Act 1

Intro

I'm Shiva and I build where messy real-world systems meet technology that has to earn its keep.

I've been building things at the intersection of messy real-world problems and technology that can actually solve them.

I started with climate and waste. Then I got obsessed with AI. The obsession stuck.

Most of what I do does not look especially interesting from the outside: data pipelines, agent workflows, and product decisions nobody notices when they work. That is the part I find most satisfying.

Act 2

Beliefs

Three beliefs that keep shaping how I choose problems and build products.

The short version of what I keep optimizing for.

01

The boring problems are the ones worth solving

AI gets applied to the flashy stuff first. I keep gravitating toward the unglamorous end: waste systems, water treatment, and operations nobody wants to think about. That is usually where the leverage lives.

The unglamorous parts are usually the real product.

02

AI should be load-bearing, not decorative

I left my last company partly because AI was a feature we bolted on. I want to work on products where removing the AI means the product stops making sense. That distinction matters to me.

If the AI comes out and nothing changes, it was garnish.

03

Design and code are the same job

I design and I build. Not out of necessity, but because the gap between how something should feel and how it actually behaves is where most products quietly fail. Closing that gap is the work.

The interface and the implementation need the same authorial taste.

Act 3

Work timeline

The through-line shows up most clearly in the work itself.

A cleaner view of the companies, roles, and kinds of systems I have spent time building.

Manasija AI

Product Specialist

Mar 2026 - Current

Building Pulse, an AI-driven market intelligence product that explains price movement through delayed attribution, personalized feeds, and a real-time research chatbot.

23ML AI

Director

Jan 2023 - Current

Helping mid-market clients implement AI systems and workflows that can actually hold up in real operations instead of staying stuck at demo stage.

Zapigo

Founding Team

Mar 2023 - Feb 2026

Worked across product, engineering, AI pipelines, and brand partnerships through multiple 0 → 1 iterations, from gifting to digital invites and guest management.

Trashnet

Co-Founder & CEO

Jan 2021 - Sep 2022

Early climate and waste work that grounded a lot of my interest in unglamorous systems, operations, and problems that matter outside software.

Indra Water

Associate Engineer - R&D

Jun 2020 - Apr 2021

Worked close to water-treatment and industrial R&D realities, which is where my bias toward useful, real-world technology really started.