Chennai, 30 September 2026
I build things for people I assume are smarter than the product thinks they are
Products are Schrödinger's cats. I see something, I form an opinion, I build it, I put it in a box and ship it. Then I open the box. Sometimes the problem is the cat. Sometimes it's me, the one looking. Some days there's no cat at all. So I tinker with it and ship it again. I'll keep doing this until the day I open the box and find the cat with a bunch of kittens. Until then, here's what I've made, who I made it for, and what happened next.
What does your daily commute actually cost you?
Commute Impact Calculator, 2025 · Solo
Made for
The commuters of the world.
Where it stands
Started from a question: can you stop traffic before it happens, by looking at it one commuter at a time instead of one jam at a time? It's a slow grind and I'm still figuring it out as I measure.
Try it
Driving a petrol hatchback alone, 12 km each way, 22 days a month, puts out about 855 kg of CO2 a year.
Worked out the way the Commute Impact Calculator does it: km each way × 2 × 22 days × 12 months × 0.135 kg of CO2 a km. That factor is 2.27 kg of CO2 a litre of petrol (India GHG Programme), × 1.4 for real-world driving (ICCT), ÷ 23.58 km a litre, a hatchback's ARAI-certified mileage. How the calculator works
What if saying the quiet part out loud was the whole point?
A satirical AI newsroom, 2026 · Solo
Made for
Newsreaders of India who are overwhelmed by the daily news.
Why I built it
News is dead, or at least the world has stopped flinching at it, and I thought satire might get past that. I can't write satire, so I built an AI newsroom that does. Of everything here, it's the one closest to my heart, and the hardest to run, harder than the commute calculator. I still haven't found my footing with it.
Why should a reader marry a publication to read one story?
APPAPPO, 2018 · Product manager at Vikatan Group, with Vikatan's engineering team
Made for
People tired of full-pack subscriptions, and the publishing ecosystem.
What happened
For readers who want to pay for one story instead of buying an annual subscription and forgetting to cancel it. It won an award and then it died; the reasons are in the micropayments essay.
What's new this month
Mumbai goes live on the Commute Impact Calculator. I'm off to Goa, and I'm working on the Frontline Substack. And the stray cat that keeps coming home is pregnant, so I'm sneakily getting the house ready for kittens.
Lately I've written
P.S. My first editor answered every reader postcard, and made me do the same. I still do. If you write, I'll write back.