A collection of 8 projects. 3 finished, 4 discarded, 1 still cooking.
TENFOLDS
The operating system for freelancers and agencies.
- Year
- 2025
- Status
- archived
- Chapter
- Startups
- Role
- Founder, Product Designer and Full-Stack Developer
- Duration
- January 2025 – August 2025
- Disciplines
- Product Strategy, Full-Stack Development, UI/UX Design
- Tags
- SaaS, Project Management, AI, Startup
Full story
The Freelancer Problem
Tenfolds started with a problem I had repeatedly experienced myself.
I was freelancing. And every project somehow required an unreasonable number of tools.
One tool for tasks. One for communication. One for files. One for invoices. One for contracts. One for random notes that nobody could find two weeks later.
Then clients would still message on WhatsApp asking:
“Any update?”
Six Tools and One WhatsApp Group
That was fair. Because from their side, most project management systems were basically black boxes.
The freelancer or agency could see everything happening internally. The client could see almost nothing.
So the client experience usually became a sequence of status-update messages, shared Drive folders, approval emails, invoice PDFs, missed feedback, and links sent across five different platforms.
I related to the problem because I was not studying it from a distance. I was living inside it.
What I Wanted to Build
So in January 2025, I started building Tenfolds.
The original idea was to create one platform where freelancers and small agencies could manage both sides of their work: their internal operations and their client-facing experience.
Not just another project management tool. A workspace that handled the entire relationship between a service business and its clients.
Simple enough in theory.
Naturally, I responded by building an unnecessarily large full-stack platform by myself.
The Two-Sided Platform
One of the most important product decisions was separating the agency workspace from the client experience.
Most project management tools treat clients like slightly confused internal employees. They expose too much information. Or they expose almost nothing.
Tenfolds had two distinct interfaces.
First, the Main Workspace. This was the internal operating system for the freelancer or agency. It handled projects, tasks, resource coordination, billing, files, and project health.
Second, the Client Dashboard. A cleaner external portal specifically designed for the client to track progress, access deliverables, provide feedback, and track invoices.
The objective was not to show clients everything. It was to show them exactly what they needed without making them learn another complicated project management tool.
The Technical Build
I developed the MVP independently. It was built as a modern, modular architecture split into separate client and server applications.
The frontend used Next.js, React, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. The backend was powered by Node.js, Express, and PostgreSQL using Prisma ORM. Authentication was handled by Auth0, with file storage on an S3-compatible object storage.
The product also included security systems that were probably more enterprise-grade than the average early MVP needed. Row-level security, strict data isolation, role-based access control, field-level encryption, and audit logging.
Apparently I was preparing for a Fortune 500 security audit before convincing ten freelancers to consistently log in.
Inside the MVP
The MVP actually included a massive amount of functionality for a solo build. Project creation, task and milestone tracking, dedicated client portals, contract management, deliverable tracking, invoice generation, payment tracking, expense management, project profitability analytics, file management, team workspaces, role-based access, and reporting dashboards.
It was a serious attempt at consolidating an entire operational stack.
The AI Layer
Tenfolds also included a dedicated AI layer. The intention was not to add a chatbot into the sidebar and call the product AI-native.
The goal was to use project context across documents, contracts, tasks, milestones, communication, and files. The AI system used Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and pgvector to build a personalized business knowledge graph from operational data.
The broader idea was that the platform would understand the operational context of the agency instead of requiring users to repeatedly explain the same project to separate tools.
Talking to Freelancers and Agencies
I did not build the product entirely inside my own assumptions. I reached out to agencies. I spoke with dozens of freelancers.
I discussed how they managed client communication, which tools they used, what annoyed them, how they handled invoices, and where their workflows became fragmented.
The product became increasingly collaborative through these conversations. There was real interest. People understood the problem. Some agencies were willing to try the platform. I also received calls from venture capital firms and discussed the business with investors.
The Pitch Became Very Large
At one point the product was framed as 'The operating system for freelancers and agencies.'
The pitch was based on the observation that smaller agencies lacked integrated operational infrastructure, and software costs increased as teams grew.
The product attempted to replace parts of Asana, ClickUp, Notion, Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, invoicing software, contract tools, and standalone AI tools.
This pitch became increasingly broad. That was both the attraction and eventually part of the problem.
Useful Is Not the Same as Necessary
The more I built, the more complete the platform became. And technically, it was becoming good. The workflows made sense. The product looked credible.
But around August 2025, I had to ask a much less exciting question: Would people urgently switch to this?
That was where the answer became uncomfortable. Tenfolds solved real problems. But most of those problems were survivable.
People complained about using six tools. Then continued using six tools. They complained about WhatsApp communication. Then sent another WhatsApp message.
Tenfolds was becoming a product that was good to have. Not something users felt they absolutely needed. That distinction killed the project.
Why I Stopped
Migrating an agency onto a new operating system means changing project workflows, team habits, client habits, documentation, file storage, billing, communication, and permissions. That is a lot of behavioural change.
By August 2025, I made the decision to let the project go. Not because nothing worked. Not because nobody cared. I stopped because the product was becoming increasingly large while the underlying need did not feel urgent enough.
Continuing would have meant building more integrations, handling billing infrastructure, and convincing teams to change existing habits. That is a large company to build around a product users may describe as 'Very useful. I should try this sometime.'
That sentence is terrifying. So I let it go.
What Tenfolds Taught Me
Founder-market fit helps you understand a problem, but it does not automatically make the problem commercially urgent. Users can genuinely like a product without changing their behaviour.
A broad platform creates a dangerous product loop. Every missing feature feels important because the product promises to replace everything. Tool consolidation sounds obvious on a pitch deck, but migration makes it much harder in reality.
Sometimes stopping is the most rational product decision.
BCKYRD STUDIO
We build fashion brands for creators.
- Year
- 2026
- Status
- in-progress
- Chapter
- Startups
- Role
- Co-Founder & Creative Director
- Duration
- 2026–Present
- Company
- BCKYRD STUDIO PRIVATE LIMITED
- Disciplines
- Product Strategy, Brand Design, Operations, Website Design
- Tags
- Creator Economy, Fashion, Commerce, Manufacturing, D2C
Full story
Merch Sucks
Most creator merchandise is just sad. It compromises on product quality, relies on sketchy print-on-demand services, or expects the creator to somehow become a supply chain expert overnight. We said, 'We ain't doing all that.' Think of BCKYRD as the operational layer, where we take care of the unsexy stuff—design, manufacturing, storefronts, logistics, and customer support—so creators can focus on what they actually do best: create content...lol.
Bloody hands
After THE HONOUR CLUB project, we have already gotten our hands dirty with the most unsexy part of the business - indian suppliers (not a pun). We have spent months just figuring out how to get premium quality garments manufactured and delivered to our customers.
We love you too
Our biggest promise is to give a customised experience to each creator, so that they can tell their story in the best possible way. From custom storefronts to drops that your audience can relate to, like nostalgia hitting hard.
The Team
We’re Lalit and Kislay. We met at IIM Ranchi and built some cool projects together. One of those was The Honour Club (THC), where we built merch for top campuses like IIM Bangalore and IIM Ranchi.
Along the way, we saw firsthand how broken the industry was—inconsistent quality, messy supply chains, and zero focus on long-term brand building. We created BCKYRD STUDIO to fix that.
At our core, we’re creators building for creators. We know how broken Indian creator commerce is because we’ve lived it alongside our friends. We built BCKYRD to give power back to the community—replacing soulless corporate apparels with authentic, premium fashion that actually means something to the fans.
FMS DELHI
Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi
- Year
- 2024
- Status
- archived
- Chapter
- College
- Role
- MBA Student
- Duration
- 2024–2026
- Disciplines
- Business Strategy, Case Competitions, Entrepreneurship
- Tags
- MBA, Dropout, Strategy
Full story
Leaving the IIM Ranchi IPM
After completing my BBA from IIM Ranchi, I took an exit from the five-year IPM programme.
The original programme was structured as BBA + MBA. I could have continued at IIM Ranchi for the MBA portion. Instead, I decided to join FMS Delhi.
The logic was fairly straightforward. FMS was one of the best business schools in the country. It had an excellent reputation. It was extremely selective. And from the outside, joining it seemed like the obvious next step.
So I joined.
One Month Later
Fairly quickly, I realised that I did not actually want the life the programme was optimised around.
That realisation did not take very long. About one month into FMS, I signed out of the placement process.
Which is probably not the most conventional thing to do immediately after entering one of India’s most placement-oriented business schools.
Signing Out of Placements
Signing out of placements was not an impulsive rebellion against corporate life. It was more practical than that.
I realised that I did not want to spend the next two years preparing for a job I already knew I would probably not take seriously. The placement process naturally shapes a large part of the MBA experience.
Once I opted out, I suddenly had much more control over my time. No placement preparation. No CV-point optimisation. No constant concern about shortlists.
That extra time became the most useful part of my FMS experience. I started using it for projects, competitions and eventually entrepreneurship.
What I Did Instead
During my time at FMS, I seriously worked on three case competitions: Asian Paints, Mahindra, and Cipla.
These were not random participation certificates. I invested real time into understanding the problems, building the strategy, creating the decks and presenting the final solutions. (And as you might have guessed from my time at IIM Ranchi and NewDen Productions, I have always had a knack for design and editing—so naturally, all the deck designs you see here were entirely done by me.)
They gave me something I was not getting from the standard academic structure: a clear problem, limited time, messy information, a team, and an actual output that had to survive questioning.
There was something satisfying about spending days arguing over one slide and then pretending during the presentation that the answer had been obvious all along.
Asian Paints Cognescenti
The Asian Paints competition was the strongest outcome of the three. My team won Cognescenti and secured a PPI.
It was a good outcome from a project I enjoyed working on.
Mahindra & Cipla Case Competitions
My team also finished as runner-up in both the Mahindra and Cipla case competitions.
Again, these were less about formal consulting accolades and more about how I chose to use my time at FMS, gravitating towards unstructured problem-solving.
Building The Honour Club
During my time at FMS, I also started working on [The Honour Club](/#work-thc). It began with the idea of improving the quality of college merchandise.
While most of my batch was preparing for internships, I was learning far more than expected about GSM, embroidery and why college students will negotiate over ₹100 like institutional procurement officers.
The project eventually served IIM Ranchi and IIM Bangalore, sold over 700 apparel pieces and generated more than ₹7 lakh in sales. It was where I started allocating serious time toward building something outside the programme.
Starting Tenfolds
As I moved toward the second year of FMS, I also began working on [Tenfolds](/#work-tenfolds), a project-management and client-collaboration platform for freelancers and agencies.
The decision to work seriously on Tenfolds was closely connected to my broader decision about FMS. By that point, entrepreneurship was no longer something I wanted to do on the side.
It had become the main thing.
The Decision to Leave
As I approached the second year, I had to make a decision. Continue the MBA. Or leave and work full-time on entrepreneurship.
By then, I had already signed out of placements. I was spending most of my meaningful time on competitions and independent projects.
The degree was still valuable. The institution was still respected. But the reason I had joined no longer matched the direction I was moving in. So I dropped out.
I had already mentally left the conventional MBA path. Eventually, the paperwork caught up. It was still a difficult decision. Leaving a recognised path without certainty on the other side is not automatically brave or intelligent.
It is simply a trade-off. I decided that the opportunity cost of staying had become higher than the value I was receiving from the programme.
What FMS Actually Gave Me
FMS gave me exposure to extremely capable peers, high-pressure team environments, and case competition experience. It gave me stronger business problem-solving skills, presentation discipline, and experience defending ideas under questioning.
Most importantly, it gave me the space to test whether I actually wanted a conventional MBA outcome, and enough clarity to make a difficult decision.
I joined because FMS looked like the correct next step. I left because I finally understood that the correct-looking step was not necessarily the correct one for me.
YOUNG CHANGEMAKERS PROGRAMME
A social internship that accidentally became an institutional programme.
- Year
- 2023
- Status
- completed
- Chapter
- College
- Role
- Core Team Member & Media Lead
- Duration
- April–May 2023
- Company
- IIM Ranchi
- Disciplines
- Programme Design, Documentary Media, Marketing Strategy, Event Management
- Tags
- Social Impact, Education, Documentary, Rural Development
Full story
The Social Internship
During the second year of my BBA at IIM Ranchi, we had a compulsory social internship.
Different student groups were assigned to different communities. Our group was assigned to Rasabeda — a small village associated with IIM Ranchi's work under the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan initiative.
The social internship itself deserves a story of its own. We spent time in the village. We spoke with residents. We observed living conditions. We tried to understand the economic, educational, and infrastructural problems that shaped everyday life there.
The internship was structured as a study-and-recommend assignment. Observe the village. Document the challenges. Create a development plan.
Simple enough on paper.
Meeting Rasabeda
One fact made the scale of the challenge difficult to ignore.
Several residents were earning as little as approximately ₹100 per week. A large part of this income came from collecting and selling wood in the local market.
₹100.
For an entire week.
It is the kind of number that makes every classroom discussion about rural development suddenly feel very abstract. Water access, education, infrastructure, basic livelihoods — the list of needs was long and interconnected.
Rasabeda was not a hypothetical case study. It was a place where the constraints we read about in textbooks were simply called Tuesday.
A Development Plan With No Development Money
Our original assignment was to study the village and create a development plan.
But while working on it, we realised something fairly obvious.
A development plan without money is mostly a very organised PDF.
We could document the problems. We could create recommendations. We could submit a report. But many of the actual needs — education, water, infrastructure, and income-generation support — required capital.
And a group of second-year students had approximately none of it.
The Question That Started YCP
So we began asking a different question.
Could we turn the social internship into something that also generated resources for the village?
Not just a report that gets filed. Not just a set of recommendations that waits for someone else to fund them. But an actual mechanism that connected learning to implementation.
That question became the beginning of the Young Changemakers Programme.
Designing a Live Case Study
The first Young Changemakers Programme was designed as a live rural case-study experience for school students.
Instead of giving participants a hypothetical social-impact problem inside a classroom, we wanted them to experience the context directly.
Not: "Here is a fictional village. Create a development strategy."
But: "Here is the village. Meet the people. Understand the constraints. Now propose something that could actually make sense."
The format combined education, rural immersion, field observation, problem identification, teamwork, presentations, social entrepreneurship, and fundraising.
The programme converted something normally confined to case-study slides into a real place involving real people and real consequences.
The Three-Day Programme
The inaugural programme was structured over three days.
Day one was induction and context. Participants were introduced to Rasabeda, the social and economic situation, and the development challenges they would explore. This was also where the digital learning material became important — participants needed context before entering the village.
Day two was the Rasabeda immersion. Participants visited the village, experienced the setting directly, and interacted with the community. They observed homes, water access, education, household economics, livelihoods, and local infrastructure. The objective was not to arrive with ready-made answers. It was to notice carefully before suggesting anything.
Day three was ideas and presentations. Participants worked in teams and presented recommendations grounded in what they had learned, observed, and discussed with residents — accounting for practical limitations, available resources, sustainability, and implementation feasibility.
This made YCP a rare live-case-study format. The "case" was not a PDF. It was a village. And unlike most case competitions, the people affected by the recommendations actually existed outside the presentation room.
Building the Digital Library
One of my major contributions was creating the YCP digital library.
A single village visit could not communicate the complete context of Rasabeda. So I created a collection of short, documentary-style educational videos for the participants.
The library covered different dimensions of village life — household economics, employment and income, buildings and residential structures, water resources, education, infrastructure, livelihoods, community challenges, and relevant background information.
The objective was to let participants arrive with context instead of treating the immersion like a sightseeing trip.
These were not generic educational videos copied from somewhere else. They were designed specifically around Rasabeda and the programme. I shot, edited, and structured each piece to communicate a specific dimension of the village without reducing it to a list of problems.
The library acted as the knowledge layer beneath the live experience.
Introducing YCP — The Press-Release Film
We had created the programme. Now we had to explain it to the world without making it sound like another three-day school workshop.
I directed and produced the official press-release video for the inaugural Young Changemakers Programme. The film was premiered live in front of reporters during the programme announcement.
It needed to communicate the rural-immersion concept, the educational model, and the connection to Rasabeda — all before the first cohort had actually experienced any of it. We were essentially making a film about something that had not happened yet, trying to be honest about the ambition without overselling it.
The film remains available on the official IIM Ranchi YouTube channel.
The First Cohort
The inaugural programme brought together approximately 100 participants from around the country.
That scale was not something we had planned for when we started asking whether a social internship could also generate funds for a village. The programme had clearly struck a chord somewhere between "interesting educational format" and "this actually sounds like a real experience."
Participants arrived at IIM Ranchi, went through induction, visited Rasabeda, worked in teams, and presented their ideas. Three days. One village. A hundred people from across the world trying to design something useful while also learning how rural development actually works when you are standing inside it.
The Fundraising Model
The programme was also structured to generate funds for development work in Rasabeda.
Over ₹3 lakh was raised through programme fees. The team managed operating costs carefully — approximately 60% of the amount raised remained as surplus available for village-related development support.
That surplus was directed toward Rasabeda rather than retained as commercial programme profit.
This was one of the central innovations. Participants were not only studying a development problem. Their participation helped fund implementation. The educational experience and the development mechanism were the same thing.
Fieldwork and the ASER Survey
During our work in Rasabeda, we conducted an education-gap analysis using an ASER-style survey with more than 20 children.
The objective was to understand foundational learning levels rather than relying only on school enrolment or attendance data. The survey helped identify specific educational gaps — the kind that do not show up in completion statistics but become immediately visible when you sit down with a child and a worksheet.
The findings contributed to targeted recommendations and informed parts of the development planning.
What Changed
Internal programme reporting later recorded average weekly household income reaching approximately ₹1,000 for participating or affected households following the supported initiatives.
That represents a significant change from the ₹100 per week baseline we had observed. But it is important to be precise about what this number means.
The measurement scope, timeframe, and the specific interventions that contributed to this shift are documented in internal project records. I am not in a position to independently verify whether the increase was sustained across all households or attributable to a single cause.
What I can say is that the programme and the associated development work contributed to meaningful changes in the village. And the combination of education, fundraising, and implementation created a model where student participation directly supported those changes.
What the First Cohort Looked Like
The press-release film showed what we intended YCP to become.
The aftermovie shows what the first programme actually looked like.
I created the official YCP aftermovie after the first cohort. It documented participant arrival, induction, the Rasabeda visit, interactions with the village, teamwork, presentations, and the overall cohort experience.
It remains available on IIM Ranchi's official YouTube channel.
YCP After Us
The first YCP was not a one-off event that disappeared after our batch graduated.
The programme continued at IIM Ranchi. It later developed into multiple editions and remains part of the institute's official social-impact programming — a rural-immersion programme for school students, focused on first-hand exposure to community challenges, cultural awareness, leadership, practical solutions, and collaboration with villagers.
We were trying to find a way to fund one village development plan. Somewhere along the way, we helped create a programme that continued after us.
I did not independently create YCP. It was built collectively by our student team with IIM Ranchi faculty and institutional support. My contribution was leading the media function — the digital library, the press-release film, the aftermovie, marketing strategy, and programme communication — alongside contributing to programme design, operations, and execution.
It remains one of my most meaningful college projects. Not because it was the largest thing I built. Not because we had everything figured out. And definitely not because three days can solve the structural problems of a village.
It matters because it began with a specific, practical question: how do we turn a college assignment into something that leaves behind more than a report?
The answer became a live rural case study, a student programme, an educational media library, a fundraising mechanism, a platform for development ideas, and an experience that continued into future cohorts.
It feels strange and good to know that something which started as a small student experiment became part of the institution.
Connected Links
[Official YCP Programme Page — IIM Ranchi](https://iimranchi.ac.in/ycp/)
[Press-Release Film — YouTube](https://youtu.be/7TgjgvY4ZW4?si=qHNHJXcLNssrELsi)
[First-Cohort Aftermovie — YouTube](https://youtu.be/RR9_LYsFZ3g?si=bzMopQQ7INvHeU53)
[Times of India — Students invited to relive troubles tribals face](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/students-invited-to-relive-troubles-tribals-face-and-find-solutions/articleshow/100220851.cms)
[Campus Varta — IIM Ranchi concludes Young Changemakers Programme](https://www.campusvarta.com/article/iim-ranchi-concludes-young-changemakers-programme)
The Honour Club
We just wanted better college merch. Turns out everyone else did too.
- Year
- 2024
- Status
- archived
- Chapter
- Startups
- Role
- Co-Founder
- Duration
- 2024-2025
- Company
- Adorkis Apparels LLP
- Disciplines
- Product Strategy, Apparel Design, Operations, Brand Identity
- Tags
- Fashion, Commerce, Merchandise, Apparel
Full story
Why We Started
The Honour Club started because Kislay and I got tired of how painfully mediocre college merchandise usually is.
Every institute somehow manages to make hoodies that nobody actually wants to wear outside campus. Since we had already handled merchandising responsibilities during our time at IIM Ranchi, we had first-hand experience of how broken the process was.
Low quality. No consistency. No identity. No ownership. Everything felt like somebody uploaded a logo onto the cheapest hoodie they could find.
We wanted to change that. Not by making luxury fashion. Just by making college merch that students would voluntarily wear.
The First Drop
Our first official launch was an official IIM Ranchi polo. We expected maybe 40–50 orders. That already sounded optimistic. Instead...
we crossed 300 orders.
Needless to say we were not mentally prepared. Suddenly we weren't designing merch anymore. We were figuring out production schedules, packaging, courier delays, quality checks and answering WhatsApp messages at 2am asking, "bhai mera parcel kab aa raha hai".
That first drop completely changed how seriously we took the project.
Things Got Real
Over roughly three months we served primarily IIM Ranchi and IIM Bangalore. Every drop taught us something. We experimented with official merchandise, section merchandise, batch merchandise, custom apparel, different production partners, different garment qualities, different print methods, packaging, website experience, and fulfilment.
Basically everything.
As things became more serious we formally registered an LLP called Adorkis Apparels LLP, because apparently that's what adults do.
What We Learned
This project forced us to learn everything nobody tells you about apparel. Finding manufacturers. Negotiating MOQs. Understanding GSM. Fabric sourcing. Embroidery. Printing. Packaging. Courier aggregation. Returns. Quality control. Margins.
And the most terrifying spreadsheet of all—inventory.
It stopped being a design project very quickly. It became an operations project.
The Problem & The End
Ironically... the thing we cared about most was also what made the business difficult. We refused to compromise on quality. But our customers were college students. That naturally capped pricing. So while sales were great, the margins simply weren't.
Every time we improved fabric quality, our profits disappeared a little more. Eventually we realised we could either increase prices beyond what students would comfortably pay, or reduce quality below what we were proud to ship. Neither felt right.
So we shut it down. Not because people didn't want it. People absolutely did. The numbers proved that. But we realised the business wasn't economically attractive enough for us to continue.
Sometimes the correct startup decision is simply knowing when to stop. THC became one of those projects we're incredibly proud of despite choosing to end it.
SALAD DAYS
A corporate internship that stopped having a job description.
- Year
- 2024
- Status
- completed
- Chapter
- College
- Role
- Founder's Office Intern
- Duration
- March–June 2024
- Company
- Salad Days
- Disciplines
- Operations, System Design, Marketing, Process Automation
- Tags
- CRM, HRM, Automation, Video Production, Founder's Office
Full story
The Mandatory Corporate Internship
At the end of the third year of the IIM Ranchi IPM programme, we had to complete a corporate internship or capstone project.
For mine, I joined Salad Days with five of my friends.
I entered as a business development intern.
I assumed it would be a fairly normal internship.
A department.
A manager.
A few presentations.
Maybe one final report that nobody would ever open again.
That was not exactly what happened.
Working Under the Founder’s Office
We were working under the founder’s office and directly reported to Mr. Varun Madan, the CEO of Salad Days.
Each of us began with an assigned department and reported to the relevant department head. But we were also expected to present our progress directly to Varun Sir every week.
This created an unusual working structure. I had a starting role. But the role was fluid. If the company needed something in another department and I could solve it, the work moved there.
This was not a traditional internship where work remained inside one narrowly defined department. We were expected to understand the immediate business problem, speak to the relevant team, figure out what already existed, identify what was missing, build a workable solution, present progress weekly, revise quickly, and move to the next operational bottleneck.
Working directly with the CEO meant that projects were evaluated less like academic submissions and more like actual business systems.
A deck was not good because it looked polished. It was good if the sales team could use it.
A dashboard was not complete because the interface worked. It was complete if the department stopped maintaining five disconnected sheets.
A training video was not useful because it was cinematic. It was useful if a kitchen employee could watch it and perform the process correctly.
That distinction shaped most of the work I did.
Starting in Business Development
I began in the business development department.
One of my first responsibilities was creating B2B pitch decks for prospective corporate clients. These included customised decks for KKR, Bombay Shaving Company, and Mars. I also redesigned the broader Salad Days pitch deck.
The decks had to communicate Salad Days’ corporate food and wellness offerings in a way that was relevant to each organisation. This involved understanding the prospective client, organising Salad Days’ offerings, adapting the narrative, structuring the business case, improving presentation clarity, and making the material usable during outreach and sales conversations.
The important part was learning that a sales deck is an operational tool. It has to help someone conduct a conversation, answer predictable objections, and move the next step forward.
From a Salesforce Deck to a Salesforce Workshop
One of the decks I created was for a proposed microgreens workshop at Salesforce.
It began as a business-development pitch. It eventually became an actual event.
The workshop was conducted at the Salesforce office with more than 40 participants.
My involvement included structuring the initial proposal, creating the pitch material, helping shape the workshop format, coordinating operational requirements, and supporting event execution.
I made a presentation about a microgreens workshop. A few weeks later, we were inside Salesforce explaining microgreens to more than forty people. Apparently, PowerPoint does occasionally have consequences.
The Spreadsheet Problem
While working with the business development team, I noticed that lead generation and outreach depended heavily on fragmented spreadsheets and manual coordination.
Information about prospects, conversations, follow-ups, and ownership was difficult to track consistently.
Building the Business Development CRM
So I built a comprehensive CRM dashboard for the business development department.
I developed it independently using the Google Workspace ecosystem and Apps Script.
The system was designed to support lead capture, prospect tracking, outreach status, follow-up management, ownership assignment, business-development pipelines, activity tracking, centralised information, and recurring operational visibility.
The objective was not to create another sheet. It was to make the existing information usable as a system.
The CRM reduced dependence on manual updates and gave the team a clearer view of the business-development pipeline. It was an internal operational system designed around Salad Days’ existing workflows.
"Can You Do This for HR Too?"
Once the work in business development became visible, I was asked to explore a similar problem in the HR department.
The HR team was dealing with multiple stages of the employee lifecycle: recruitment, candidate tracking, interview coordination, offer-letter preparation, onboarding, employee records, status management, documentation, and internal coordination.
A substantial amount of this work was manual. Information was spread across different files and processes.
Building the HRM Suite
So I ended up building a broader HRM suite.
What began as "Can you do something similar for HR?" became a fairly complete internal system covering recruitment through employee management.
The system was built using Google Sheets, Google Forms, Google Drive, Google Workspace, Apps Script, automated document generation, automated email workflows, and connected dashboards.
It reduced manual effort across HR processes (approximately 40% reduction in manual effort) and accelerated recruitment and onboarding workflows.
Automating Offer Letters
One part of the HR system automated the preparation and distribution of company offer letters.
Previously, this required manually copying candidate information, updating document templates, generating individual letters, exporting files, attaching documents, sending emails, and maintaining status records.
The automated workflow connected candidate data with offer-letter templates and distribution processes. This reduced repetitive work and lowered the risk of inconsistent information across documents.
This is a strong example of the internship’s broader pattern: I was rarely asked to build "software." I was asked to solve an operational problem. Software happened to be the most sensible answer.
Six Months of Use
The HRM suite was not discarded at the end of the internship. It remained in operational use for at least six months.
The company eventually onboarded a dedicated HRM SaaS platform. That is an important part of the story.
The internal system was never intended to permanently replace specialised enterprise software. It was designed to solve an immediate operational gap while the company was growing.
It worked as an interim infrastructure layer until Salad Days was ready to adopt a dedicated product. The system solved the problem at the stage it was built for. Later, the company outgrew it. That is what useful internal tooling is supposed to allow.
Marketing Between Dashboards
Alongside the operational systems, I also worked on marketing and product communication.
This included creating an Instagram reel for a product launch, supporting a new-product launch campaign, producing content for Salad Days’ digital channels, contributing to client-facing campaign material, and helping strengthen communication around new offerings.
The Vasant Kunj Launch
One significant piece was the launch video for the new Vasant Kunj kitchen.
The work involved understanding the launch context, planning the visual narrative, filming, editing, adapting the content for Instagram, and presenting the kitchen in a way that felt operationally real but still engaging.
The video achieved more than 9,000 organic views on Instagram.
The more useful contrast is that I was moving between CRM logic, HR automation, pitch decks, event operations, campaign strategy, and video production. Sometimes within the same week.
The Final Two Weeks
During the final two weeks of the internship, I moved into training and development.
This became one of the largest pieces of work I completed at Salad Days. At the time, the company did not have a comprehensive video-based training system covering operational procedures across kitchens and teams.
So I began creating one.
Building 60+ Training Modules
The brief was not to make one introductory video. It became more than 60 training modules.
I handled training-content planning, topic breakdown, scripting, filming, editing, visual instruction, module organisation, consistency, and final delivery.
The modules covered kitchen sanitation, hygiene procedures, vegetable preparation, cutting different types of vegetables, ingredient handling, food-preparation standards, equipment use, operational consistency, product knowledge, what sun-dried tomatoes are, how they are prepared, role-specific kitchen processes, and recurring quality procedures.
Turning Kitchen Knowledge Into a System
The training modules eventually became the foundation for a structured training library across Salad Days’ operations.
The challenge was not only production volume. It was converting physical kitchen knowledge into standardised media. A process that feels obvious to an experienced employee is often difficult to document.
For every module, I had to determine what the employee needed to know, what could go wrong, which actions required visual demonstration, how detailed the explanation needed to be, which process variations were acceptable, how to present the instruction consistently, how the content should be grouped, and how employees would actually use it.
Designing for People Who Are Working
Most videos are evaluated using views, retention, engagement, and aesthetic quality. These videos had a different success condition: Could someone watch the module and perform the process correctly?
That changed how the content had to be designed. The modules needed direct framing, visible actions, consistent terminology, minimal ambiguity, repeatable structure, enough context without unnecessary explanation, practical pacing, and operational accuracy.
This was one of the clearest examples of design serving a business system rather than a marketing surface. They were operational media. Their value came from clarity and consistency.
The Confidentiality Problem
A central design constraint of this portfolio page is that I cannot publicly show most of the work.
The systems contain internal company data, employee information, recruitment data, client information, operational workflows, sales records, proprietary documents, training processes, copyrighted company content, and confidential business material.
Most of the work exists. Most of it should also remain exactly where it is.
What I Actually Did
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: Customised B2B pitch decks for clients like KKR, Bombay Shaving Company, and Mars. I also led client research, redesigned the broader Salad Days pitch deck, and drafted the initial Salesforce microgreens proposal.
EVENTS: Coordinated the Salesforce microgreens workshop from the initial pitch to on-ground execution, managing an event with more than 40 participants.
INTERNAL SYSTEMS: Built a business-development CRM using Google Workspace and Apps Script. This handled lead tracking, outreach management, and provided pipeline visibility for the team.
HR OPERATIONS: Developed an internal HRM suite that included a recruitment dashboard, candidate tracking, and interview workflows. I also built employee management and onboarding systems, complete with offer-letter automation and automated communication workflows.
MARKETING: Produced the Vasant Kunj kitchen launch video which generated over 9,000 organic views. I also contributed to a product-launch reel, supported the new-product launch campaign, and created digital campaign material.
TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: Filmed, edited, and scripted more than 60 video modules. I designed the module architecture to standardise kitchen-process documentation and operational training across the company.
What The Internship Actually Taught Me
Internal tools do not need to become permanent products. They need to solve the current operational stage well. The best process automation usually starts with watching people perform the process manually.
A dashboard is not useful merely because it contains information. It is useful when it changes what the team can see and do.
Founder’s-office work is defined less by title and more by whichever bottleneck becomes important next.
Training content is a form of operational infrastructure. A pitch deck can become an actual event.
Visual design and software development were not separate functions in this internship. They were different tools used against different business problems. Public-facing brand work depends on a substantial amount of invisible internal structure.
Moving quickly across departments is useful only when each solution remains understandable to the people who will maintain it.
Some of the strongest portfolio work cannot responsibly be shown. The explanation and evidence must therefore carry more weight.
