The advisor technology platform provider and consultancy Milemarker has added its own chief technology officer.
The firm, which was launched and co-founded by industry executive and serial entrepreneur Jud Mackrill in 2021, has announced the appointment of Kailash Duraiswami as its first CTO.
Duraiswami, a serial entrepreneur himself, is no stranger to the fintech scene. In 2021, he founded Pantenix, an AI platform for automating manual data-entry processes, which he later sold to Orion Advisor Solutions.
Following that acquisition, he continued at Orion as an enterprise architect working on Orion’s data streaming platform, which was recognized with a 2023 WealthManagement.com Industry Award in the technology disruptor category for data accessibility, delivery and transparency.
“Everyone on the leadership team has started a company of their own,” said Duraiswami, noting that while his on-paper mandate as CTO is to manage the software footprint of Milemarker, it remains an open environment and a young company where the whole team shares ideas and creativity.
Duraiswami spent a year contracting with Milemarker as an engineer prior to officially coming on board as its CTO. He has also spent more than a decade working in software engineering roles in addition to his entrepreneurial endeavors. He attended Emory University, where he earned a degree in financial economics.
Milemarker, in simplest terms, seeks to serve advisory firms—including RIAs and IBDs—in gaining control over and “owning their data,” a phrase Mackrill has been quoted using numerous times.
The firm has grown to more than 30 employees and offers a mix of consulting, managed back-office services and a fractional chief data officer service, and several software-as-a-service products.
Most recently, Milemarker rolled out its Firm Intelligence product in September. It also has an Advisor Relationship Management platform, an Integration Suite, Data Analytics and Reporting for Wealth Management and the Milemarker Analytics Suite.
“There are many systems that advisory firms use and usually only a small amount of folks in a given shop are technically proficient enough to drill down deeply into those products and even they would be challenged to understand a given platform’s 10,000 features and manage all the data,” said Duraiswami.
“What we do is take the data from all those systems and build a portal that allows the advisors and others the ability to use that data in a meaningful way,” he said.
Milemarker tends to serve advisory firms managing assets ranging from $250 million to over $200 billion. It has gained experience working with firms that have grown through mergers and acquisitions and end up with fairly heterogeneous tech stacks. The company, in turn, helps bring order to the data chaos by creating workflows, integrating those systems and consolidating the technology they have.
“Kailash’s experience as a founder, combined with his success scaling innovative technologies, makes him the perfect fit to lead Milemarker’s technology team,” said Kyle Van Pelt, CEO of Milemarker.
