About Kaushal
Kaushal Malkan has spent more than nine years building and growing online businesses. He founded TechWhoop, co-founded Cannibals Media, and serves as Chief Operating Officer at CiteWorks Studio. His background spans technology publishing, a portfolio of more than 30 niche websites, organic growth, and the study of how AI platforms recommend companies.
As an Editorial Reviewer for Hosting Consensus Index, he brings a website owner’s perspective to hosting research. His focus is on whether a recommendation addresses the reader’s actual requirements, explains important trade-offs, and gives them enough context to evaluate the hosting plan behind the brand name.
Building TechWhoop
Kaushal founded TechWhoop in June 2017 and led the technology publication through its sale to a Singapore-based firm in November 2024. His involvement covered the publication’s development from an early-stage website into an established business and its eventual transition to new ownership.
His responsibilities included SEO, content management, hiring, team leadership, video production, and business growth. Building the publication gave him experience organizing technical information for readers while managing the commercial and operational needs of a growing website.
That experience informs his approach to hosting research: explanations need to be understandable, and recommendations need to make sense for the person responsible for running the site.
Scaling a portfolio at Cannibals Media
As Co-Founder and COO of Cannibals Media from July 2019 to July 2025, Kaushal helped launch and scale more than 30 niche websites. The portfolio grew through organic traffic, and the websites were subsequently sold.
He also led operations, hiring, team management, automation, and the development of repeatable delivery processes. His experience extends from building individual publications to coordinating the people and systems needed to manage a wider website portfolio.
For Hosting Consensus Index, this background provides a practical perspective on the questions website owners face as they grow: what a plan includes, who handles maintenance, what ongoing costs look like, and whether an upgrade addresses a clearly defined need.
Published technology writing
Alongside operating websites, Kaushal has contributed technology articles to InspiringMeMe, including a guide to troubleshooting IP address issues published in July 2020.
This writing experience adds an author’s perspective to his publishing and operations background. For hosting research, that perspective is useful when reviewing whether technical explanations define unfamiliar terms, make their assumptions clear, and help readers understand what to check next.
Current work in SEO and AI search
Since August 2025, Kaushal has served as COO at CiteWorks Studio, where he leads cross-functional operations across a team of more than 30 people. His work covers SEO, content strategy, AI search visibility, client delivery, and operational systems.
He works on how brands are discovered, cited, and recommended across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other discovery platforms. This includes examining the questions buyers ask, the sources referenced in AI answers, and the distinction between a brand being mentioned and being recommended for a particular need.
This work is relevant to Hosting Consensus Index because interpreting an AI recommendation requires attention to its wording, supporting evidence, and conditions. Kaushal helps assess whether the published explanation preserves those details and gives readers a clear account of what the research supports.
Technical education and industry participation
Kaushal holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from Savitribai Phule Pune University, completed in 2019. His academic background complements his experience in technology publishing, website businesses, and search strategy.
He was also named to the judging panel for Xenia Hackathon 2026 at PICT, Pune. The event focused on practical technology projects, with evaluation criteria including technical implementation, feasibility, scalability, and real-world usefulness.
What Kaushal reviews for Hosting Consensus Index
Hosting Consensus Index examines how AI platforms recommend hosting providers for defined website needs. Kaushal’s editorial review focuses on the information a reader would need to assess those recommendations:
- Website and workload fit: Whether the scenario explains the type of website, anticipated usage, software requirements, budget, and technical help available to its owner.
- Provider and plan distinctions: Whether the explanation identifies the relevant hosting product or plan, rather than treating every service sold by a provider as interchangeable.
- Pricing and meaningful limits: Whether quoted costs distinguish introductory offers from renewals, identify the billing commitment, and account for relevant extras and usage restrictions.
- Day-to-day operations: Whether descriptions of support, migrations, backups, restoration, and managed services explain what is included and what remains the customer’s responsibility.
- Performance evidence: Whether claims about speed, uptime, and capacity identify their source, date, and conditions, including which plan or configuration was assessed.
- Search-related claims: Whether statements connecting hosting with website performance, search rankings, or AI visibility have appropriate evidence and qualifications.
His role is to identify missing context, unclear terminology, and conclusions that go beyond the available evidence. Where a claim needs further verification, that uncertainty should remain visible to the reader.
How his review supports the research
An AI consensus result describes agreement among the responses collected for a study. It does not, by itself, establish how a hosting service performs under a particular workload.
Kaushal reviews the interpretation of those results. He can challenge an explanation, flag an unsupported claim, or identify a limitation that changes how a reader should assess a recommendation. His personal preference does not add a recommendation vote or determine the consensus leader.
If a review identifies a processing error, such as a passing mention counted as a recommendation, the research record should receive a documented correction. A finding that a provider’s current offering differs from an AI answer should be explained separately, preserving the original response and its research date.
Professional scope and affiliations
Kaushal’s expertise centers on website entrepreneurship, technology publishing, SEO, and AI search analysis. His editorial review assesses the clarity, evidence, and practical relevance of hosting research. Any hands-on performance testing should be identified separately, with its methodology, configuration, and results available to readers.
His current role at CiteWorks Studio is disclosed as a relevant professional affiliation. Any provider-specific client, commercial, or ownership relationship relevant to a review should also be disclosed alongside that work.
CiteWorks Studio also provides AI search strategy and subject-matter support to Hosting Consensus Index, as disclosed in our site footer. This affiliation does not determine the underlying AI responses or consensus rankings.
Connect with Kaushal on LinkedIn
Reviewer resources: Human Review Policy · Research Methodology
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