Cleartrip, Lead Software Developer

Built Cleartrip's first iPhone app, search interfaces for Small World, and a RequireJS-based component framework used across the site.

I joined Cleartrip as Lead Software Developer, focusing on frontend and mobile engineering. Working with two brilliant UX designers, I built what became my biggest accomplishment at the time: Cleartrip's first “native” iPhone app. Under the hood, it combined Objective-C with HTML5 running inside a memory-constrained Safari web view. The challenge to compress travel booking data into small interfaces led me to adopt new frontend techniques. For e.g, I used object pooling - a technique common in game development - to reuse objects and reduce garbage-collection pauses which would hamper the UX. I also added debounced touch interactions, and built a native-like two-column round-trip scroller with web technologies. The result felt so smooth that many people assumed the app was fully native . I also built parts of the search UX for Small World, Cleartrip's destination discovery product. It brought together flights, hotels, weather, maps, photos, ratings, and travel guides across more than 3.2 million places. I later turned those lessons into a custom JavaScript framework built around RequireJS modules and deployed across the site. Cleartrip taught me how important great UX and pixel-perfect UI design is, and how it can strongly shape a product's success.