About Sahil Kapoor

Sahil Kapoor is the founder of Open Theory Labs, a product and engineering company in Gurugram that he started in August 2026. From December 2022 to July 2026 he was CEO of Hawk MarTech's technology arm, a Gurugram-based product studio shipping consumer products across sports, real-money gaming, travel, and ecommerce to over a million daily users on mobile and web. He has been building software for over a decade.

Before Hawk, Sahil co-founded CarInfo with Sahil Ajmani, as a side project while they both worked at ixigo. He led engineering from the first commit in June 2016 through his exit in December 2022, as CarInfo grew to over 80 million downloads across Android and iOS and 1 million daily active users. The company was later acquired by Cars24 in January 2026.

Earlier, he spent nearly four years at ixigo, where he architected ixigo Flights and ixigo Trains from scratch and grew Trains into India's third most-used travel app. ixigo reached 30 million monthly active users in FY2019. He also did two stints as a Product Engineer at GoTo Group on the GoFood team inside the Gojek super-app, which had about 170 million users across Southeast Asia, and consulted for KalaGato on its mobile app portfolio.

Products he has built or led have reached more than 200 million users.

A short personal note. I started writing code at 12 and never stopped. I work across product, design, and engineering, and I've been around the full arc of a startup, from the first commit to teams of hundreds.

Companies I've Built

Open Theory Labs

Founder · August 2026 to present · Gurugram

I started Open Theory Labs to give ambitious ideas better odds: make exploring an idea cheap, building it fast, and proving it normal. More on why I started it.

Hawk MarTech (Technology)

Chief Executive Officer · December 2022 to July 2026 · Gurugram

I set up and ran the technology and product studio inside the Hawk MarTech group. We shipped to over a million daily users on mobile and web with a team of over 50 engineers, product managers, and designers, operating across Gurugram, Dubai, and London. We built owned products and co-built with media groups, startups, and operators that need a product-and-engineering arm without hiring one from scratch.

Owned and client portfolio:

• Viacation. Travel meta-search across deals, packages, and discovery.
• SG11 Fantasy. Real-money fantasy sports across cricket, football, and multi-sport contests.
• SGChess. Skill-based chess tournaments and instant games.
• Bluffmaster Poker. Real-money poker for pros and casual players.
• Cricket Bazaar. Live cricket scores, news, and stats.
• One Turf News. Multi-tenant sports news platform with geo-scoped editions.

We also ran AI-driven automations and a few stealth LLM projects for content production and ad operations.

CarInfo

Co-founder · June 2016 to December 2022 (exit) · New Delhi

CarInfo began as a number-plate lookup and grew into one of India's most-used auto-information apps over six and a half years. The product expanded into ownership history, insurance verification, challan and PUC status, resale-value estimates, used-car loans, document and renewal reminders, and full RC management.

I led engineering and product execution from the first commit. We grew the company to over 80 million downloads and 1 million daily active users almost entirely through organic, word-of-mouth growth. We were profitable from the fourth month and never raised outside funding. For a decade, CarInfo has been in the Play Store's top 100 apps in India. Strategic partnerships with CarDekho, Spinny, Acko, and Probus insurance extended both distribution and monetization.

I exited my shares in December 2022 after building a defensible brand and product. Cars24 acquired the company in January 2026. More on the CarInfo page.

Lunarbounds

Founder

I founded Lunarbounds to build a real-money opinion trading app on Android, iOS, and web, covering cricket, news, politics, and entertainment. We built the trading engine, order matching, settlement, payments, and KYC in-house. The app passed 1 million downloads, reached 300,000 monthly users during the IPL, and peaked at 20,000 concurrent traders. We shut it down when India banned real-money gaming in August 2025. More on the Lunarbounds page.

Earlier Roles

ixigo

Technical Architect · February 2016 to November 2019

Built ixigo Flights from scratch starting in 2016, including flight and hotel booking, web check-in, the flight tracker, and the Smart Tracker that pushed delay and cancellation notifications to users. The app was featured by Apple for design and innovation.

Then architected and built ixigo Trains from scratch, shipped IRCTC ticketing, running status, PNR prediction, and trip management. Trains became India's third most-used travel app, and ixigo reached 30 million monthly active users in FY2019. Featured by Apple three times and ran on demo devices in Indian Apple Stores.

GoTo Group (Gojek)

Product Engineer · November 2019 to June 2021, and February 2022 to November 2022

Core team member on GoFood inside the Gojek super-app, which had about 170 million users across Southeast Asia. First stint focused on restaurant interfaces, checkout, map components, and delivery functionality, and pushed test coverage above 80 percent. Second stint led the redesign of the ordering flow across menu, promotions, and payment, plus search with customizable filters, real-time order tracking, and a ratings and feedback system.

KalaGato

Product Consultant · March 2021 to December 2021 · Delhi

Acquired and grew mobile apps inside the KalaGato portfolio. Optimized monetization and ad integrations, managed product development end to end, and worked with the design team to refine the apps' user experience and lift retention.

GoYaNo Pvt. Ltd.

Freelance Software Engineer · October 2015 to February 2016 · Gurugram

Designed and built Goyano, a hyper-local platform for event discovery, user feedback, and personalized offers. Shipped a live event feed, a curated offers feed, an open community forum, and a content blog.

ClinchPad

Software Engineer · August 2015 to February 2016 · Gurgaon

Founding-team engineer on Wanto, a social fashion product aggregator that pulled inventory from over 100 ecommerce sites in India. Built iOS and Android apps including login, payments, an interactive collage maker for fashion collections, and social-sharing features.

Hot Cocoa Software

Software Engineer · August 2014 to August 2015 · New Delhi

Built applications from scratch for national and US-based clients, contributed to open source on GitHub, designed mobile UI and icon sets, and led QA across the team's projects. Key projects included Convergys MyTransport, ShaleApp Logistics, and Apache Tribe Talent Management.

How I Work

I've worked through the whole life of a product. CarInfo went from one feature to 80 million installs on my watch. ixigo Trains went from an idea to India's third most-used travel app. Hawk MarTech's tech arm went from zero to a million daily users in under two years.

Full stack, in the sense of running the whole product. Beyond engineering, design, and product, I work on growth marketing, copywriting, hiring, finance, and the operational plumbing engineers usually delegate or ignore. In my experience, consumer products fail on that second list far more often than on the first.

Decisive about people. I've hired, fired, coached, demoted, and rebuilt teams. The hardest skill in leadership is being honest with people about whether they're on the right team, in the right role, doing the right work, at the right pace. Most of what gets called leadership is just doing that on time.

Bias to ship. I get more clarity from putting a working version in front of users and watching what happens than from planning.

Tech I Use

• Backend. Node.js, Python, REST and GraphQL, SQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, Kafka.
• DevOps. AWS/GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, Firebase, CI/CD, observability and alerting.
• Web. React, Next.js.
• Mobile. Android (Kotlin), iOS (Swift), Flutter.
• AI. Custom LLM workflows, retrieval pipelines, content and ad automations.

Writing

I publish essays on building, scaling, and the parts of running a company nobody warns founders about. The newsletter and archive live at sahilkapoor.com. Around 25,000 readers follow the writing on LinkedIn.

Get in Touch

Open to collaborating, investing, or comparing notes with operators and builders. For Open Theory Labs work, email [email protected].

LinkedIn · X · GitHub