Small diameter single-mode fiber (SMF) allows for the design of compact spectrographs that operate at the diffraction limit. The small instrument scale, in turn, allows cost-effective configuration flexibility to use the instrument as a testbed for infrared SMF spectrograph technologies. The same base instrument could be coupled to different adaptive optics (AO) and non-AO SMF feeds. We present the build for such a spectrograph, Iranti, which works in the near-infrared (NIR) range and incorporates novel techniques. Our implementation of this instrument has sufficient cross dispersion to allow testing of a range of input fiber links, including multiple fibers or multi-core fibers (MCFs); the camera optics and detector can also be swapped out easily for different wavelength ranges. The base system uses a white pupil design that relays a slow beam between the collimator, an R6 echelle grating with 13.33 lines/mm and a volume phase holographic grating (VPH) as a cross disperser. In Iranti, we also address mechanical and thermal considerations to improve stability in the instrument. We configure the instrument for ranges in 800 to 1300 nm and characterize system efficiency and stability.