; so, become experts in using it to accelerate your capabilities.” 

Following the pitches, a "speed dating" session allowed mentors from various Citi departments to connect with student teams, exploring project proposals, and identifying alignment with their skills and insights. 

Dr Anu Sahni, Programme Director for the MSc in AI for Business, Data Analytics, and Knowledge Transfer Champion at National College of Ireland underscored the transformative power of mentorship.  “Having the guidance and support of an experienced mentor can provide a mentee with a broad range of personal and professional benefits, including gaining practical advice and encouragement, as well being exposed to new ideas, and new ways of thinking, and now having another big organisation, Mphasis onboard to support this initiative, we will definitely see a remarkable amount of value added to an already innovative collaboration.”  

New supports 

This year’s cohort has already benefited from additional supports, including valuable insights into innovative solution development from Georgina Lupu Florian and Adrian Florian of Wolfpack Digital.  

Pritesh Tiwari, CEO of Data Science Wizards (itself a spin-out company from NCI MSc in Data Science), provided guidance on idea building and validation, while Swapnil Parashar, Director of Software Engineering at Oracle Cloud, shared industry perspectives on innovation.  

Adrian Florian from Wolfpack Digital with Abhijit Shetti from Mphasis 

New partnership 

A significant development for this year’s programme is the new strategic partnership with Mphasis, a global AI-led, platform-driven technology solutions provider. 

Mphasis will support participating student teams through project guidance and will sponsor awards and prizes for the winners at the upcoming Dragons’ Den event. 

Rohit Jayachandran, Head of Banking & Financial Services at Mphasis, said: “Our long-standing partnership with Citi has opened the door to impactful collaborations, such as Dragons’ Den. At Mphasis, we see immense potential in the next generation of technologists, and working with Citi upStart allows us to nurture that potential and fuel innovation for the future. Additionally, Mphasis’ philosophy, “AI Without Intelligence Is Artificial™”, aligns perfectly with the programme’s focus on intelligent application of technology.” 

The ten participating teams, comprised of master's students in Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, AI, AI for Business, Fintech, or Cybersecurity, are developing a diverse range of impactful ideas. These include "Finpals," an AI-driven solution for automating credit risk analysis; "Lendloop," a peer-to-peer lending platform; "Medinova AI" and "Medtrix," both focused on enhancing healthcare access and patient support; "Phantom," an all-in-one Irish tourism app; and "Venture Forge," which aims to innovate within the Carbon Credits Market using blockchain technology. 

About the teams

Each team has 6 members, all of whom are currently undertaking master's programmes in Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, AI, AI for Business, Fintech or Cybersecurity. The ideas being developed by the ten teams participating in this year’s Citi upStart are: 

• Finpals will use AI agents to automate and unify every stage of credit risk analysis and recovery management, optimising loan recovery by delivering faster approvals, fewer defaults and smarter portfolio management. 
• Idea Incubators will build a skill-first professional network for new generations and early-career talent that transforms networking into an engaging experience where learning, visibility, and opportunity happen together. 
• Just as Uber transformed car trips and Airbnb revolutionised short-term lets, 121.ai will be transforming finance as a safe, peer-to-peer lending platform. Lendloop will act as a link between those in need of a loan and those with funds to lend. 
• Medinova AI will consolidate all medical needs in one easy to use app, making access to healthcare services as easy as possible, as consistent as possible, and as early as possible, leading to positive patient outcomes as relieving systemic pressures. 
• Medtrix will be a unified AI-enabled care platform, designed to provide end-to-end support for vulnerable patients. Reducing false alarm rates by enhancing patient safety and independence will lead to a reduction in adverse events and a lower burden on caregivers. 
• Phantom will deliver a single, all-in-one tourism app for Ireland that connects guides, transport, hotels, food, safety updates, emergency health assistance, and instant language help, including safety alerts and offline access to essential information. 
• As digital ads become more expensive and less relevant, SparkHub will offer SMEs direct connection with verified micro-influencers, eliminating intermediaries like Meta and Google, and so reducing ad costs while increasing authentic connection with consumers. 
• Tech8 will help you invest, with an app that rounds up everyday purchases and auto-invests the spare change into local, verifiable impact portfolios, with an AI coach and an emotional agent that adapts to how users feel and motivates positive habits. 
• TRACE will help banks make faster decisions, leveraging AWS cloud services to create a scalable, secure, and real-time banking analytics system that addresses the challenges of traditional loan portfolio management, and could save up to 80% of manual data processing time. 
• Venture Forge are exploring the gap in the Carbon Credits Market, using blockchain to build transparency, automating issuance, decentralising exchange with smart contracts, boosting liquidity, risk management, and trustless settlements for carbon credit tokens. 

Bertie Kelly, Commercial Manager at NCI and Dr Anu Sahni, Programme Director for the MSc in AI for Business, Data Analytics, and Knowledge Transfer Champion at National College of Ireland, presenting at National College of Ireland. 

Professor Paul Stynes, Dean of the School of Computing at National College of Ireland said: “Regardless of whether you become the ultimate winner, I cannot emphasise enough the value of taking part in the Citi upStart programme. It is a chance to thrive personally, academically, and to build potentially lifelong career connections. It is one of those fantastic opportunities that could be the turning point in a student’s academic and professional career.” 

Founded in 2011, Citi upStart has a rich history of fostering innovation. Re-launched as a joint initiative with NCI in November 2024, the programme continues to be a vital platform for future technologists, driven by the leadership of Dr. Prag Sharma at Citi and Dr. Anu Sahni at NCI, and with top-down support from Davinia Conlan, Citi Country Officer, Ireland, and Professor Gina Quin, President of NCI. 

Dr Anu Sahni stated: “None of this would be possible without strong contributions from many people on both the Citi and NCI sides. Citi upStart receives top-down support from both Davinia Conlan, Citi Country Officer, Ireland, and Professor Gina Quin, President of NCI. I’d particularly like to acknowledge Dean of the School of Computing, Professor Paul Stynes, and Commercial Manager and TTO, Bertie Kelly. I’m grateful to so many of my colleagues in the School of Computing, including Anshu Shahedo. I am also very grateful to Eugene Mclaughlin, Sean Heeney, Victor del Rosal, and Vikas Sahni. I’d also like to thank our Marketing team, especially Teresa Murray and Kate O’Brien, for their continued support of NCI’s Knowledge Transfer initiatives. From Citi, as well as the many mentors, I’d like to thank Dr Prag Sharma for his leadership and support, as well as Anna Bednarska, Senior Vice President; Elizabeth O’Brien, Communications Manager; and Amy Treston, CSC Business Analyst. I’m very excited to welcome Mphasis; Deepa Nagaraj, Abhijit Shetti, and team, as a partner, and greatly appreciative of support from Wolfpack Digital, Data Science Wizards, and Oracle. Finally, I would like to thank the students for their enthusiasm, their wonderful ideas, and for their hard work and passion throughout the programme. It is a fantastic achievement to get to this level.” 

About National College of Ireland  

National College of Ireland, located at the heart of the IFSC, is renowned for its academic excellence in business, marketing, early childhood education and care, HR, accounting and finance, psychology, data analytics, and computing. Alongside studying a broad range of courses, NCI students also learn practically by availing of work placements and research opportunities that are aimed at fostering innovation and understanding in various in-demand fields. NCI values entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as continuously striving to ensure that the College is a welcoming, inclusive place where all students and staff can thrive, personally, professionally, and academically. At NCI, we are with you every step of the way. 

About Citi 

Citi is a preeminent banking partner for institutions with cross-border needs, a global leader in wealth management and a valued personal bank in its home market of the United States. Citi does business in more than 180 countries and jurisdictions, providing corporations, governments, investors, institutions and individuals with a broad range of financial products and services. 

About Mphasis 

At Mphasis, engineering has been in our DNA since inception. Mphasis is an AI-led, platform-driven company with human-in-the-loop intelligence, helping global enterprises modernize, infuse AI, and scale with agility. The Mphasis.ai unit and Mphasis AI-powered ‘Tribes’ are focused on client outcomes and embed artificial intelligence and autonomy into every layer of the enterprise technology and process stack. Mphasis built NeoIP™, a breakthrough AI platform that orchestrates a powerful pack of AI solutions and platforms to deliver impactful outcomes across the enterprise IT value chain, as we believe ‘AI Without Intelligence Is ArtificialTM’. Mphasis NeoIP™ is powered by the Ontosphere, a dynamic and ever-evolving knowledge base, delivering continuous and constant innovation through perpetual intelligent engineering—driving end-to-end enterprise transformation. 

At the heart of our approach is customer-centricity—reflected in our proprietary Front2Back™ transformation framework, which uses the exponential power of cloud and cognitive to deliver hyper-personalized digital experiences (C=X2C2TM=1) and build strong relationships with marquee clients. Our Service Transformation solutions enable enterprises to pivot from legacy systems and operations to secure, adaptive, cloud-first operating models with minimal disruption. Continuous investments in platforms, such as the Neo series, enable enterprises to stay efficient, relevant, and ahead in a dynamic AI-first world. Mphasis is a Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch, Hi-Trust company, rooted in a learning and growth culture.

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