Vikram Warialani

About me

I'm Vikram Warialani, a Data Modelling Architect by day and the Editor-in-Chief of PickMyCard the rest of the time. I'm based in India and have spent the better part of two decades around technology, which means most evenings end with me reading about a new gadget, a new app, or whatever the internet decided was important that week.

Outside of tech, I travel often, mostly to chase a cuisine I haven't tried or a hotel chain I haven't stayed at before. Friends will tell you that handing me a hotel loyalty programme to enrol in is dangerous.

The thing my circle teases me about most, though, is credit cards. I've been the go-to person for card advice in my friends-and-family group for years, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. PickMyCard is basically that habit, scaled up.

Why I started PickMyCard

The honest reason: a credit card, used well, creates real value out of thin air. Nothing else in personal finance quite does that. A ten-lakh annual spend on the right card can mean lounge visits, flight tickets, dining credits, and voucher rewards that add up to tens of thousands of rupees a year, all from money you were going to spend anyway.

I'd already been giving informal card advice to friends and family for ages, and I genuinely enjoyed it. What pushed me from advice-on-WhatsApp to building a proper site was watching people with serious monthly spends use completely wrong cards. We're talking thousands of rupees a year in rewards, quietly left on the table.

I wanted something more structured than ad-hoc advice. Something searchable, fact-checked, and actually useful for Indian readers. PickMyCard started as a side project, but I built it properly from day one, with AI-driven recommendations baked in.

What I bring to this

Over a decade of working in technology and data shapes how I think about cards. Card terms are essentially a structured-data problem with marketing copy on top, and that mental model runs through the engine here: fees in, rewards out, eligibility filters, side benefits valued at honest market rates, then a single number you can compare.

The other half is lived experience. I've held and actively used a long list of Indian cards across the spectrum, from entry-level to super-premium, and I read the market closely enough to spot a quiet devaluation, a new launch, or a fee change in the days after a bank pushes it through. That is usually what gets flagged for a re-review here.

PickMyCard launched with a comprehensive editorial review across every active card in April 2026. ThelastRevieweddate you see on each page tracks the ongoing fact-check cadence. When a card's terms move, we re-read the fine print and update the data.

Cards I've personally used

The list is long, so I'll keep it tight. Some are current keepers, some I held at their peak and have since moved on from.

My current favourites lean premium. The Amex Platinum Travel sits at the top of my wallet. The HDFC Infinia handles big-ticket and travel, the Amex Membership Rewards Credit Card runs behind it for the points stack, and the Amex Platinum stays around for the lounge experience and concierge. The SBI Cashback Card was my flat-rate workhorse for years, though the recent rules tightening has dulled it. The Axis Magnus lives in the wallet specifically for Accor transfers.

The older list reads like a tour of the Indian credit card market. My first card was the ICICI Coral, picked up right after my first TCS salary cleared, and I still remember being thrilled by the BookMyShow offers. The HDFC Regalia and Regalia Gold followed, then the RBL Zomato card during its dining-discount golden age. I've also held the HSBC Platinum, Citibank PremierMiles, both the SBI Vistara Prime and IDFC First Vistara before Vistara merged into Air India, the Amex Gold, the Standard Chartered Titanium, the Axis ACE and Horizon, and the HDFC Millennia at various points.

Get in touch

Reach me at hello@pickmycard.in. Card questions, factual corrections, and affiliate partnership enquiries all land in the same inbox. I read everything that comes through.