01 Building
Mohana Krishna Padda
SVP Engineering at Sprive
02 About
Builder. Coder. Dreamer. Doer.
I'm a passionate, unconventional tech leader who thrives on building bold ideas and leading from the front. I proudly embrace my inner geek and love being the odd one out, the one who dreams big and delivers even bigger.
I don't just think outside the box, I'm not even on the same planet. I want to die on Mars. I'm obsessed with space tech, brain-chip cloning, and anything that sounds a little too crazy to be real, because that's where the real magic happens.
Built NexaDB – a lightweight NoSQL database with vector search, TOON format, and 25K+ ops/sec. Created DBView (native macOS SQL client with AI editor, ERD and SSH tunneling) and DBCraft (open source dashboard platform on a Rust backend)
Built 20K AI Doctors across 108 specialties in 19 languages with 1.5M translations for under $100K at Jivi AI. Launched 7 production systems including Sigma, Longevity, and Pulse
Led Praavi's ultra-lean team (2 core engineers) delivering complete neo-banking platform across 4 platforms in just 45 days
Co-founded OneBharat and secured $10M valuation term sheet in 3 weeks. Built OnePulse (dynamic scoring) and OneCollect (SmartNach). Later returned term sheet after re-evaluating priorities – chose integrity over capital
4 years at BharatPe ($2.8B) as Associate Director → Director. Built BharatSwipe (₹700Cr+ transactions, 50K+ merchants), PostPe, Unity, 12% Club. Made CI/CD 12x faster. Scaled team from 20 to 200+ engineers
Led Growth Engineering at Blinkit/Grofers ($10B). Built referral systems, revamped rewards & cart, handled full-stack (Python, Node.js, React Native, Android, iOS)
PitchVision (2014-2019): Software Engineer → Senior SDE → Engineering Manager → Head of Engineering. Built PV-Review (1M+ deliveries analyzed), PV-TV, PV Match with live streaming
Founded GrowJS community in Delhi NCR – a thriving space for 500+ JavaScript engineers with regular meetups and knowledge sharing
JNTU Kakinada - A+ grade, 4 Academic Excellence Medals, Student of the Year, Best Engineer Award from District Collector, Infy Engineering Excellence Award. Director of App & Security club for 3 terms
From Haifriend (2011, first project featured in 3 newspapers) to today's shipping set – SlatePlan (sprint planning), Karcha (shared expense tracking), Staffelog (canteen meal issuance) and Utilee (browser tools for video makers). Built Heartynote at 19, IrcM (won Student of Year, presented at US conference), SaveChey and more
03 Projects
Developer tools, and worlds built for the fun of it
Creator | NoSQL + Vectors + TOON
A lightweight NoSQL database with vector search, TOON format, and enterprise security built-in. 25K+ ops/sec, 0.039ms latency, 200x faster vector search. One database, zero config.
Creator | Sprint Planning Without the Clutter
Table, board, timeline and burndown over the same sprint, driven from the keyboard. Put the task ID in your branch name and the merge requests link themselves.
Creator | Shared Expense Tracking
Snap a receipt, text the Telegram bot or paste from WhatsApp. Every spend sorted into a space, shared with your partner, in any currency.
Creator | Meal Issuance Tracking for Canteens
A barcode on every staff ID and a scanner on the counter phone, so nobody collects the same meal twice. Enforced as a database constraint, not a policy.
Creator | Browser Tools for Video Makers
Twelve single-purpose tools for the small jobs in making a video: speech timing, teleprompter, SRT and VTT, safe zones, timecodes, frame extraction. Nothing leaves the tab.
Creator | Open Source Metabase Alternative
Turn your database into beautiful dashboards in minutes. Visual query builder, 20+ chart types, self-hosted. Free forever.
Creator | Modern SQL Client for macOS
Beautiful, fast, and native database client for macOS. Connect to MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite with AI-powered SQL editor.
Creator | AI Assistant Usage Monitor
Unified macOS menu bar app to monitor all AI coding assistants. Track usage, quotas, and costs across Claude, Cursor, Copilot, Gemini & more.
Creator | 10+ Free Developer Tools
JSON to TypeScript, Zod, OpenAPI. JWT debugging, Base64, UUID, hashing. 100% client-side.
Creator | Interactive Estate, North Goa
A private cliff-top estate above the Arabian Sea, built in WebGL. Walk it, lift the roofs, run the day from dawn to night, or drop into a scripted mood like the sunset session or a monsoon afternoon.
Creator | Interactive Estate, Bangalore
A family estate on the edge of Bangalore, modelled unit by unit on a 150 x 200 ft plot. Time of day, weather, smart-home controls, walk mode and a searchable site plan down to the dogs' lawn.
04 Work
Building products that matter at scale
SVP Engineering
Transforming UK fintech infrastructure and product to help homeowners become mortgage-free faster. Half a million users, £50bn in tracked mortgages, £35m through the platform every month. I lead Engineering, QA, DevOps, Security and Compliance, and set the roadmap with the founders.
Associate Director to Director - 4 Years
Revolutionizing Indian Merchant Payments. Built BharatSwipe, PostPe, Unity, 12% Club.
Led Engineering @ Growth
Led Growth Engineering at India's largest quick-commerce platform. Full-stack ownership.
05 Writing
Thoughts on engineering leadership, building products, and AI
February 14, 2026 - 12 min read
When BBC's Dragons' Den featured Sprive, we faced 2.4 million requests in 2 hours. This is how our infrastructure handled the chaos, and the engineering decisions that made it possible.
December 17, 2024 - 25 min read
A deep dive into how 3-way merge algorithms and vector clocks power everything from Git to distributed databases. Understanding these fundamental concepts is essential for building resilient, conflict-free distributed systems.
December 7, 2024 - 24 min read
A deep dive into connection pooling issues caused by excess prepared statements—diagnosis techniques, root causes, and battle-tested solutions for database stability at scale.
06 Contact
Whether you need technical leadership, advisory support, or want to discuss innovative ideas – I'm always excited to connect with fellow builders and dreamers.