Deepak Tyagi
Architect. Builder. Operator.
Most founders hit a moment where every technical decision routes back to them and there’s no one senior enough to take it off their plate. That’s the only problem Deepak solves — and he’s been solving it across three continents for ten years.
Ten years. One constant.
From blockchain payment rails to government edtech to a consumer platform at 1M+ users — the technical problem changes. The operating problem never does.
Deepak started as an engineer in a startup doing what Zepto and Blinkit do today — and watched founders lose companies not because the product was wrong, but because the right technical person wasn’t in the room when the critical decisions were made. Wrong hires. Wrong architecture. Wrong direction chosen at the wrong moment.
He quit, started building independently, and founded Frecher Hinakins — a bootstrapped technical practice that grew to 30+ clients across six countries without external funding. Through those engagements he operated at every level: architect, consultant, team builder, compliance owner, investor narrative writer.
Then came the engagement that defined the practice: being brought in as Consultant CTO to build India’s first friendship app from a blank repository — scaling it across India, the US, and Singapore, building the engineering team, owning security and compliance across country and state-level requirements, and delivering the technical narrative for investors. Everything a technical co-founder actually owns.
A founder’s technical problem is rarely the thing they describe. It’s almost always the decision-making structure that produced it — and that’s what gets fixed.
The structural read before the build.
Every system failure is downstream of a decision that looked fine at the time. Four observations that define the pattern.
Observation · ArchitectureThe architecture decision you skip at 100 users is never a technical problem. It's a business problem — at 100,000.
The structural move
Most early-stage teams treat infrastructure as something to fix once they have traction. By then, the decision is already made — it's just made badly. The architectural choices that look like engineering preferences at day one become migration costs, downtime events, and scaling blockers by month six. The founders who avoid this aren't more patient. They're more deliberate about which corners can be cut and which ones compound.
Consequence
Alyke scaled to 1.5M+ users on architecture designed from the ground up — not retrofitted. The system held because the decisions were made before the load arrived.
Observation · SecurityEvery data breach in an early-stage company Deepak has seen shares one root cause: security was added after the architecture was designed.
The structural move
Security doesn't layer onto an existing architecture cleanly. It has to be a design property — which means the CISO perspective needs to be in the room when the system is being drawn, not when it's being audited. GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, RBI data localisation: the cost of retrofitting compliance into a running system is between 3x and 10x the cost of designing for it upfront. The founders who understand this stop treating compliance as a checkbox and start treating it as an infrastructure decision.
Consequence
30+ client engagements delivered across regulated environments — India, Germany, US, Australia — with compliance built in at the architecture stage, not bolted on before the audit.
Observation · AI integrationMost AI features in early-stage products don't ship a capability. They ship a liability — because no one designed what happens when the output is wrong.
The structural move
The question isn't whether to integrate AI — it's what the surrounding system needs to look like for AI to be safe to use. Failure modes, remediation ownership, cost of a wrong output: these aren't product questions. They're infrastructure questions. The founders who answer them before shipping have a feature. The ones who don't have an incident waiting to happen.
Consequence
AI integration delivered across client engagements with defined failure boundaries, not shipped as demos. Infrastructure built before the capability was exposed.
Observation · Infrastructure costInfra cost is a product decision. Most founders treat it as a finance problem — and discover the difference during a growth sprint.
The structural move
Cloud cost spirals aren't accidents. They're the consequence of product decisions made without visibility into the infrastructure layer — storage strategy, caching, query design, vendor lock-in. A 40% reduction in infra cost doesn't come from a procurement negotiation. It comes from rebuilding the parts of the product that were designed without cost as a constraint. The CTO who has been through this knows which architectural choices are reversible and which ones compound.
Consequence
Infrastructure cost modelled from the first architecture session on the Alyke engagement — built to scale gradually, not speculatively. Same output at 10-person team as at 30.
Six problems. One operating layer.
These are the situations founders bring to Deepak. Each has a defined outcome. None are solved by more engineers.
You are the de facto CTO and it's consuming the company
Every architecture call, every vendor decision, every engineering dispute returns to the founder. The company runs at 60% capacity — 40% absorbed by technical decisions that should never reach this level. This is not a workload problem. It is a structural problem with a structural fix.
→ The technical operating layer comes off the founder. Completely. By week 3.
You need to build from zero and the first 90 days will determine the next three years
Stack choice. Service architecture. First engineering hires. Infrastructure model. These decisions are invisible until they become expensive problems 12–18 months later — during a growth sprint, when there's no time to revisit them. Built from blank repository to 1M+ users across three markets.
→ Technical co-founder from day one — without permanent equity commitment.
Your team is growing but velocity is falling
More engineers, slower output. The problem is almost never headcount. It is architecture that doesn't support the team size, a release process that creates queues instead of flow, or coordination failures invisible from inside the team. This pattern resolves the same way every time.
→ Find the structural cause. Fix the operating system around the team.
Your technical story needs to survive investor diligence
Investors don't evaluate architecture — they evaluate confidence. A founder who hesitates on infra cost per user, biggest technical risk in the next 18 months, or why the engineering org is structured as it is, loses credibility regardless of the underlying product.
→ Technical narrative built 90 days before it's needed. Not when the term sheet lands.
Your CTO departed and the engineering function has no senior direction
A leadership gap in the technical function compounds daily. Architecture decisions get made by whoever is loudest. Retention risk rises. Roadmap continuity breaks. Deepak has stepped into this transition and been operational from day one — team retained, roadmap continued without interruption.
→ Immediate senior technical continuity while you decide what comes next.
Compliance, security, or regulatory requirements are blocking growth
NDIS compliance in Australia. App Store data governance across India, the US, and Singapore. ISO alignment for healthcare SaaS. These are not obstacles solved with a checklist — they require someone who has built compliant systems under real regulatory scrutiny and knows where the gaps compound.
→ Compliance and security architecture that doesn't slow the product down.
The full stack. Not a specialism.
Ten years of delivery across the complete technology function — not advisory across it. The distinction matters.
Architecture & Scaling
Systems designed to hold the weight of what comes next
Cloud & Infrastructure
Infrastructure cost as a product and engineering decision
Cybersecurity & Compliance
Security as an architectural property, not a layer
Product Engineering
Full-stack delivery — mobile, web, CRM, integrations
AI & Automation
AI infrastructure built for operational safety, not demos
Team & Process
Technical org design — from first hire to structured function
Five engagements. What the CTO actually changed.
Not what was delivered. The state of the company before, the decisions made, and what was different after.
01 · Ongoing · Flagship · Co-founder scopeIndia's first friendship app — blank repository to 1M+ users across three marketsConsumer social · Zero-to-one build · India · USA · Singapore · Consultant CTO · 2024–present
The situation
Engineering needed senior direction immediately — not after a 3-month search and 3-month onboarding. Every day without architectural oversight was a day of feature decisions made without context. In a consumer social platform, bad architecture decisions in this phase compound into retention problems 12 months later.
What was owned
Full product architecture. AI proximity and interest matching engine — the core product differentiator. Multi-tier subscription infrastructure across Google Play and App Store. Engineering team: hiring criteria, interview design, onboarding, culture. Sprint cadence, technical review, release discipline. Security and compliance across India, USA, and Singapore. Investor technical narrative.
How it operated
Not advisory. Every decision above required ownership — not input. The compliance architecture that keeps the platform live across three markets was built before a problem surfaced, not after. A fractional CTO in this role costs a fraction of a permanent hire and produces the same operating output — because the operating principles are the same regardless of engagement structure.
02 · Completed · Frecher Hinakins · Data & revenue opsStarcar Germany — Revenue operations system for a national car rental networkAutomotive-tech · Revenue management · Germany · 15 stations nationwide
The situation
Germany's largest independent car rental network — 15 stations — was making pricing decisions manually. A team member checking competitor sites, noting rates, updating branches one by one. In a market where competitor pricing moves daily and fleet utilisation changes hourly, revenue left on the table every day. The problem wasn't the platform. It was that the platform had no intelligence layer.
What was built
Automated competitor intelligence: daily rate ingestion from Sixt and Check24 across all vehicle classes and locations. Fleet utilisation data ingestion weighted against actual occupancy signals. Degression logic engine: yield × base rate × degression table — Starcar's exact revenue model, codified. The system turned a manual, slow process into a decision engine that directly influenced pricing outcomes across the network.
The operating principle
Revenue operations problems are almost always disguised as technology gaps. The decision to build a data processing layer rather than replace the enterprise platform saved Starcar a seven-figure procurement spend. The right diagnosis of the actual problem is the primary value a fractional CTO delivers — before a line of code is written.
03 · Completed · Frecher Hinakins · Government scaleMaharashtra SSC Board — Government edtech platform for 1–10 grade curriculumGovernment edtech · Maharashtra, India · Concurrent examination infrastructure · Rural-ready delivery
The situation
Building for the Maharashtra SSC Board is not the same problem as building for urban EdTech. The user — a Marathi-medium student in semi-urban or rural Maharashtra — has fundamentally different network conditions, device specifications, and content consumption patterns. Most EdTech platforms are built for the user teams imagine, not the user who actually exists.
What was built
Student app: full SSC Board curriculum grades 1–10, Marathi medium, video/audio/notes/e-books optimised for low-bandwidth conditions. Admin panel (ReactJS): content management for curriculum administrators. Reporting panel (Angular): usage analytics, student progress, teacher performance. Subscription and access control aligned to board curriculum structure. Concurrent examination infrastructure designed for simultaneous mass test-taking.
The operating principle
Examination infrastructure fails differently from content delivery. A timed exam has three distinct load spikes — start, mid-exam, submission — each with different failure modes. Getting this right required designing the examination flow before designing the infrastructure. The architecture that came out of that process was not the simplest one. It was the one that worked correctly under real conditions.
04 · Completed · Frecher Hinakins · Compliance architectureNDIS compliance platform — Healthcare SaaS for disability services in AustraliaHealthcare SaaS · NDIS compliance · Australia · Regulated environment
The situation
NDIS service providers in Australia operate under strict regulatory requirements — participant data handling, audit trails, funding claim documentation. The compliance burden prevents most small providers from scaling because the administrative overhead grows with each client. The problem was not a compliance gap — it was a compliance architecture gap.
What was built
A healthcare SaaS platform purpose-built for NDIS compliance: participant management, care plan documentation, shift notes and incident reporting, funding claim generation aligned to NDIS price guides, and audit-ready record architecture. Compliance built into the data model from the first session — not retrofitted before the regulatory review.
The operating principle
In regulated industries, the cost of retrofitting compliance into a running system is between 3× and 10× the cost of building it in upfront. The CTO who has been through the retrofit knows exactly what “we'll handle compliance later” actually costs — in time, in re-architecture, and in regulatory exposure during the gap.
05 · Completed · Frecher Hinakins · Fintech architectureProject Hydro + Crosspay — Blockchain payment rails and global money transfer infrastructureFintech · Blockchain · USA + UK · KPMG Fintech Startup of the Year · 10,000-member developer community · 150 countries
The situation
Project Hydro was an open-source blockchain ecosystem incubated by Hydrogen — KPMG Fintech Startup of the Year, Fast Company World-Changing Technology. A 10,000-member global developer community across 150 countries depended on the infrastructure being architected correctly. In financial infrastructure, an architecture error is not a bug to be patched — it is a security vulnerability with real financial consequences for real users.
What was built
Snowflake Topup Wallet: RESTful API generating and monitoring Ethereum wallets per ERC-1484 Snowflake identity standard. Meta-Transaction Queuing Server: off-chain queue enabling gas-free user experience. OMG Plasma Bridge: smart contract bridging Snowflake identity for near-instant low-cost transfers. KYC compliance layer: Fiat-to-Hydro and Hydro-to-Fiat remittance with full Pseudo-MSB regulatory compliance. Crosspay (London): frontend architecture for a live global money transfer platform.
The operating principle
Financial infrastructure must be correct in ways that most software doesn't need to be. A gas optimisation error costs users real money. A KYC compliance gap creates regulatory exposure. Operating at this level requires understanding the business and regulatory constraints as deeply as the technical ones — because in fintech, the two are inseparable.
Where the pattern was built.
Not a list of roles. Each stop is defined by the observation it produced.
Independent Engineer
India · Singapore · USA · Australia · Canada
Built production systems across five countries while completing B.Tech — leading a distributed team of 10 developers across blockchain, fintech, edtech, e-commerce. First lesson: operating discipline separates engineers who ship from engineers who merely build.
The insight
Every system built in this period was for a founder who didn't have a senior technical person. The pattern was consistent: decisions that should have taken two hours took two weeks because there was no one with the authority and context to make them. The founders weren't incompetent. They were operating without the right person in the room. That observation is the entire basis for what Praxis does.
TapGrocer
Full-Stack Engineer · Gurgaon
Engineer at a 30-person grocery startup doing exactly what Zepto and Blinkit do today. Watched at close range how wrong technical hires, deferred architecture decisions, and founder overextension compound into company-level failure. The product was sound. The operating infrastructure around it wasn't.
The insight
The company didn't fail because the market was wrong. It failed because the technical function was never built to support the pace of decisions the business needed. Architecture decisions were deferred until they couldn't be. The first senior hire came too late. This is the situation most 0-to-1 founders are in — and the one Deepak now exists to prevent.
Frecher Hinakins Pvt. Ltd.
Founder & CEO · Noida
Bootstrapped a technical practice from zero. 30+ clients across six countries. 20+ production systems shipped — from blockchain payment rails (KPMG Fintech Startup of the Year) to government edtech for the Maharashtra SSC Board, to NDIS compliance platforms in Australia and AI-driven enterprise CRM in the US.
The insight
Every engagement owner-operated. No institutional backing. Running a service business at this level teaches one thing above all: quality and volume cannot coexist. The decision to limit engagements — to go deep rather than wide — was the same decision that made each engagement worth having. It's also the operating principle that Praxis is built on.
Starcar Germany
Technical Architect · via Frecher Hinakins · Remote
Germany's largest independent car rental network was losing revenue to manual pricing. The problem was framed as a technology gap. It was a decision architecture gap — and the fix was a data processing layer, not a platform replacement.
The insight
The right diagnosis of the actual problem is the primary value a CTO delivers before a line of code is written. Starcar was about to spend seven figures on a new platform. The real solution cost a fraction of that and was live in weeks. Misdiagnosed technical problems are the most expensive kind.
Alyke · Praxis
Consultant CTO · Co-Founder · India · USA · Singapore
Brought in as Consultant CTO for India's first friendship app — now at 1M+ downloads across three markets. Operated across the full co-founder scope: architecture from zero, AI matching engine, engineering team, security and compliance, investor narrative. Concurrently co-founding Praxis — the fractional C-suite practice that makes this operating model available to 4–5 founders per year.
The insight
Built the team to 30 to hit launch targets, then systematically automated every manual workflow until 10 people were running what 30 had been running. CI/CD eliminated manual deployments. SOPs replaced ad-hoc decisions. Infrastructure automation eliminated manual monitoring. The saving wasn't just headcount — it was the organisational complexity that comes with headcount.
Embedded. Not advisory.
Every engagement starts with a 45-minute diagnostic. No pitch. No deck. The founder describes where the company is stuck — technically, organisationally, or structurally. Deepak says what he sees, what he thinks is actually causing it, and whether he’s the right person to address it.
If there’s a fit, the engagement is scoped to a specific outcome with a specific timeline. Not an open retainer. A defined objective, a defined period, and a defined handover — systems documented, team operating independently, the founder removed from the loops that shouldn’t require them.
Fewer engagements than asked for. The founders who work with Praxis get everything. That’s only possible because attention isn’t distributed across ten companies simultaneously.
Structure
Retainer · Equity — scoped to outcome, not hours logged
Typical length
6–12 months, 3-month minimum — extend or exit clean at the milestone
Capacity
2–3 engagements at any time — selectivity is how quality is maintained
Stage
Seed · Series A–ready · Zero-to-one
Geography
India · Germany · USA · Remote globally
First step
45-min diagnostic — no obligation, no pitch, no deck
India
Primary market
Germany
Client delivery
United States
Client delivery
Australia
Client delivery
AWS · GCP · Azure
Cloud platforms
SOC 2 · ISO 27001
Compliance delivered
GDPR · RBI
Regulatory frameworks
Alyke
1.5M+ users scaled
Frecher Hinakins
30+ engagements
SaaS · Mobile · CRM
Product categories
AI · ML Infra
Integration layer
Praxis
Operating now
One conversation. Technical and direct.
Bring the technical problem as it actually is. Deepak will tell you what he sees, where the structural risk sits, and whether there’s a fit. If there isn’t, that will be said directly.
Praxis takes 4–5 founders per year across the partnership. If there’s capacity, there’s a conversation.