Prachi

Applied AI

Applied AI & Product Management

taking systems apart to see why the money moves,
then building the simplest thing that works.

Prachi, smiling, in a pale pink sweatshirt

hi, it's me ♡

1. start from zero
2. follow the money
3. measure the change

4242 4242 4242 4242

PRACHItest mode · 12/30

AIR INDIA EXPRESSBOARDING

DELGAU

TEAMRevenue

ROUTES7

PRASKmet ✓

SEAT7A2025–26

Now playing · Prachi Forward Deployed from first principles: why AI companies hire the Palantir way

2:406 min

teardowns_final_v3

AirDropPrachi would like to share a resume

PAYMENT

✓ paid via UPI

₹ 249.00

MDR: 0.00%
rail: NPCI
gateway: Razorpay
settles: T+1

who pays?: read the essay

Writing and doing applied AI at VVelofy,

taking payment systems apart from first principles, one teardown at a time.

Open to Product Management and Forward Deployed roles. Say hi at pprachi740@gmail.com ✉

Recently Written ▶

Forward Deployed from first principles: why AI companies hire the Palantir way A general product meets a customer it has never seen. Why that gap creates a job, what the job costs, and what it should measure.

Stripe from first principles What must be true for an internet business to take a card payment, and how each of those constraints became a Stripe primitive.

Razorpay on India's Unified Payments Interface India made moving money between banks almost free. Here is what still costs money, and how Razorpay built a business on it.

Snapmint and the instalment plan without a card Most Indians cannot split a purchase on a credit card. Snapmint rebuilt the instalment plan on India's payment rails. Here is how it fits together.

Pay Later from first principles What a lender in India must solve to let someone pay in 15 or 30 days, and who pays for a loan that earns nothing when the shopper is on time.

Pricing a seat from first principles A seat is fixed, perishable and wanted at different prices by different people. Revenue management follows from those three facts.

GST from first principles: a tax that runs on matched invoices A value-added tax is only as honest as its invoices: how India's Goods and Services Tax matches them, where fraud gets in, and what to build on top.

Pricing AI products from first principles: seats, tokens or outcomes Every request to a model burns compute that costs money, and that cost keeps falling. Here is what it means for seat, usage and outcome pricing.

Work ✳

Velofy

Writing & Applied AI | Apr 2026 to now

First-principles teardowns of payment systems, and AI put to work on research, analysis and writing.

Air India Express

Data Analyst, Revenue Management | Apr 2025 to Mar 2026

Priced seats on seven domestic routes from booking, fare and capacity data, and met Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Kilometre (PRASK) targets.

Mind Chimes

Media Intern | Nov 2022 to Sep 2024

Infographics, social posts and web graphics for a mental wellness practice; grew Instagram organically, steered by analytics.

NSS, SPMC

Technical Head | Jun 2021 to Mar 2022

Launched the National Service Scheme unit's first e-magazine, and designed and built its website from scratch.

Other Work ✦

A unified health system

MA dissertation | Delhi Technological University

The needs, gaps and fixes for implementing Ayushman Bharat, including where centre-state relations break down.

India's digital payment revolution

Op-ed

An evaluation of the digital payment ecosystem, the starting point for the teardowns on this site.

Co-authored research

Economics | 3 papers

Consumer perception of the Goods and Services Tax (GST); trade and investment reforms and small enterprises; gender gaps across STEM in India.

R, SQL and Tableau

Data projects

Hypothesis testing in R; a Tableau dashboard on the Tableau job market; a National Hockey League database modelled and queried in SQL.

Project Jagmug

Enactus, SRCC | 3rd place, SEIP 2020

A rural electrification mission for a village in Chhattisgarh, pitched at Enactus at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC).

Writing & debate

Awards

1st in creative writing at Blood Connect, 3rd at Hindu College, and 2nd in debate at Vinoba Bhave University.

About ⌘

I work on applied AI and product management, from first principles: before the product, the constraints. Based in India.

At Air India Express I was a Data Analyst in Revenue Management, pricing seats on seven domestic routes from raw booking, fare and capacity data, and meeting our Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Kilometre (PRASK) targets. Since April 2026 I've been writing and doing applied AI at Velofy.

Before that, an MA in Economics from Delhi Technological University and a BA in Economics from SPM College, University of Delhi, with research on the Goods and Services Tax (GST), trade policy and India's digital payments.

I'm looking for a Product Management or Forward Deployed role, where the job is to sit with the problem until it is obvious ☺.

Toolkit: SQL, R, STATA, Excel, Databricks, Tableau, Power BI, Figma, Canva.