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I’m a tinkerer at heart.

As a kid, I changed GTA files to see what would happen, made VBScript pranks, and once built both a mischievous batch-file worm and its antidote. The habit stayed: peel back an abstraction, understand the machinery, and rebuild enough of it to learn.

Lokesh smiling at sunrise in the mountains, wearing a black tee.
Sunrise in the mountains

That curiosity became a career in software. For more than seven years I built backend systems, data infrastructure and products, most recently at Udaan, where I architected Percept Insight and led the SQL infrastructure team, and earlier as a founding engineer at Clarisights. These days I’m building MastiDB, an on-disk OLAP database engine, and a handful of apps for dancers.

I’m also an inquisitive netizen with an insatiable appetite for learning, expanding my worldview, and finding the courage to suck at something new. Casual curiosities have a habit of turning into serious pursuits. Movement was one of them. It started with copying Bollywood songs off the television, and years of contemporary dance, improvisation, acroyoga and yoga have taught me that the body is intelligent, and that attention, play and collaboration are practices in themselves.

Otherwise, I’m usually training, reading, wandering through the internet, or following an interest far beyond the point of practical necessity.

I enjoy conversations about technology, art, philosophy, creative practice, and pretty much anything approached with genuine curiosity.

I took a planned break of about two years, my wholesomebatical, making things in both worlds and, more and more, things that join them.

Life in fragments

Stages and studios, code and curiosity, mountains and rooms where something shifted.

  • Lokesh holding a large cheque at a hackathon.
    Runner-up, Udaan AI Hackathon
  • Lokesh on stage in front of a slide titled Clarisights in numbers.
    InOut 6.0, 2019
  • Lokesh in a folded headstand at home.
    Debugging from a new angle
  • A cup of tea on a ledge over a mountain valley.
    Tea over a valley
  • Lokesh in a studio, studying a hand gesture.
    Studying a gesture
  • A shoreline in Bali.
    Bali
  • Lokesh on a mountain trail.
    On a trek
  • Lokesh speaking at a lectern.
    At the lectern, InOut

Working with me

  • I zoom in and out as a problem needs, from product thinking to deep tech to customer feedback. On Percept Insight that meant going from what customers asked for down to the compiler that turns reports into Druid SQL.
  • I balance long-term vision with short-term velocity, and choose case by case instead of staying rigid.
  • I stay close to the problem and the people using it, with no filtering layers in between. When a Percept funnel was slow, I read Druid’s configs, and then its source.
  • I value impact, but not everything has to be about it. I love geeking out on craft and getting lost in good conversation for their own sake.