Phaneesh Gururaj

CTO

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India21 yrs 1 mo experience

AI ML PractitionerAI Enabled

Key Highlights

Led engineering and product teams at redBus.
Successfully launched rPool ride-sharing platform.
Expert in scaling B2C platforms and engineering teams.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and Transportation technology leader with expertise in AI and engineering.

Contact

phaneesh@gmail.com LinkedIn

Skills

Core Skills

AiEngineeringTechnology PlatformsMlProduct ManagementData ScienceB2c PlatformsRide-sharingMicroservicesDevopsB2c SpectrumAnalyticsEnterprise ApplicationsDigital MarketingNetwork MonitoringTest AutomationApplication Development

Other Skills

AWSAerospikeAmazon Web Services (AWS)Apache KafkaB2C channelsBus TrackingCC (Programming Language)C++CassandraCloud ComputingData Store architectureDatabasesDynamo DBF#

About

Phaneesh comes a rich experience across various domains ranging from Telecom, Pharma, e-Marketing and Travel. At redBus he worked for the last 7 years and donned various hats and worked on different disciplines in the Organisation across Product, Engineering and Data Science. He and his team were instrumental in taking redBus to International Geographies, building platforms for Payments, SEO, User Generated Content, Mobile Apps, Personalisation and Data Platforms to scale the business. He has successfully led the Engineering and Product Teams at redBus and also launched rPool (ride sharing platform) from 0-1 during his time there. Prior to that, had stints at Intouch Solutions, Sprint Nextel and Lucent Technologies. He likes to be in the space where Engineering is a strong enabler to the Business and likes to build strong engineering & product teams to enable the objectives. Building world class Products that impact people across all walks of life is something he is keen to be associated with.

Experience

21 yrs 1 mo

Total Experience

3 yrs 2 mos

Average Tenure

2 yrs

Current Experience

Ema unlimited

Head of Engineering, India

Jun 2024 – Present · 2 yrs · Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India · On-site

Ema, a Universal AI employee that boosts productivity across every role in your organization.
Working with a truly world class team to achieve this objective and pushing the boundaries in the GenAI / LLM space.
As the Engineering Head in India, my work involves across
Hiring : attracting the best minds to Ema and build a top notch AI / ML talent in India.
Innovation : Ema is a new Product experience altogether ; we need to look at this very closely from how the current systems / workflows are being done and how AI can add value.
Building Engineering Muscle : As SaaS companies scale and serve 1000s of accounts, how we need to keep the lights ON juggling various other priorities and constrains.
Research : GenAI and LLMs are at the heart of many research interests among both industry and academia. Partner with the 2 segments and accelerate the adoption of solutions from research to industry.
We are hiring across the org and scaling our teams in India. Folks interested, please DM.
Also, there is an interesting program to become an AI resident @ Ema. More on that soon !!

AIMLEngineeringInnovationHiring

Koo

CTO

May 2021 – Jun 2024 · 3 yrs 1 mo · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

As a CTO of Koo, I oversee all aspects of Tech, Infra, Security and ML work we do.
layout the technology platforms for Koo to succeed
enabling folks to perform to their best
identifying hard problems ahead
creating playbooks for scale and executional excellence
Are few things I end up doing.

Technology platformsInfraSecurityML

Redbus

4 roles

Sr. Vice President - Head of Products | Data Science

May 2020 – May 2021 · 1 yr

Heading the Product and Data Science charters at redBus
As a Product Head I oversee all redBus Product lines across various Geographies we operate. This includes our
Core B2C channels ; iOS, Android, Browser
Horizontal charters like Personalisation, UGC, Payments, Bus Tracking, Maps, CRM flows on SalesForce, Self Help (chatbots) and Add Ons.
Bus Operator facing Products that includes Pricing, Insights & Content
Building a strong Product Management Org to lead this charter has been a great experience

Product ManagementData ScienceB2C channelsPersonalisationPaymentsBus Tracking

Vice President Of Engineering

Apr 2018 – Apr 2020 · 2 yrs

Heading the engineering efforts to scale our B2C platforms - During this rapid scale phase, we re-wrote a bunch of our back-end platforms for scale using Go, Cassandra, ArangoDB, Neo4j, Kafka. We built a strong engineering team focused on scale and security.
In this this period(2019) we as a team started rPool - ride sharing vertical at redBus. Donned various hats to get this off the ground and dwelled in to quite a few interesting problems.
matching algorithms/strategy for ride sharing
maps | geo-location use cases
growth hacks to on board customers
Looking for some great engineers across all engineering disciplines - #golang, #aws, #scale #mobile #react-native #ml. Get on the right BUS that is making HISTORY not only in INDIA but across other GEOS as well.

EngineeringB2C platformsGoCassandraKafka

Senior Director Of Engineering

Promoted

Apr 2016 – Mar 2018 · 1 yr 11 mos

This phase @redBus involved rewiring our code and systems for global scale. We embraced micro service architecture, early adopters of containers & AWS Lambdas, set-up a strong Dev Ops eco-system for auto-scaling, IaaS and Security.
Data Store architecture was another area where we had to invest in depth. We converged on
ArangoDB for our SEO graphs,
Cassandra for our Inventory writes,
REDIS for our search cache,
Firebase for our chat, configs
Riding strong with focus on global expansion, platforms and last but not the least - use Data the right way.
Accelerating AI/ML using some of the GCP and AWS suite of tools.
Pushing out new verticals - BusHire, Cars and Pilgrimages. As a tech shop, we are trying to roll this out in GoLang.
More importantly - learning something NEW every day !

MicroservicesAWSDevOpsData Store architecture

Director of Engineering

Apr 2014 – Apr 2016 · 2 yrs

Solving some really interesting problems for the Indian Bus/Hotel industry with a passionate team.
Responsible for the B2C spectrum ranging from Web, Mobile and Analytics teams targeting both Bus and Hotels vertical.

B2C spectrumWebMobileAnalytics

Intouch solutions

Engineer, Team Lead & various other hats

Jul 2009 – Apr 2014 · 4 yrs 9 mos · Overland Park, Kansas

Engineering challenging applications for the Pharma/Healthcare vertical
Hands on experience as a Dev Manager of engineering staff developing enterprise applications in Pharma industry.
Championed various programs (first time execution) in the Digital Marketing Space– Google Glassware Apps, Mobile Apps, Social Media, eCRM/Salesforce integration.
Ability to - think big, decompose the big problems in to smaller problems, assess risk, multiplex multiple programs at the same time, understand and articulate both technical and business synergies with partners.
Excellent oral and written communication skills – technical presentation, proposals and SOWs, technical design document.
Ability to hash out clear roadmaps, release cycles, feature requirements, technology solutions for both external and internal teams and complying with Pharma regulations.
Salesforce/Veeva integration
Our team built consumer facing Applications and Web Portals to engage with the community ;
Integrations with FDA for nutrient tracking, fitbit / jawbone to track activity.

Enterprise applicationsDigital MarketingSalesforce integration

Sprint

Software Devloper

Jan 2007 – Jun 2009 · 2 yrs 5 mos · Overland Park, Kansas

Developing Applications in the Network Monitoring and Operations space.
Built applications to forecast and model network performance, inventory procurement and capacity management.

Network MonitoringOperations

Alcatel lucent technologies india private limited

Software Engineer

Jul 2004 – Jul 2005 · 1 yr · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Development of tools to test network congestion, traffic and handoffs.
Test Automation and State Machine Development for testing Lucent's 5ESS switches.

Test AutomationState Machine Development