Dynamic Duos: Brothers in life and in business

This week in Dynamic Duos, we hear from Hypetap’s CTO Dhruv Singh and CEO Detch Singh.

September 5, 2025 8:00

In Dynamic Duos, Mumbrella each week asks two colleagues with a professional and personal affiliation to share with readers the importance of workplace relationships in an increasingly hybridised world of work.

Dhruv Singh:

I’ve literally known Detch his whole life, being his older brother. I had a five-year head start on him, which, as the older sibling, meant I spent most of our childhood thinking I was the wiser one. He disagreed, obviously. But somehow, despite the age gap (and all the sibling rivalry that comes with it), we were always close.

Then adulthood hit, and like many good plots, we went in completely different directions. Detch jumped into the intense world of investment banking. It’s the kind of job where sleep is optional and spreadsheets outnumber friends. Meanwhile, I was off working as a power & control systems engineer, crisscrossing Australia & NZ. We saw each other maybe twice a year if we were lucky. And honestly, I really missed him. But also, life got in the way.

Then one day he called. That alone was surprising, since our lives were so out of sync that it was almost a given that we’d never catch each other and we’d moved to a more text-meme-silently-support-each other from afar kind of communication mode. I picked up and out of the blue, he told me, “I’m done. I’m leaving banking. I’ve got this idea, and I think I need your help with it”. At that point, I’d just started my own engineering consultancy, partly so I could spend more time in Melbourne, see friends again, maybe even have friends again. So, timing-wise? Pretty spot on.

His idea was rooted in social media, which was a surprise, because neither of us had any experience in that world unless you count watching too much YouTube. But it was good. Like, really good. It made sense. And the more we talked about it, the more we realised our skill sets fit together well for what we wanted to build and we could do it successfully.

So, we dove in. Two brothers, no media background, just spreadsheets and a vague idea of what we wanted to build (which was completely wrong btw but that’s a story for another time) and Hypetap was born.

Honestly, deciding to do it with him was a no-brainer. Plus, there’s a level of trust with your sibling that’s unparalleled. We’ve known each other forever and we’ve been good sounding boards for one another over the years.

Detch Singh:

Dhruv and I met when I was born 😂. I didn’t have a say in it unfortunately. He’s older than me by five years, which is a big gap when you’ve only done single digit years in life. There was a very different dynamic as kids compared to now, as we both claim to be adults.

He’s also a lot taller than I am, so lots of people don’t clock right away that we’re related. It takes them a while to figure it out, and then I must explain to them that I got the Danny Devito genes from Twins.

On a more serious note, there’s no doubt that my brother is my closest friend but he’s also the smartest guy I know. I always tell people that it’s lucky that we work together, because as you get older, life gets in the way, so many people I know don’t get to see their siblings often. I’m fortunate enough to see Dhruv a lot (daily when I’m in Melbourne). The downside is that we end up talking a lot of shop, but the upside is that we have a lot to do with one another.

When it comes to work, we have a great working relationship. There’s a lot of healthy tension around ideas but we both always want the same thing, so there are no egos involved. We normally agree in the end! We bring very different things to the table when it comes to business, so we’re never treading on each other’s toes, and we have a lot of trust in what the other person will deliver. It’s a complementary dynamic.

Dhruv on Detch:

Most memorable moment with Detch: In the very early days of Hypetap (think early 2014) we had a client in Sydney who was only willing to work with us if we could deliver a certain capability on our platform. We were building it already, but it was still in its early stages. Detch, a couple of the early team and I stayed up 3 days straight to get it done. We were writing code furiously whilst Detch helped us test it.” The next day, still not having slept, Detch caught a flight to Sydney to deliver it to the client. It worked out, and it’s one of the early successes I remember well.

Best word to describe him: Resilient. To a fault. He will not give up.

Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour he has: “We need to build [insert whiz bang complicated feature name here]. It’ll be such a value add for our clients. How long do you think it would take you guys to build it?” Followed by the inevitable – “That’s ages…. Is it that complex? It doesn’t have to be gold plated just a simple version we can start with”.

Detch on Dhruv:

Most memorable moment with Dhruv: Dhruv is the chief technology officer running the tech/data side of the business, and has degrees in Computer Science and Mechatronics; as you can imagine he is a lot smarter than I am. When we were kids, he would always build things with Lego, Meccano etc. When he got bored of them and left, I would swoop in and create stories and games with the things he built. In some way, I feel like we are still doing that today at Hypetap.

Best word to describe him: Deep thinker – two words, sorry.

Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour he has: Ha! He’s going to hate me for this, but Dhruv has (or used to have) a habit of correcting people even when he knew what they meant. The average person would think ‘oh I get what this person is trying to say’ but Dhruv was always compelled to correct or clarify. To me, it was endearing because it was never done arrogantly or with bad intent, but to people who didn’t know him as well…maybe not so much.