About

I’m Pankaj Baranwal, an entrepreneur born in Lucknow and based in Mumbai. I build things, mostly with software and AI, and I write about what I learn along the way.

What I’m building

I’m the Co-Founder & CEO of BeyondChats, an AI platform that helps businesses turn website traffic into quality leads and resolve most customer queries without a human in the loop. I co-founded it in 2023 with Simran Jain, and we are a small, fast team of engineers, designers, and marketers solving a deceptively hard problem: making every website visit feel like a good conversation.

The path here

• Beyond Exams: a social venture to make quality education more accessible. This is where I learned that the most impactful stories often start with humble beginnings.
• DeepLogic AI: worked as a technology consultant solving real-world problems with computer vision and NLP, including machine-learning projects with the Mumbai Police and IIT-B.
• Internet Society: served as an IGF Youth Ambassador, thinking about the future of an open internet.
• University of Delhi: B.Tech from the Cluster Innovation Centre, plus a Google Summer of Code along the way.

Beyond work

Running a company does not cure the urge to code. I still love solving problems that way, so most of my free time has a side project in it, usually something small that scratches an itch I ran into myself.

Some of that spills into other people’s sites. I freelance as the webmaster for more than ten of them, including indianangel.in, drmalpani.com and micelabs.in. Lately I have been running an experiment across them: an AI engine that tries to lift their traffic, engagement, and the share of people who come back. This blog is one of the sites in that experiment.

I have a soft spot for helping kids get future ready. Better digital skills open better jobs, so I have donated computers to more than five schools and brought on a mentor who guides those schools on digital upskilling. When a sincere young person wants to find their feet in the digital world, I will go out of my way to help.

Away from the screen I am happiest outdoors. Scuba diving, skiing, and trekking are how I reset.

Why I write

I believe in building in public. Writing forces me to think clearly, and sharing the journey (the wins, the dead ends, the half-formed opinions) is how I give back to the community of builders I learned from. You’ll find me writing about entrepreneurship, AI, technology, healthcare, geopolitics, and life. Right now the main thread is a field guide to selling AI to Indian hospitals: the procurement, pilots and compliance nobody writes down. For a snapshot of what has my attention at the moment, see my now page.

If any of this resonates, whether you’re building something, thinking of investing, or just want to talk, reach out. And if we have already worked together, a few honest words on my recommendations page would mean a lot.