I've spent 25 years building and running technology organizations: two startups from zero, a 100-plus engineering org, an SVP role inside a private-equity portfolio, and now CTO of a venture carved out of a 17-year-old logistics group.
AI is not new to me. I was shipping ML into production at MineWhat in 2012, and putting R-CNNs to work in Choice.AI's image pipeline back when CNNs were new, long before AI became a boardroom word.
Along the way I've done technical due diligence for funds, integrated acquired companies into a central portfolio, helped a sovereign fund stand up a venture studio, and mentored founders at Techstars Bangalore.
Enterprises bring me in when the mandate is clear about the outcome and vague about everything else. "Consolidate these acquired products." "Make this org AI-first." "Stand up ventures in Riyadh." My job is to turn that sentence into a plan, a team, and a shipped result.
Where I'm useful
- M&A and technical due diligence: Diligence for funds, PE firms and family offices, and hands-on post-merger integration. At Trilogy I was the directly responsible individual for folding acquired products such as AnswerHub and InsideSales into a central portfolio, refactoring them for cloud and taking cost out of the infrastructure.
- Transformation and AI-first organizations: At BRIDGEi2i I turned an analytics workforce into blended data-science and engineering teams of 100-plus people, shipping forecasting, NLP and video-analytics platforms across CPG, financial services and insurance.
- Sovereign funds and venture building: Head of Technology at Stryber and CTO advisor to Sanabil Venture Studio, the PIF-backed studio building in fintech, consumer goods, and tourism and leisure. I covered regional tech partners, cloud partners, technology budgets and due diligence. Today I run a corporate venture carved out of RSA Global, where we closed a $1.5M seed led by 21 Ventures. I've hired many CTOs, set up AI-first cultures as a matter of course, and mentored early-stage founders at Techstars Bangalore.
- Working across geographies: Bay Area and Bangalore as a founder, Dubai as an operator, Riyadh with Sanabil. Five languages. I'm comfortable with C-level stakeholders and regional partners, and I've led executive-level negotiations, technical proposals and RFP responses.
- Unclear mandate to outcomes: Co-founded MineWhat and took Choice.AI from idea to product-market fit as its third product. At RSA Cross Border the brief was "rebuild logistics with AI at the center". A year later that hypothesis runs cross-border parcels across 40-plus countries behind one integration layer.
- Teaching people to build: I'm passionate about teaching, and AI has changed what's teachable. I've turned a designer into a full-stack product manager who codes and delivers, and QC software testers into full-stack developers. The tools are new; the method is the same one I've used for 25 years: sit next to someone, ship something real together, then get out of the way.
Track record
Aug 2025 – Present
Chief Technology Officer · RSA Cross Border (RSA Global), Dubai
Cross-border parcel logistics for 3PLs across line haul, clearance and last mile, moving China and India into the US, UK, EU and GCC. Carved out of RSA Global; $1.5M seed led by 21 Ventures.
Jul 2024 – Jul 2025
Head of Technology · Stryber
Venture studio. Built a culture of ownership aimed at turning strong developers into venture CTOs, and AI-agent products that speed up venture creation.
Jul 2024 – Jul 2025
CTO Advisory (via Stryber) · Sanabil Venture Studio, Riyadh
Sovereign-fund venture studio in Saudi Arabia, building in the PIF's Strategic Pillar sectors. Regional and cloud partnerships, technology budgets, due diligence.
Dec 2023 – Jun 2024
Fractional CTO · Traveazy Group and independent clients, Dubai
CTO transitions, AI-first org setup, ML for image and text search, data engineering for real estate, and a predictive bidding model for a VFX studio.
Mar 2021 – Nov 2023
SVP Engineering · Trilogy, Dubai
Technical decisions across a private-equity portfolio with a team of VPs and product architects. Integration of acquired products, cloud refactoring, FinOps, developer-experience tooling, and the early build of Alpha School.
Aug 2019 – Mar 2021
Director of Technology · BRIDGEi2i Analytics Solutions (acquired by Accenture), Bengaluru
Transformed an analytics workforce into blended data-science and engineering teams. Platforms and accelerators for workflow automation, forecasting, simulation, video analytics and NLP, deployed serverless across the major clouds.
Aug 2012 – Mar 2019
Co-Founder & CTO · MineWhat and Choice.AI, San Francisco Bay Area and Bangalore
Merchandise intelligence for e-commerce, processing millions of events at holiday-peak velocity at a fraction of the incumbent cost. Choice.AI, the third product, went from idea to product-market fit. Ran technology due diligence for fundraising.
Credentials
- B.E. Computer Science, College of Engineering Guindy (1996–2000)
- Alchemist Accelerator, Class X
- Mentor, Techstars Bangalore
- "Relevance of SDK to foster IMS application development", 2007 International Conference on IP Multimedia Subsystem Architecture and Applications
Languages
- English, Tamil and Telugu (native)
- Hindi (full professional)
- Kannada (professional working)
What people say
“I never dreamt that I could code. Now I manage and release a full vehicle configurator with Cursor. Thanks to Pavan sir for all the guidance.”
“Pavan combines both business acumen with technology. I've been fortunate to know Pavan - both as a mentor as well as a peer building a startup in a similar vertical. His war stories and practical lessons in running and scaling a company helped me both in my strategic and tactical decisions.”
“Pavan has provided deep insights, candid feedback and support on various issues beginning with building a sw engineering resource pool & restructuring. I strongly recommend Pavan as a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs in the tech space.”
Connect
If you have a mandate that is clear on the outcome and unclear on the path, write to me at tvpavan@gmail.com.