A conversation, not a brochure
Go ahead — ask me the hard ones.
You're here because you might work with me. So let's skip the buzzwords and do what we'd do on a call: you ask the questions a careful founder should ask, and I answer them straight.
Who are you, in one breath?
Engineer first, everything else second. Co-founder of Vellestudio, the Pune agency behind Simplified — an AI content platform with fifteen million users whose architecture I've owned since its seed stage. I graduated in computer engineering in 2009, straight into the worst hiring market in a generation, and took the job I could get: answering support calls. Everything since has been a compounding series of people trusting me with things that didn't exist yet.
There's a failed startup on this page. Why would you show me that?
Because it's the best due diligence I can offer you. Between 2016 and 2018, three of us built CeleryHQ — a cloud point-of-sale for Indian restaurants, years before the market was ready. A visionary in the US wrote the Android app. A fresh graduate sold it door to door. I built everything else. Over a hundred restaurants paid. Then growth demanded a street sales force, and three founders with day jobs couldn't fund one.
Here's the part that matters: the last paying customer left in 2026 — eight years after we stopped pushing. We didn't build a bad product; we made a bad bet on our own commitment. I've never made that mistake again, with my time or anyone else's money.
CeleryHQ taught me the difference between building a product and building a company — and that the difference is commitment, not code.
So what did the failure actually produce?
Two companies and my two most important professional relationships. The visionary went on to found Simplified — and called me, not a search firm. The fresh graduate who sold POS terminals door to door? He's my co-founder at Vellestudio today. Same three people, two thriving ventures. Nothing gets wasted.
Why did a funded US startup hand its platform to you?
Because the founder had already watched me work — as his freelancer years earlier, then as his co-founder. When he raised money from some of Silicon Valley's best-known funds to take on the biggest names in design tools, he didn't run a search. Over five years I architected Simplified from a content tool into an AI-powered SaaS spanning text, image, video, and audio — and built the engineering team in India that runs it. The same founder trusted me twice. That's the only credential I really care about.
And yes — somewhere in there I moved the whole platform from AWS to GCP over a weekend. People love that story. It's the least interesting thing I've done.
What do you actually do all day now?
I run an AI-first engineering team: engineers write specs and review, AI writes most of the code, and I hold the architecture straight. My own work happens at whatever altitude the problem needs — designing a platform, advising like a CTO, or sitting in the sprint taking tickets. Fifteen years in, most engineers retreat into slide decks. I'd rather stay dangerous at every level.
Fifteen years in — why go back to a classroom?
In 2024 I did the Leadership in the Digital Era program at IIM Lucknow. Not for the certificate — because I'd spent fifteen years studying machines and it seemed fair to spend one properly studying humans. Leading people is a craft, and crafts deserve deliberate practice. The support desk taught me to listen in 2009; IIM taught me what to do with what I hear.
Where's the proof? Show me the range.
Countries — from Pune, for people on five continents:
Domains — restaurants taught me billing, trading taught me latency, an NGO taught me frugality, marketing AI taught me scale:
Tools — everything here has survived real production traffic on my watch:
Python
Django
Celery
TypeScript
Node.js
React
Next.js
Angular
GCP / GKE
DigitalOcean
Cloudflare
Docker
Kubernetes
Terraform
Helm
GitLab CI/CD
PostgreSQL
MySQL
MongoDB
Redis
RabbitMQ
Prometheus
Grafana
Sentry
Claude
Gemini
LangGraph
ElevenLabsHouse rule: if it's on this wall, I've run it in production. If it isn't, I'll tell you before you find out.
Okay. How do we actually work together?
Four honest ways in — pick the altitude your problem needs:
A team that ships your product
Vellestudio builds platforms end to end — architecture, backend, frontend, infra, AI. Our engagements average four-plus years. We don't do drive-bys.
A senior engineer or architect in the room
Principal-level and hands-on: platform architecture, cloud migration, or the hard production problem nobody owns. I write code the whole way through.
CTO-grade counsel, no costume
Architecture reviews, AI strategy, build-vs-buy, team design. I've sat on the founder's side of the table, and it changes the advice.
An extra pair of hands
Agentic systems, AI integrations, a feature that must ship. Yes, I still take tickets — happily. Titles are for email signatures.
Last one. What's with the badminton?
Most mornings, before the standups. After fifteen years of playing decade-long games, there's real joy in a point that ends in seconds. It also keeps me honest — the shuttle, like production, does not care about your plans.
Your turn to talk. Tell me what you're building.
Agency, architect, advisor, or extra hands — through Vellestudio or directly. The engagements I love best start before the thing exists.
One handle everywhere: @pyarun — LinkedIn, GitHub, GitLab, Stack Overflow.