Building Innovo: Our CTO's take on culture, tech, and teamwork

Innovo's co-founder and CTO reveals how agility, collaboration, and iterative development drive the mission to build essential cleantech infrastructure.

Written by: Kavya Shah

When I sat down to speak with John, one of the co-founders of Innovo, I expected to hear about product roadmaps, market gaps, and the technical wizardry behind the blockchain. What I didn’t expect was how often he would come back to people, how much of his pride and vision is rooted in the team he’s carefully curated and the culture they’ve sustained. 

“I'm the proudest of the team,” he said, without hesitation. “We’ve been really intentional about who we brought on board. That’s what’s made everything else possible.”

And when you zoom out, that tracks. Innovo isn’t just a software startup. It’s a response to a structural need in clean energy markets: a lack of usable, efficient infrastructure. Excel and legacy systems dominate, and yet the urgency to scale clean energy markets grows by the day. Innovo is building the connective tissue - the operating system - that has the potential to save time, energy, and money. 

John reflected, “The original idea for Innovo was an exchange.” John and his co-founder, Pratik, both came from trading backgrounds and had seen up close how digitization transformed markets. But as they began speaking with more stakeholders, the vision evolved.

“We kept hearing about deeper problems,” John said. “People didn’t just need a marketplace; they needed infrastructure. They needed software.”

And so Innovo shifted. What started as a platform for exchanges slowly morphed into something more foundational; a platform for trade operations. The user interface, he explained, is just the surface layer. What’s underneath is what powers the future: a system that others can plug into, build on, and scale with.

That ability to stay nimble, to make sharp pivots when something isn’t working, has become a defining feature of Innovo’s DNA. “We’ve had a few pivots,” John said with a laugh. “But they’ve all been necessary. And they’ve all come from listening.”

John is candid about how building software, especially good software, is an iterative process, one which leans on learning from what doesn’t work. “Everything starts on a whiteboard,” he emphasised, “and we keep going back to whiteboarding and prototyping. You might see a clean form or a dashboard on screen, but it took weeks of iteration and conversation to get there.”

He describes the process as 80% thinking, 20% execution. “Mapping out a workflow almost always brings up new questions, and stirs new conversations”

The team’s focus is on user experience, workflow clarity, and data flow. No fluff. No unnecessary features. Every action and conversation is intentional.

And it’s an ongoing process. “We’re building while moving. It’s nerve-wracking. But it’s also how we’re scaling.”

Innovo’s roadmap includes everything from enhanced reverse auction features to future delivery scheduling, detailed settlement views, and better compliance reporting. But beneath each feature is a larger goal: to build market infrastructure that can support not just today's REC market, but adjacent spaces as well.

“There’s a lot of potential to unlock value,” John said with a smile. 

Innovo learned to slow down and plan more. “Early on, we were, and honestly, still are always putting out fires.” Now the team remembers stepping back, reflecting, and asking, “What do the next six months look like? What will it take to get there? The usage of blockchain adds another layer of complexity; we have to slow down and think first,” he concluded.

There’s no illusion of control. “Nothing goes according to plan,” he added with a grin. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t plan.”

What stood out to me most wasn’t just the functionality of what Innovo is building, it was the philosophy behind it. A belief in decisiveness, in staying nimble and agile.

“What would you change about your journey,” was the last question I asked him. 

“Talk to people,” John said, almost as if giving advice to his past self. “Get out of your head. Prototype earlier. Don’t repeat what doesn’t work.”

It’s a lesson I think a lot of us can take to heart, especially those building something new in an uncertain space.

Innovo isn’t just reacting to what the market needs today. It’s quietly building the infrastructure to support what these markets will need tomorrow.

And from what I can see, they’re just getting started.