Tirthesh Ganatra

Summary

Strategic technology leader with 15+ years of experience in building and scaling high-performance engineering teams, delivering production-ready systems for millions of users, and achieving two successful startup exits. Expert in bridging hands-on technical execution with leadership vision, currently leading DevOps, Data Platform, and Backend Platform functions as Senior Engineering Manager and CISO at Branch International, an NBFC. Proven track record in modernising architectures, optimising cloud and infrastructure costs, implementing AI-driven innovations, and elevating enterprise security.

Highlights

• Led security and infrastructure transformations that enabled 2x business growth with no increase in AWS spend.
• Delivered $40K+ annual savings by migrating analytics from Sisense to Metabase.
• Reduced observability costs by over 60% through an OpenTelemetry migration.
• Scaled platforms to 150M+ users (Pricebaba) and 3.2M MAU (Sri Mandir) with industry-leading retention and stability.
• Spearheaded two startup exits and multiple M&A technical due diligence engagements.

Experience

Senior Engineering Manager & CISO · Branch International

Nov 2023 — Present

• Function as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), strengthening the organisation’s security posture with ZTNA, IDS, DLP, and advanced WAF/DDoS protection.
• Lead DevOps, Data Platform, and Backend Platform teams, managing 14 engineers across global locations.
• Achieved over $40K in annual savings by migrating from Sisense to Metabase for BI and analytics.
• Reduced annual Datadog costs by over 60% ($20K to $8K) through metric collection optimisation and a strategic migration to OpenTelemetry.
• Drove architectural and cost governance optimisations that supported a 2x business growth trajectory while keeping AWS spend flat.
• Improved backend performance by eliminating N+1 queries and optimising critical code paths, significantly reducing slow requests.
• Instituted CI/CD QA gates and deployment best practices that improved release reliability and reduced production incidents.
• Introduced and prototyped AI solutions using LangChain and RAG to enhance internal knowledge bases, making data retrieval faster for analytics teams.

Head of Engineering · Sri Mandir (AppsForBharat)

Aug 2021 — Oct 2023

• Scaled the Sri Mandir app to 3.2M MAU and 700K DAU with a 99.5% crash-free rate and over 50% Day-1 retention.
• Moved the architecture from a PHP monolith to microservices, improving scalability and agility.
• Designed an event-driven gamification module handling 300K+ events/min and 3,500+ RPM.
• Led a zero-downtime migration of 25M+ user records to a new system.
• Cut latency of the high-traffic Shrine Service 15x, from 450ms to 30ms.
• Built the team through targeted hiring, mentoring, and development programs.

VP, Software Engineer · Vayana

Mar 2018 — Aug 2021

• Integrated the acquired SahiGST platform into the Vayana ecosystem for seamless data exchange.
• Automated deployments and infrastructure scaling with Terraform and Ansible, ensuring peak-load readiness.
• Led ISO and PCI compliance projects.
• Spearheaded Enriched API Services and the FIP Gateway for regulatory compliance in the Sahamati / Account Aggregator framework.

Co-founder & AVP Tech · SahiGST (Digitax Technologies)

Dec 2016 — Mar 2018

• Co-founded and scaled a GST compliance platform serving 1,300+ customers filing 75K+ returns a year.
• Built a trusted GST reconciliation platform for public companies and banks.
• Acquired by Vayana in 2018.

Co-founder & Engineering Lead · Pricebaba

Aug 2011 — Nov 2016

• Built and scaled a product discovery platform to 150M+ users.
• Managed daily ingestion of 1.1M+ product updates from e-commerce sites.
• Developed a retailer network of 2,000+ stores for real-time price and inventory updates.
• Backed by 500 Startups; acquired by 91Digital in 2018.

Skills

Leadership

Team building & mentorshipStrategic planningM&A technical due diligence

Architecture

Scalable architectureMicroservicesHigh-throughput systemsEvent-driven systems (Kafka, SQS)

Cloud & DevOps

AWSDigitalOceanTerraformAnsibleDockerCDK

Security

CISOISOPCIZTNAIDSDLPWAFDDoS protection

AI & ML

LangChainRAGLLMsGenerative AI

Languages & data

GoPythonKotlinPHPPostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBRedisDynamoDB

Observability

OpenTelemetryELKLokiPrometheusDatadog

Education

Writing

• Dec 31, 2022Proven Strategies to Enhance User Retention2 min
• Dec 31, 2022દીકરો મારો લાડકવાયો દેવ નો દીધેલ છે1 min
• Aug 14, 2022Not Everything You Think Needs To Be Shared1 min