About Sahil Kapoor

Sahil Kapoor is the CEO of Hawk MarTech's technology arm, a Gurugram-based product studio shipping consumer products across sports, real-money gaming, opinion trading, 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 was co-founder and CTO of CarInfo. He led engineering on the bootstrapped auto-information app from the first commit in June 2016 through his exit in December 2022. CarInfo grew to over 70 million downloads and roughly 10 million monthly active users during his six-and-a-half-year tenure. 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 at 30 million monthly active users. He also did two stints as a Product Engineer at GoTo Group on the GoFood team inside the Gojek super-app used by 100 million people 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

Hawk MarTech (Technology)

Chief Executive Officer · December 2022 to present · Gurugram

I set up and run the technology and product studio inside the Hawk MarTech group. We ship to over a million daily users on mobile and web with a team that covers design, DevOps, backend, mobile, product, and AI, operating across Gurugram, Dubai, and London. We build owned products and co-build 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.
• YesNo. Opinion-trading markets where users predict outcomes and trade positions.
• Cricket Bazaar. Live cricket scores, news, and stats.
• One Turf News. Multi-tenant sports news platform with geo-scoped editions.

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

CarInfo

Co-founder and CTO · 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 70 million downloads and around 10 million monthly active users entirely on organic loops, SEO, and category leadership in vehicle search, with no outside funding raised. The marketing engine combined SEO, Google and Meta paid acquisition, and a content arm built around vehicle data. 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.

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 grew to over 30 million monthly active users (2019) and became India's third most-used travel app. 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 used by 200 million people 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

Comfortable across the full arc of a product. First commit, messy middle, scale, exit. CarInfo went from one feature to 80 million installs on my watch. ixigo Trains went from idea to 30 million monthly users. Hawk MarTech's tech arm went from zero to a million daily users in under two years.

Full-stack in the literal sense of running a product. I'm involved in engineering, design, product but also growth marketing, copywriting, hiring, finance, and the operational plumbing engineers usually delegate or ignore. Most consumer products fail because of the second list, not 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. Clarity rarely comes from planning. It comes from putting a working version in front of users and watching what happens.

Tech I Use

• Backend. Node.js, Pythonm 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.

LinkedIn · X · GitHub