Open to opportunities

Shrinath Balakrishnan

@shrinathbalakrishnan

Message

I build lean engineering organisations and AI products that move business metrics.

India

Message

What I'm looking for

I'm looking to lead technology and product as a business function—building lean teams, making clear architecture and spend decisions, and applying AI where it materially improves customer outcomes or business metrics.

At Source.One, I led technology and product for a ₹3,000 Cr business, building a 20–25 person engineering organisation that supported 90%+ market share in six years while keeping cumulative technology spend under $1M.

I make technology decisions as business decisions: I replaced an inherited over-engineered platform with a WhatsApp-and-CRM launch path, later migrated to native buyer and supplier apps, and moved off AWS to owned infrastructure when the economics changed.

I shipped freight-pricing ML that reduced estimated-versus-actual freight-cost error from roughly 19% to under 7%, along with RAG text-to-SQL, OCR workflows, regulated-document compliance automation, and a WhatsApp commerce platform handling about 20,000 messages daily.

Earlier, I built IoT, e-voucher, and event platforms at RedPanda Innovation Labs and worked on Amazon Retail Services' ML-driven competitive-pricing platform. I also bring operating experience across people, budgets, procurement, and company-wide decision-making.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Co-Founder

Source.One

Jan 2018 - Jan 2026 (8 years)

Helped grow the business to ₹3,000 Cr in FY26 revenue while remaining profitable throughout. Owned People Success and Operations alongside technology, and introduced company-wide operating discipline.

Business Strategy Operations Management People Management Budgeting Performance Metrics

Chief Technology Officer

Source.One

Jan 2018 - Jan 2026 (8 years)

Ran an AI-first strategy across product, development and testing, and built an engineering organization of 20-25 behind a business that took 90%+ of its market in six years. Launched two SaaS revenue lines and built a freight-pricing ML model that cut cost estimation error from 19% to under 7%.

AI ML Flutter NodeJS TypeScript Go Python AWS Product Management Engineering Leadership Cost Optimization

Head of Operations & People Management

Red Panda Innovation Labs

Jan 2017 - Dec 2017 (11 months)

Ran production, procurement and daily operations planning; raised efficiency by improving coordination between delivery teams.

Operations Management Procurement Production Planning Team Coordination

Software Lead & Full-Stack Developer

Red Panda Innovation Labs

Jan 2015 - Dec 2017 (2 years 11 months)

Built smart-energy IoT product for KokoNetworks, stood up India platform for Global Citizen, and built e-voucher management system for Sodexo. Member of the Red Panda Steering Committee.

Python Django Flask Java Play Framework AWS JavaScript IoT Fullstack Development

Software Developer

Amazon.com

Jan 2012 - Dec 2013 (1 year 11 months)

Worked within Amazon Retail Services' global ML-driven competitive pricing and monitoring platform. Led an end-to-end AWS rewrite of a subsystem during Amazon's internal cloud migration.

Java Spring Framework AWS Machine Learning Cloud Migration