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Nila

I'm Vignesh Mohankumar, and Nila is my independent consulting practice. I partner with technical leaders to ship production AI systems. I don't just give advice — I do the work too.

Have an idea? Reach out.

Expertise

  • Implementation: Architecting production-ready AI systems with a focus on scalable infrastructure and data privacy.
  • Strategy: Evaluating where AI can create the most value in your product and helping drive the roadmap to get there.
  • Enablement: Upskilling your engineering teams to build with LLMs through direct guidance.

Testimonials

“Vignesh played a crucial role in advancing our AI capabilities, architecting a system that enabled us to run LLM features on our own infrastructure while maintaining strict data privacy. His expertise in educating our engineering team on LLM best practices and strategic guidance materially accelerated our AI roadmap. He helped us navigate the complexities of AI deployment and set us up for long-term success.”

— Paul Klicnik, CTO at Relay

“Vignesh helped us get our AI system to production within a month with an architecture designed to support future product goals we had in mind. He set us up to improve our systems over time by building an evaluation system and upleveling our team on best practices in applied AI engineering.”

— Patrick Vatterott, CTO at Vitally

“Our onboarding flow needed to capture user preferences in a natural and effective way. Vignesh experimented with generative AI approaches and developed a system that turned chatbot conversations into structured insights. His work was essential to delivering the experience we envisioned.”

— Charles DePue, CEO at Sitch

“Our team needed to build a frontend interface for a conversational AI application for a large prospective customer on a tight timeline. Vignesh stepped in and integrated our chat SDK and NLX platform into a solution that could easily be productized. The solution worked to specification and was a key part of how we showcased our capabilities to the client. His ability to deliver under pressure made all the difference.”

— Andrei Papancea, CEO at NLX

Background

I've partnered with companies in industries including enterprise SaaS, consumer social, healthcare, fintech, and crypto.

Prior to consulting, I was an early engineer at two AI-driven companies that were acquired:

  • Drift: Conversational AI for marketing and sales (acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.2B)
  • Kensho: AI for financial services (acquired by S&P Global for $550M)

Recent Posts

About

I'm based in New York, NY. I grew up in New England and was born near Chennai, India. Nila means moon in my native language Tamil (my sister suggested the name).

Find me on LinkedIn, X and my personal blog.