Navneet Karnaani is a veteran software leader and founder with over three decades of hands-on experience, currently running Mandrake Technology Consulting as a fractional CTO and micro‑SaaS builder from Pune. He combines deep infrastructure and distributed-systems expertise—shipped enterprise platforms at VMware, Nutanix and Symantec—with a proven talent for building engineering organisations from scratch (0→20+ in under a year) and mentoring the next generation of founding engineers. Navneet is pragmatic about trade-offs, known for translating business constraints into honest technical advice and for preferring maintainable architectures over short-term hacks. He teaches distributed systems, runs structured internships that emphasize AI-native workflows, and ships focused developer tools like Pratham to solve real operational pain points. What’s less obvious: he deliberately limits client engagements to maintain depth over breadth, offering founders the equivalent of an experienced co-founder who’s seen the common failure modes before.
11 years of coding experience
26 years of employment as a software developer
Advanced Product Management Professional, Product Management, Advanced Product Management Professional, Product Management at Institute of Product Leadership
S.S.C. (Standard 10), S.S.C. (Standard 10) at Hindi Vidya Bhavan
Master's Degree, Computer Science, Master's Degree, Computer Science at Nowrosjee Wadia College
H.S.C. (Standard 12), Science, H.S.C. (Standard 12), Science at Elphinstone College
Contributions:1 release, 4 PRs, 13 pushes in 4 years
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