Nishanth Kesavan

Nishanth Kesavan

Builder & Problem-Solver · Bengaluru, India

I spent 13 years in IT, most of it at Brillio Technologies working on a Microsoft engagement. My work involved data analysis, building Power BI dashboards, designing taxonomies for customer support classification, and contributing to ML model training. I was the person who turned raw ticket data into something stakeholders could act on.


Having said that, I would not call myself a software engineer, that is too much. I understand code, I can read it, I can modify it, and I can write enough to build what I need. However, my strength has always been in understanding the problem first, then figuring out the technical path to solve it.


In 2025, after over a decade in corporate environments, I stepped away to build my own tools. The projects I work on now, from RailHygiene to the Kerala Flash-Flood Watch, are things I personally wished existed. They address gaps in Indian public data, civic accountability, and everyday utility that I could not find solutions for elsewhere.


I should be transparent about one thing: every project on this website was built with the help of AI, primarily ChatGPT and Gemini. I am not a professional developer. I did not write every line of code from scratch, and I would not pretend otherwise. What I brought to each project was the problem definition, the domain knowledge, the data source research, and the product decisions. AI helped me translate those into working code. I would say this is an important distinction, because the advent of LLMs has fundamentally changed who can build software, and I believe learning to work effectively with AI is a skill that everyone should be incorporating into their toolkit.

Approach

How I Build

I want to be upfront about my process, because I think it is relevant and I do not want anyone visiting this site to have the wrong impression.

While I hold a BCA and a Diploma in IT where I first learned to write code, I have never worked professionally as a software developer, and I did not spend my career writing production-grade code at a tech company. What I have is 13 years of experience working closely with data, systems, and technical teams, which gave me a strong understanding of how software works, even if I was not the one writing it.

The reason I was able to build and ship four products in under a year is AI. Specifically, ChatGPT and Google Gemini. These tools allowed me to go from "I know exactly what I want to build and why" to "here is a working, published application" in a way that would not have been possible even two years ago.

My role in each project is what I would call the product mind: I identify the problem, research the data sources, define what the tool should do, make the architectural decisions, test every flow, and handle the deployment. AI handles the heavy lifting of translating those decisions into Kotlin, JavaScript, Python, or whatever the stack requires. I review, iterate, debug, and refine until the product meets my standards.

I would say this is not a limitation to be embarrassed about. It is the new reality of building software. The ability to clearly define a problem, communicate it to an AI, evaluate the output, and iterate until it works is itself a skill, and I believe it is one that everyone should be developing. The barrier to building useful tools has dropped significantly, and the people who will benefit most are those who have domain expertise and real problems to solve, not necessarily those who can write code from memory.

Career

Work Experience

2025 — PRESENT

Independent Builder

Self-employed · Bengaluru

  • Built and published RailHygiene, an Android app that lets passengers check and rate train coach hygiene using PNR lookup, with zero personal data collection
  • Built and published Padham, a minimal, offline-first Malayalam spiritual text reader designed for daily practice
  • Created Kerala Flash-Flood Watch, a multi-source decision-support dashboard combining data from IMD, NASA IMERG, CWC, RainViewer, and KSDMA for monsoon monitoring
  • Developed ProteinDB, a web application that scrapes, normalizes, and ranks Indian protein supplements by objective value metrics

2012 — 2025

Tech Specialist

Brillio Technologies · Client: Microsoft — Supportability Insights

  • Developed and implemented taxonomies to categorize customer tickets/cases across products (Sales, Accounts, Office, Windows), later consolidated into a single unified taxonomy
  • Analyzed data and conducted deep product failure case/incident analysis to identify top trending issues, providing actionable insights to engineering
  • Transitioned reporting from Excel charts/pivots to Power BI visualizations, enhancing data accessibility for stakeholders
  • Played a key role in ML model implementation — modifying taxonomies, training models using manually classified high-confidence data
  • Developed interactive Power BI dashboards leveraging DAX and calculated columns, enabling stakeholders to derive actionable insights
  • Created a Copilot dashboard to monitor daily trending issues for new products
  • Designed a CELA (Legal Affairs) dashboard integrated with Power Automate for case management
  • Automated report generation and distribution workflows
  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams to refine taxonomies, improve ML models, and enhance supportability insights

2007 — 2012

Subject Matter Expert (SME)

C Cubed Solutions

  • Managed escalations and complex help desk operations, ensuring high-quality customer experience
  • Developed and optimized training programs for support teams, improving productivity and efficiency
  • Led a team of support specialists, tracking performance metrics and driving process enhancements

Capabilities

Technical Skills

Mobile Development

Kotlin Jetpack Compose Android SDK Material Design 3 Firebase Room DB

Data & Analytics

Power BI DAX SQL Excel (Advanced) Python R (Basic)

Web & Cloud

JavaScript TypeScript Next.js Node.js Azure GitHub Actions

Operations & Process

Escalation Management ML Model Training Taxonomy Design Power Automate Data Validation

AI-Assisted Development

ChatGPT Google Gemini Prompt Engineering AI Code Review AI-to-Production Workflow

Education

Academic Background

Bachelor's in Computer Application

Alagappa University

2011

Diploma in Information Technology

MSBTE

2007

Credentials

Certifications

Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate

Recognition

Achievements

  • Recognized as "Brillian of the Quarter" twice and "Brillian of the Month" once for excellence in operations and leadership
  • Promoted to Operations Lead in recognition of outstanding performance and leadership in technical operations