David Binny carries quiet confidence, the kind that comes not from years in the spotlight but from decades spent building, listening, and refining. There’s no jargon parade, no trend-driven bravado. Instead, he speaks with the precision of a product designer and the restraint of someone who’s seen a lot of hype and knows what actually sticks. Just deliberate insight shaped by a deep respect for how great systems and great companies are made.
“When things get noisy, the most powerful thing you can do as a leader is cut through it,” he says. That principle of clarity over complexity has become a throughline in his leadership and in the transformation, he has executed at Panaya. Once a behind-the-scenes tool for ERP upgrades, the company has emerged under his leadership as an AI-powered SaaS platform used by some of the world’s largest enterprises to manage testing, change, and digital risk with great accuracy. Panaya is no longer the upgrade company. It’s now the market leader in AI-powered Smart Testing and Change Intelligence, delivering speed, certainty, and scale.
But this isn’t just a product story. It’s a leadership story. At its center is a CEO who still thinks like a builder, and leads as someone who knows the real magic happens in the quiet decisions, not the keynote moments. Besides streamlining, David leads with a steady hand, guided by three additional values that have held firm as the business landscape has evolved dramatically.
He believes that empathy builds trust. He often notes that people bring their whole selves to work, and in challenging moments, showing up with understanding builds more than morale. It propels results. Curiosity, too, has been a constant. David describes it as his edge that keeps him scanning for change, exploring new tech, and spotting patterns early. In his view, it’s a leadership muscle that keeps you ahead.
Lastly, he underlines the importance of accountability and empowerment in unlocking growth. “I set high expectations,” he says, “but I also give people the room to own it.” That sweet spot fosters growth for both the business and the individuals involved.
A Product Brain with a Systems View
Coming from a product background, David had a front-row seat to what customers needed and how technology could meet them. That early vantage point shaped how he defines value: not in abstract features but in solutions that solve real problems. He often says he never stopped thinking like a product leader; the only shift was scale. Today, he sees the company itself as the product, and his job as CEO is to evolve it toward lasting value. Taking on that role meant zooming out; shifting from roadmaps to vision and asking the bigger questions: Where are we going? Why does it matter? What does success look like for our people, our customers, and the business as a whole?
It wasn’t about walking away from the details; it was about threading them into a bigger picture. A transition from execution to vision, problem-solving to pattern recognition, and product ownership to holistic experience ownership, including team, culture, growth, brand, and impact.
From Upgrade to Intelligence: Panaya Under CEO David
Under his leadership, Panaya evolved from a trusted tool into something far more strategic: a source of actionable intelligence. When David stepped in as CEO, Panaya had strong technical roots but needed a broader compass. The company had long been synonymous with ERP upgrade analysis, reliable, yes, but pigeonholed. What he saw wasn’t a product problem. It was a positioning ceiling.
He initiated a bold shift from a one-time, project-based revenue model to a scalable, recurring SaaS engine. This strategic reinvention repositioned Panaya not just as a tool, but as a platform; an intelligent system that delivers value across the entire change lifecycle.
So, he pulled the business back to first principles and rebuilt its foundation. The shift meant resetting the sales tempo, redesigned incentives, and a sharper focus on long-term value.
The outcome? Under David’s leadership, Panaya achieved consistent double-digit ARR growth while remaining profitably self-sustaining—a rare combination in today’s SaaS landscape. The company now serves a global customer base across 75 countries, including a third of the Fortune 500.
More than metrics, though, David reshaped the company’s self-perception. Panaya has evolved into a modern platform for AI-powered Change Intelligence, a strategic ally for enterprises navigating complexity.”
“Test What Matters,” Panaya’s guiding principle, embodies this focus. “Panaya tells you what to fix, what to test, what to automate, and what to skip,” the CEO explains. “That’s the difference between noise and insight.” This isn’t automation for automation’s sake. Its intention is built into the infrastructure.
Since its founding in 2006, Panaya has supported over 3,500+ customers in 75 countries. Certified by SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce, it now delivers Change Intelligence and Smart Testing for ERP, CRM, and cloud applications with a unified, AI-powered platform for test automation, test management, and impact analysis.
To support that ambition, David and his team reorganized R&D into dedicated capability squads. These micro-units focus on areas such as code correction, test automation, and platform scalability. That structure gave rise to Panaya’s GenAI backbone and its AI co-pilot, Seemore, a tool designed to illuminate, not overwhelm. What makes Panaya unique is that its insights are powered not just by GenAI, but by deep domain expertise in ERP, CRM, and enterprise change management. This blend of intelligence and experience means Panaya doesn’t just automate; it understands.
David also flattened the learning curve. Today, users can get started in under an hour, and departments that once operated in isolation now align through a shared data experience. The goal, he says, remains the same: to deliver change with speed and confidence.
“We test what matters, not everything that moves”, a core mantra that’s now embedded in every layer of the platform.
On the commercial front, they expanded Panaya’s global sales footprint, established dedicated customer success arms focused on renewals and account growth, and doubled down on marketing efforts to penetrate new markets and territories. Every move fed a larger ambition to build a company with the reflexes of a startup and the backbone of an enterprise player. It’s not a soundbite. It’s the architecture of the entire company.
Engineered for Change: Panaya’s Signal in the Noise
Ask David what makes Panaya stand out, and he skips the industry lingo. He reaches for a metaphor. “Think of it like the difference between driving with a printed map versus using GPS or Waze,” he exemplifies. “Traditional testing tools might give you a static view — what might need attention.”
In the enterprise world, change rarely arrives with clear instructions. That’s exactly what Panaya sets out to provide. What sets it apart is its focus on actionable intelligence. The platform acts less like a dashboard and more like a decision partner, surfacing the parts of a system that need attention, how to fix the problem, and, just as importantly, the ones that don’t.
It’s about shining a light on the hidden pressure points that shape downstream outcomes. Whether teams are working within SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, or ServiceNow, Panaya brings clarity to complexity, flagging risk areas and charting the smartest path forward.
“We don’t just make testing faster,” David remarks. “We make it smarter, targeted, and risk-based.”
According to David, the real value lies in certainty, not speed. Panaya equips teams with the insight to move quickly because they understand exactly where change lives and what it affects. Under the hood, the platform runs on a unified architecture that combines real-time impact analysis, GenAI-powered test automation, and centralized test management. Business and IT users operate on the same interface, with onboarding that takes minutes, not weeks. It’s cohesive by design.
With its GenAI engine and Seemore, Panaya doesn’t just recommend, it acts. Together, they automate some of the most time-intensive parts of change management. Test scripts that would typically break with every system update now have the self-healing power in real-time, evolving as the platform grows. When issues surface in the code, these tools accelerate resolution by not only pinpointing the problem but correcting it automatically, cutting troubleshooting time from hours to moments.
The Magic Behind the Mindset
It began not in a boardroom or coding lab but at a small table where a young David practiced card tricks for hours, captivated not by applause but by the hidden discipline behind the illusion. As a child, he was drawn to magic. Not just the showmanship but the architecture of wonder: the sleight of hand, the rhythm, the consistency that made one flawless moment possible. That early obsession with detail, timing, and audience impact never really left him. It simply evolved.
“Building great technology is a lot like magic,” David reflects. “It takes creativity, but also deep structure underneath. You need to know your audience, respect the craft, and execute with precision.”
That philosophy, equal parts imagination and intentionality, has come to define his leadership style. It’s not just about solving complex problems but doing so with elegance and empathy. About making the hard things feel seamless.
One quote that has stayed with him, long past those childhood days and into the corridors of leadership, is from Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
“It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
For David, that mindset is everything because in business, the real differentiator isn’t skill, it’s choice. The choices one makes when it counts: what to build, what to ignore, what to stand for. That’s what separates good products from great ones, and growing companies from those that matter. It’s the compass that guided him from product floors to the CEO’s office, from building features to building futures.
It’s the kind of outlook that turns heads and earns honors. In ‘Top 10 Impactful Leaders Transforming the Future of Business, 2025,’ David was recognized for precisely this rare ability. Effortlessly fusing technical rigor with human intuition, crafting transformations that feel less like an overhaul and more like an intuitive, strategic evolution.
Advice to Future Leaders: Solve Real Problems
In a tech sector fixated on speed and constant reinvention, David’s advice to emerging leaders is refreshingly grounded. It emphasizes discernment more than disruption.
He suggests that they start with the problem, not the technology. For him, real transformation begins with an issue worth resolving, not with chasing trends.
The kind that keeps users up at night or slows a business to a crawl. He believes that if one is not rooted in operational pain or human friction, even the most advanced solution is just noise dressed as progress.
David recommends that these aspirants stay close to their users. It’s a lesson he’s lived, not just learned. Over the years, some of Panaya’s most defining innovations didn’t come from whiteboards or strategy decks, but from the quiet corners of customer feedback. A support ticket. A field call. A moment when someone outside the boardroom told the truth.
But perhaps the clearest throughline in his approach is: simplify. While complexity is seductive, he insists that simplicity is what scales. It builds trust, drives adoption, and delivers results.
While change moves fast, he urges leaders not to overlook what endures.
“Transformation isn’t just about product—it’s about people,” he asserts. He encourages them to prioritize building a strong team culture early on because it’s the one thing that stays steady as the market shifts. The result isn’t just a better product but one that feels more thoughtful and human.
What’s Next: Scaling Intelligence
As Panaya looks to the future, the vision is precise. The priority remains on creating enterprise testing solutions that are more intelligent, autonomous, and aligned with real business needs. The company is doubling down on GenAI investments, expanding Seemore’s capabilities, and deepening alliances across the enterprise tech stack (SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and ServiceNow ecosystems).
They’re not just listening to customers; they’re decoding their unspoken needs. David feels the most potent innovations don’t come from surveys but from that sudden spark where a genuine human struggle meets a cutting-edge solution. It’s about catching the faint whispers before they become widespread problems. “We believe in simplicity that scales,” David affirms. “Test What Matters isn’t just a slogan—it’s how we save customers time, money, and stress.”
As for his own next chapter? He keeps it humble, stating that he will continue to listen, simplify, and build upon it. Ultimately, he considers this to be what drives impact for their customers, their team, and the market they serve.
