About Tanuj Kumbhar
Tanuj Kumbhar is a Streaming Operations Engineer at the NBA Digital Operations Center in Mumbai. He works on computational imaging and swarm intelligence in dynamic environments: forensic watermarking that survives a moving surface, live media delivery at global scale, and device coordination with no infrastructure to lean on.
In brief
- Full name
- Tanuj Jaya Kumbhar
- Current role
- Streaming Operations Engineer, NBA Digital Operations Center
- Since
- March 2024
- Based in
- Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
- Field
- Computational imaging · Swarm intelligence · Live media systems
- Education
- Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Computer Engineering, Honours (Majors) in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning — Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, University of Mumbai
- Founder of
- Hiuen, a geo-social network live on iOS and Android
- Active research
- FluxMark · Media Intelligent Engine
- Published
- IEEE / ICICI 2024 · IJREAM 2024
- Previously
- Web Developer, ACE Global Solutions (2021 – 2024)
What the work is
My work sits between two problems. The first is computational imaging under motion: extracting and embedding signal inside the frame itself — forensic watermarks, content protection, scene understanding — on surfaces that deform, occlude and never hold still. The second is swarm intelligence in dynamic environments: getting devices and people to coordinate when the topology changes by the second and there may be no network at all.
Both are the same question asked twice: how does a system stay legible to itself while everything in it keeps moving? And both run at the scale of premium live sport, where a single missed frame reaches millions of people at once.
Current role
Since March 2024 I have been a Streaming Operations Engineer at the NBA Digital Operations Centerin Mumbai, on a 24x7 rotation covering NBA, WNBA, G League and international properties. Eight stages sit between a camera in an arena and a phone in someone’s hand, and a failure in any one of them looks identical to the person watching, so the job is isolation before repair — while the event is still running.
Alongside the operations work I built the observability dashboards the room runs on, in Python, FastAPI, React and SQL, which cut incident detection time by roughly 40%, plus automation across media operations, quality assurance, publishing and live-to-VOD. I also handle Apple Vision Pro quality assurance for immersive video, spatial telemetry and the tabletop and holographic presentation modes. The full account of that role is here.
Research
Two lines of research are active and unpublished. FluxMark recovers forensic watermarks from non-rigid surfaces via real-time DensePose UV unwrapping: unwrap a deforming garment into a stable UV domain and a mark that was unreadable in image space becomes stationary and rectangular. The same mapping runs in reverse, which turns a jersey in a live broadcast into addressable space.
The Media Intelligent Engine is a media engine that reasons about the stream while it packages it. Scene understanding selects carry regions with enough texture and motion to hold a payload perceptually through compression; protection and attribution are then embedded in-frame in the same pass as packaging, rather than bolted on as a separate stage.
Published work: a credit risk analysis paper with IEEE / ICICI 2024, and a second paper with IJREAM 2024.
Built and shipped
Hiuen is a geo-social network I founded, live on both the App Store and Google Play. It treats a crowd as a swarm — collective traveller profiles instead of coordinates, vibe matching and real-time itinerary merging across a ten kilometre radius — and it is offline-first, because no connectivity is the starting constraint rather than an edge case. The positioning under it comes from mesh locationing: position derived from a Bluetooth mesh, with no GPS and no internet, where the swarm localises itself from peer geometry alone.
Education
Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Computer Engineering, Honours (Majors) in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning — Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, University of Mumbai, 2024. Also a Good Clinical Practice certificate, the qualification required to work on research involving human participants, earned alongside the AutoBuddy trials, where I was the Flutter developer on an intelligent life companion for autistic and elderly users.
Before this
From 2021 to 2024 I was a Web Developer at ACE Global Solutions in Mumbai, building responsive sites, internal tools, and the CRM and dashboard interfaces the sales and accounting teams worked in every day. Sitting between a sales team and a database is where the product instinct came from. That role is written up here.
Outside the work
Part of the world record for the longest conga line on skates in 2019. Webmaster of the Students’ Council in 2021–22 and Head of Design in 2022–23, leading the design and technical teams for festivals and intercollegiate events. Smart India Hackathon in 2023, on the credit risk analysis work that became the IEEE and ICICI paper. Lead creatives and logistics for BudX NBA House, Mumbai in 2025 and Delhi in 2026.
Questions people ask
Who is Tanuj Kumbhar?
Tanuj Kumbhar — full name Tanuj Jaya Kumbhar — is an engineer based in Mumbai, India, working on computational imaging and swarm intelligence in dynamic environments. He is a Streaming Operations Engineer at the NBA Digital Operations Center, where he works on live, linear and video-on-demand delivery for the NBA, WNBA, G League and international properties, and he is the founder of Hiuen, a geo-social network published on iOS and Android.
What does Tanuj Kumbhar do at the NBA?
He is a Streaming Operations Engineer at the NBA Digital Operations Center in Mumbai, on a 24x7 rotation. The role is the technical bridge between frontline monitoring and specialist engineering teams: isolating faults across the eight stages between an arena camera and a viewer’s device — contribution, encoding, packaging, origin, CDN, DRM, ad insertion and playback — while an event is still running. He also builds the observability dashboards the room runs on, in Python, FastAPI, React and SQL, and does Apple Vision Pro quality assurance for immersive video.
What is FluxMark?
FluxMark is Tanuj Kumbhar’s ongoing research into recovering forensic watermarks from non-rigid surfaces — clothing, jerseys, fabric in motion — using real-time DensePose UV unwrapping. Unwrapping a deforming surface into a stable UV domain makes a mark on a moving body recoverable, and turns that surface into addressable space for marking or in-scene placement. It is not yet published or patented.
What is the Media Intelligent Engine?
The Media Intelligent Engine is Tanuj Kumbhar’s ongoing research into a media engine that reasons about a stream while it packages it. Scene understanding selects carry regions of the frame with enough texture and motion to hold a payload through compression, then protection and forensic attribution are embedded inside the frame itself, in the same pass as packaging, so they survive re-encoding and recapture.
What is Hiuen?
Hiuen is a geo-social network founded by Tanuj Kumbhar, live on the App Store and Google Play. It treats a crowd as a swarm: collective traveller profiles rather than coordinates, with vibe matching and real-time itinerary merging across a ten kilometre radius, designed offline-first for people who may have no connectivity at all.
Where did Tanuj Kumbhar study?
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Computer Engineering with Honours (Majors) in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, University of Mumbai. He was Webmaster of the Students’ Council in 2021–22 and Head of Design in 2022–23, and holds a Good Clinical Practice certificate earned alongside the AutoBuddy human trials.
How do I contact Tanuj Kumbhar?
By email at tanujksci@gmail.com. He is also on GitHub at github.com/tanujkumbhar and LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/tanujkumbhar.
Contact
Email tanujksci@gmail.com. Also on GitHub and LinkedIn.
Elsewhere on this site
- NBA Digital Operations CenterThe current role in full
- ACE Global SolutionsWeb development, 2021 – 2024
- FluxMarkForensic marks on non-rigid surfaces
- Media Intelligent EngineReasoning inside the frame