A customer was ready to abandon a software project. The investment had already been made; the promised product still had not arrived. Eswar Lingam tells the episode with the satisfaction of an engineer who has finally got something to work. Fission Labs, he says, helped the customer stay with the investment and get the project live. He leaves the customer unnamed. The pleasure in the telling comes from the launch.
It is a useful introduction to the co-founder and CEO of Fission Labs. Technology businesses have a generous supply of people willing to discuss the future. Lingam's account concerns the awkward business of delivering something in the present. In his telling, larger consulting firms had failed to bring the product to market. That is his account of the engagement, rather than a public comparison of named competitors. His chosen measure of success is refreshingly legible: people could finally use the thing.
Across his work in product development, his connection to Salesforce consultancy Cloud Peritus, and his recent interest in enterprise AI, that practical concern keeps returning. What does the customer need? Can this team deliver it? And will the result justify the customer's confidence? A working product is an agreeable answer. It also has the advantage of being rather difficult to fake in a meeting.
The art of declining an invitation
Lingam has described a sales practice that deserves a little attention: Fission Labs screens prospective customers while those customers are screening Fission Labs. If the team cannot do the work to the standard he wants, he says it declines the project. The reason is commercial as well as technical. Referrals account for a substantial part of the work, in his description. Each engagement therefore carries the possibility of an introduction to the next one.
He sets out an ambition for a customer recommendation score of ten. That is a target, rather than a published company score. The distinction matters. His point is that the engagement should leave somebody willing to recommend the team enthusiastically. Taking unsuitable work might make today's sales figures more agreeable while making tomorrow's introductions considerably more awkward.
“Otherwise, we decline their projects.”
Eswar Lingam, on screening prospective engagements
There is an engineer's respect for fit in this approach. A project has requirements; a team has capabilities. The cheerful handshake comes after those have been compared. Lingam describes the people at Fission Labs as product engineers, with software serving the product the customer needs. The language puts an obligation on the firm: knowing how to write the code is only part of understanding the assignment.
A career with several workbenches
Lingam's career includes co-founding Gongoora, co-founding Publiture and serving as its chief operating officer, and leading engineering and operations in India at Peel Technologies. Publiture dates to 2009 in his career record; the Peel role began in 2015. These are different seats around the same table: creating a business, running its operations, and taking responsibility for an engineering organization.
His academic background includes a master's degree in statistics and computer science from Marquette University, with attendance listed from 1996 to 1999 on his professional profile. Statistics and software make a useful pairing for someone now discussing AI applications. One concerns what can reasonably be concluded from information; the other concerns making a machine perform an intended task. The connection is an observation about the disciplines, rather than a claim about why he chose them.
At Fission Labs, the leadership group includes fellow co-founders Kishore Poreddy and Surendra Mallampati. Mallampati is identified as co-founder and chief technology officer. Their presence gives the company a more accurate shape than a solitary-founder narrative would. Product development is collective work, and the company's leadership reflects that fact.
Cloud Peritus adds another chapter. Lingam is its co-founder and, on its current leadership page, a board member. Siva Ramesh is listed as CEO and chief architect. Older descriptions of Lingam as Cloud Peritus's CEO belong to an earlier arrangement. The current distinction lets the story move forward: he remains connected to the business while another executive holds its operating leadership.
Dallas, chosen by the clock
When Lingam explained Fission Labs's Dallas expansion in 2023, he gave a practical reason for the geography. Customers wanted engineers whose working hours overlapped with their own in the United States. An offshore team could supply capability; a US development presence could make more of the working day available for collaboration.
Dallas also offered access to people working across banking, telecommunications, IT and engineering, he said. He described an office lease already signed and hiring under way. He acknowledged technology-sector headwinds and a banking crisis while arguing that the moment offered an opportunity to expand. This was a plan with an address and a recruitment task attached.
In a separate account of the transition into 2023, he discussed staff attrition, retention policies for key personnel, and a move toward hybrid work. Employees hired for remote-only roles continued working from different cities. He also described expansion into Indian cities including Vijayawada. The detail is worth keeping because it gives growth its proper texture: people, arrangements and adjustments.
The office announcement and the staffing account sit comfortably together. An expanding business has to win work and make itself workable for the people doing it. A lease can be signed in an afternoon. Establishing the conditions under which a team works well together takes rather more patient attention.
A little suspicion of the starting pistol
Lingam's advice on product launches contains a useful qualification. Releasing early can help teams learn from users in gaming or consumer-support applications, he has argued. Financial systems demand a different judgment about quality. He asks teams to consider the features required for a minimum viable product, acceptable quality, and whether extra resources would help meet the schedule.
The attraction of that argument is its refusal to turn a method into a universal commandment. A release strategy has consequences for the people who use the product. Choosing it means considering what kind of software is being built and what a failure would mean in that setting. The calendar alone cannot answer those questions.
There is a small, human footnote to his discussion. He explained that the accompanying recording had poor sound because he was traveling to India for family reasons without his usual setup. The executive discussing the conditions for a good release was also dealing with the conditions for a usable recording. Technical advice occasionally acquires its own demonstration.
Accountability has an office door
In a company announcement about workplace certification, Lingam described Fission Labs as having a flat hierarchy with easy access to leadership. He also emphasized responsibility and accountability. The certification covered India from November 2021 to November 2022. It belongs to that period, rather than serving as an undated claim about the present.
His account of hierarchy is revealing because access and responsibility appear together. Being able to reach a leader is useful when a decision needs making. Taking ownership matters when that decision has consequences. An organization can put either idea on a wall. The interesting question is how they meet during the working day.
Former colleague Chetan Vij described Lingam as someone who communicated priorities clearly and joined the work when circumstances required it. That recollection provides a personal counterpart to the organizational language. The portrait is of a manager whose involvement could extend past setting the task. It is one colleague's experience, and its specificity makes it more useful than a string of ornamental adjectives.
AI, with the customer's vocabulary included
Fission Labs announced AWS Generative AI Software Competency Partner status on June 17, 2025. Its announcement described work with enterprise knowledge assistants, retrieval-augmented generation and AI systems incorporated into existing workflows. Lingam presented the designation as evidence of the company's investment in bringing generative AI into customers' cloud environments.
The following June brought a more particular expression of that ambition. DaaX named Fission Labs the inaugural partner in its Domain Knowledge Cartridge ecosystem. The cartridges supply industry terminology, concepts and relationships to DaaX applications. Lingam said Fission Labs planned to develop reusable cartridges for customer solutions built with DaaX. This was an announced development intention, rather than a report of completed deployments.
“Businesses need AI that can apply industry knowledge”
Eswar Lingam, June 2026
The subject has changed from office locations and launch schedules to the knowledge an AI application needs. The customer question remains familiar. A business operates with particular terms, relationships and expectations. An application has to work within those particulars to be useful. Fluency makes an attractive demonstration; understanding the assignment is what gives the demonstration somewhere to go.
That is where Lingam's story currently lands: a product engineer's attention moving into another set of tools. The decisions along the way are concrete enough to remember. Decline an unsuitable project. Put engineers where customers can work with them. Think carefully before choosing a launch date. Give new software the context its users already possess. Each asks for judgment before applause. The applause, if the product works, can find its own way into the room.