Origin Story

Our Founder Vijay, recalls a poignant incident from his childhood when he was just thirteen years old. It was the last day of his principal's tenure at his school, and as the students lined up on both sides of the road to bid farewell to their beloved principal, something extraordinary happened. The principal stopped in front of young Vijay, placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, and spoke these words to him

"Remember this son. No matter how hard it gets, or how long it takes, never, ever give up"

Vijay has been driven to finish what he starts since a young age. He has a tenacity for tackling challenges that others might find too daunting. For example, he remembers cutting the grass at school all by himself when every other kid had given up and abandoned the task. He also completed his final year projects in high school and graduate school when his friends had abandoned them due to their difficulty. And when confronted with a technical problem that had eluded every engineer who had taken a crack at it, Vijay refused to give up. As a QA Manager at a company remarked, "He fearlessly confronted the problem and tackled it head-on until he found a solution".

Vijay's steadfast commitment to finishing what he starts has been a defining characteristic throughout his life. He has always been willing to put in the time and effort, whether it takes weeks, months, or even years to complete a task. Even if he were to come last in a marathon, his friends knew they could count on him to stick with the team and never give up midway, a quality they admired even back in middle school.

Vijay's problem-solving skills were put to the ultimate test when he encountered one of the most complex problems of his career. It took him years to solve, and he had to apply principles from relativistic physics and the multiverse theory to think outside the box and utilize a software framework in a groundbreaking way that had never been done before. To this day, nobody fully comprehends the intricacies of the solution, and only Vijay possesses the expertise to address any issues that may arise in its implementation. It is not a mere hack, but a robust solution that has been successfully implemented at scale for a company as large as Walmart. Vijay's outstanding achievement earned him the well-deserved nickname "Braniac" at his previous company, a title that he cherishes to this day.

Vijay chose the name "Nautilus" for the company, inspired by the submarine featured in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." In the book, Captain Nemo defies the odds by building an incredible submarine that astounds the world with its technological advancements. He travels alongside a group of loyal companions who stand by his side through thick and thin. Together, they face many challenges and overcome them against all odds. Interestingly, all of the submariners in the book were Indian, further emphasizing the message of diversity and unity in the face of adversity.

Our story began in 2000 after Vijay graduated and began working for a large company in Bombay, India. Vijay's exceptional programming skills were quickly recognized by his managers, and he successfully executed numerous projects, culminating in the largest and most complex project the company had ever tackled. Working from their headquarters, Vijay developed his first synchronization solution, utilizing advanced technologies such as distributed transactions, messaging, web services, and Windows Server Advanced Clustering, all while leveraging the power of SQL Server. This was a significant technological achievement, particularly for the time period, demonstrating Vijay's innovation and foresight in the field of programming.

During the early years of his career, Vijay was focused on absorbing as much knowledge as possible from those around him, quietly honing his skills as a programmer. After executing numerous successful projects, he began to develop an idea that would eventually evolve into Arc. This idea was sparked by a simple yet powerful question: what if we could use the same solution we developed for one client in every project going forward? Would it not be more efficient and cost-effective, saving time, money, resources, and human labor? This initial germ of an idea would ultimately lead to the creation of the Arc product, that streamlines and optimizes development processes, allowing for greater productivity and innovation.

During breaks between projects, Vijay began developing the core components of Chakra. Despite his expertise, he was initially unsure how this technology could be used. Initially, Chakra was utilized as a tool to generate code in both the database and C#. Over the years, Vijay executed numerous successful projects for a wide range of companies, with Chakra consistently in the background, working to optimize and streamline development processes.

In 2005, Vijay arrived in California to take on the role of project leader and Chief Software Architect for a product development company. Prior to this, he had successfully built a product for the company - a feat that had eluded many others before him. Over the course of his time in the USA, Vijay worked with a variety of companies, absorbing as much knowledge as possible about how they built their products and what it took to create a successful, hyper-scalable application. Throughout these experiences, he continued to find ways to leverage Chakra on the sidelines, using it to automate manual tasks and streamline development processes wherever possible.

After many years of executing successful projects for a multitude of companies, Vijay finally had the opportunity to build an application from scratch a few years ago. He spent many months meticulously designing the architecture of the application, utilizing the best available technologies at the time. This project represented a unique opportunity for Vijay, as he was finally able to "complete the circle" and integrate key ideas from what has become Chakra into the core of the application. This integration not only showcased the power and versatility of the ideas behind Chakra but also demonstrated Vijay's vision and foresight in creating a tool that could be seamlessly integrated into any development project. The result was a cutting-edge application that showcased the full potential of what would eventually become Arc.

The idea for Fusion Core initially existed as nothing more than a daydream, inspired by what architecture books had described as a possibility for the future. However, Vijay quickly recognized that Chakra was the missing link that could make this ambitious idea a reality. Undeterred by the potential obstacles and challenges that lay ahead, he set out to tackle each issue one by one, refusing to accept the possibility of failure. With a meticulous approach, he compartmentalized each issue and worked tirelessly to overcome them. This unwavering dedication to turning his vision into a reality ultimately paved the way for Fusion Core, the cutting-edge solution that empowers developers to build innovative and scalable applications with ease.

Despite being faced with numerous unknowns and potential obstacles, Vijay fearlessly worked to bridge the gap and integrate caching fully into the Data Access Layer. Through a series of incremental steps and tireless experimentation, he was able to develop a solution that would eliminate the need to call the database directly from the code. This breakthrough enabled him to extrapolate beyond what was currently possible and design a solution that could work at scale, even with a cloud deployment to stateless application servers.

At the outset, there were several seemingly insurmountable problems that posed significant challenges to building Fusion Core. Despite these initial setbacks, Vijay persevered, methodically working to develop innovative solutions to each issue he encountered. Over time, he was able to overcome every obstacle and fine-tune Fusion Core into a truly revolutionary solution. In fact, his breakthroughs were so significant that he was able to successfully implement Fusion Core on stateless servers, an achievement that represents a giant leap forward in the realm of application development.

Throughout his career, Vijay has maintained a steadfast commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in software development. Rather than simply following established patterns and conventions, he has always sought to do things differently, to innovate and create something better than what has come before. As a result, he has encountered countless new challenges and obstacles along the way, each one pushing him to delve deeper into his craft and find new solutions to old problems. Today, Vijay has largely succeeded in his endeavor, creating a truly unique and game-changing approach to application development that has transformed the industry and empowered developers around the world to create software that is faster, more reliable, and more scalable than ever before.

Vijay's ambition did not stop at Chakra and Fusion Core. He aimed to tackle all the core issues involved in developing a successful, hyper-scale international application. He realized that security was a significant problem for developers to handle, and they often made errors that could lead to security breaches. So he decided to build a new security framework on top of Fusion Core that was easy for developers to implement, prevented security issues due to developer errors, and was also high-performing. Vijay had never seen a large application that was both secure and easy to maintain with excellent performance. Today, we can proudly say that this dream has been achieved.

Vijay had witnessed teams struggling to implement efficient and fast search functionality within their applications. To address this, he added support for updating search indexes within Chakra. With just a few months of work, he was able to accomplish what had taken a large search team several years to achieve. He had succeeded in using code to surpass the limitations of human labor.

Vijay recognized that logging and alerting were ongoing challenges in every project he had worked on. So, he set out to invent a better, more intelligent system that would make sense whether it produced a log file or wrote to a database. The result is a logging and alerting system that is not only extremely effective, but also easy for developers to use. This system has revolutionized the game for application development, making it easier to track and diagnose issues than ever before.

Vijay's innovations aren't limited to a specific programming language or technology stack. He understands that the core ideas and algorithms behind his creations are universally applicable, and that's why his long-term vision for Nautilus is to democratize advanced application development on all platforms and technologies. Advancing these technologies, we hope that developers will eventually be able to create fast, secure, and scalable applications with ease, regardless of the language or platform they're using.