Delhi, 9th September 2025: Building technology today means balancing scale, speed, and user experience in an environment where challenges can change overnight. Behind every smooth digital interaction is a story of problem-solving, persistence, and the drive to create impact. From scaling under pressure to celebrating small wins, this article is by a leader whose journey reflects how technology is not just powering live sports, it’s amplifying the joy of the game for millions worldwide
Join Mr. Marquis Fernandes (Director – India Business, Quantic India) in a dynamic conversation with Mr. Rishav Saxena, CTO at PARTH | CREX. He shares how his team engineered seamless fan experiences during massive traffic surges, embedded emotional storytelling into backend decisions, and created a culture of agility without sacrificing code quality. In this conversation we understand how his approach combines technical rigor with empathy, ensuring every decision safeguards not just performance but the passion of millions of fans.
Q. You have scaled a live platform to serve millions using Google Cloud. Can you walk us through one particularly challenging scalability problem you encountered and how your team overcame it?
One of the most intense challenges came during a high-profile cricket series when traffic spiked to nearly ten times our usual peak within just a few minutes of the match starting. It was not just the application servers that felt the strain as our data layer was also under heavy pressure, causing latency spikes at the worst possible time. The real challenge was doing all this without disrupting the live match experience for fans who expect updates in near real time.
We acted quickly. We implemented sharding method for high-traffic data nodes, adjusted our Cloud Run scaling policies to respond aggressively to bursts, and optimized payload sizes so we were not pushing redundant data. On top of that, we introduced a selective data subscription model so clients received only what they needed. Within hours we had things running smoothly again, and every match that followed ran without a hitch even under record-breaking traffic. That night became the blueprint for how we scale under pressure.
Q. CREX has a strong focus on fan experience. How do you align backend development decisions with emotional and experiential aspects of sports engagement?
For us the backend is not just about infrastructure, it is part of the storytelling. A two-hundred millisecond delay in sending a wicket notification might sound negligible, but in the world of sports fandom it can be the difference between feeling the thrill of the moment and reading about it after it has happened. That is why every backend decision, from caching to queue management, is made with the fan’s emotional experience in mind.
We work closely with the design and product teams to map technical metrics to fan emotions. If a feature has the potential to trigger big reaction moments, we invest heavily in redundancy, monitoring, and load testing for that pathway. For us backend architecture is really about preserving the drama, suspense, and joy of the game, no matter where the fan is in the world.
Q. In a bootstrapped startup, balancing rapid delivery with long-term maintainability is tricky. What internal processes or philosophies have helped your team stay efficient without compromising on code quality?
The temptation to cut corners in a bootstrapped setup is real, but we learned early that technical debt in live sports compounds faster than you expect. Our philosophy is simple: build fast, but refactor faster. We release in short, iterative cycles but lock in dedicated time for refactoring and optimization. That keeps us nimble without letting quality slide.
We have also established clear coding standards and internal documentation so any engineer can quickly understand the context of a module they have never worked on before. Combined with our two-layer testing approach, which uses lightweight tests for speed and deeper integration tests in nightly builds, this process allows us to keep pace with the sports calendar while maintaining a stable and reliable platform.
Q. From long nights solving production bugs with your team to seeing fans react to live updates, what has been your most goosebump-inducing moment so far at CREX?
The one that stands out happened during a World Cup final. It was late at night, the match was down to the last over, and we were in the war room watching traffic in real time. With every ball the traffic graph spiked, and when the winning shot was hit the dashboard exploded with peak traffic, live reactions, and chat messages. It felt like the entire cricketing world was on our servers at that exact second.
In that moment I realised we were not just running a sports app, we were part of a collective global memory. The fact that our infrastructure stayed rock solid made it even more rewarding. That was a night none of us will ever forget.
Q. If you could go back in time and hand your younger CTO self that one debugging tip, what would it say?
I would say “Always check the assumptions you have not questioned yet.” Most of my longest debugging sessions did not come from complexity, they came from overconfidence that a certain part could not possibly be the issue.
Now I approach debugging like peeling an onion, systematically verifying each layer, even the ones I am sure about. I also try to reproduce the problem in the smallest possible environment before tackling the bigger picture. This approach has saved me many hours and quite a few sleepless nights.
Q. Working in a high-performance startup, what is your personal hack to stay focused, energized, and still have fun with your team?
I work in structured sprints, aligning my energy to match timings when possible, and I take short but meaningful breaks with the team. Sometimes it is just a quick chat over coffee, sometimes a five-minute laugh over a meme. Those moments break the monotony and keep morale high, even when deadlines are intense.
I also make it a habit to celebrate small wins immediately. Shipping a tiny performance improvement that only the development team notices might not warrant a big announcement, but acknowledging it keeps spirits up. Over time, that mix of intensity and lightness is what keeps us sharp, connected, and motivated.
Mr. Rishav Saxena’s journey shows that technology leadership in live sports is about more than code and infrastructure, it’s about engineering moments that connect people across time zones and emotions. By blending agility with discipline, and innovation with human-centred design, he demonstrates how startups can punch above their weight and create lasting impact. For today’s digital leaders, his story is a reminder that true scalability isn’t just about systems, it’s about sustaining trust, excitement, and the magic of shared experiences.
