Strategy · Technology · Execution
I help founders, CEOs and investors make high-stakes product, technology and fintech decisions — and turn those decisions into outcomes.
Piyush Pathak
Founder, CommerceUp — acquired by Aspire, 2023
Former Head of Product & Engineering, Aspire
Piyush Pathak
Founder
14+
Years building and leading product & engineering
100+
Brands and products shipped since 2012
3
Markets operated in — India, UAE and US
Experience that builds confidence
Companies I founded, led, or built inside.
01
The operator behind the advice
Fourteen years: engineer and architect in digital publishing, then founder and CEO of a commerce SaaS that Aspire acquired, then the executive running global product and engineering for the company that bought it. I’ve made most of the expensive mistakes personally.
2012 — 2017
70+ mobile apps and the CMS behind national newspapers. Engineer to architect.
2018 — 2024
Notation Software Labs and its product CommerceUp — 70+ merchants across UAE and MENA, acquired by Aspire.
2023 — 2026
Built the India org, then ran global product, engineering and design across India and North America.
02
Recent advisory
Anonymised, because that is the deal. The through-line is not a sector — it is a decision that is expensive to get wrong and cheap to get a second opinion on.
Governance, risk & compliance · Banking
“We sell to enterprise banks. Can we sell to smaller ones?”
An enterprise GRC platform wanting to open an SMB motion. I worked with the team on what that actually requires — packaging, onboarding, pricing and support model — and on which parts of an enterprise product actively block a smaller buyer. The output was a SaaS direction and the sequence to get there, not a deck.
Quick commerce · Marketplace
“How do offline and online orders run through one pipeline?”
A quick-commerce marketplace in the Instacart mould, where the hard part was not the storefront but reconciling in-store orders and online orders into a single fulfilment pipeline. I defined the product end to end — the marketplace model, the order and fulfilment flow, and the implementation path from first version to operating scale.
Recent advisory has also covered security tooling for infrastructure compliance, and consumer mobile products in mental health. Client names are withheld by agreement — happy to talk through any of it on a call.
03
How I engage
Most of my time goes to embedded leadership, and I take two of those at once. Everything else starts with the same free thirty-minute call.
04
Where I help
Why Piyush
Sometimes you need someone who has already made the decision.
I’ve built companies, led product and engineering organizations, been through an acquisition from the inside, and worked across product, technology and business strategy in three markets.
The value isn’t another pair of hands.
It’s judgment, pattern recognition, and knowing which problems are worth your quarter.
2 embedded engagements at a time — building Convertly with the rest
I’m currently available for selected advisory and fractional leadership engagements.
Building something instead?
If you already know what you need built, skip the call and get a written build plan in 24 hours.