Two years of building useful tools, learning as I go, and finding my place.
In 2012, I sat in my first pharmacy class and watched the professor write on the board.
My education through Class 12 had been in Hindi. Now I was studying pharmacy in English, trying to understand the subject and the language at the same time.
Thanks to my mama (my mother’s brother ) we watched plenty of Hollywood films. I could listen and understand more than I could confidently write.
Unfortunately, Hollywood hadn’t prepared me to write pharmacy exam answers.
I had six backlogs in my first year.
I recovered, completed my degree, and later, after a four-year break, went on to study law in 2020.
Today, I’m building software. 9xchat, the AI workspace Vijay and I built at 123sudo, is now part of how I research, create, and communicate every day.
That sounds like quite a jump. It was.
But the connection becomes clearer when I look at what I’ve spent the last two years doing.
From having ideas to putting them into people’s hands
For the last two years, I’ve been building and launching apps with our team.
Some began with something I needed. Others came from how Vijay worked, a frustration within our team, or a problem experienced by the people we build for.
That’s the part I enjoy: noticing something annoying and asking whether we can make it easier.
Then comes the less glamorous work. Explaining the idea. Discussing it with the team. Making decisions. Testing it. Realising that something obvious to us isn’t obvious to someone else.
Eventually, you put it into someone’s hands.
That changes the conversation. You’re no longer only discussing what the product could do. You’re learning what people actually find useful.
As a co-founder of 123sudo, I work across creative direction, marketing, product ideas, and design. I’m involved in how we present our products and how people experience them.
I don’t code yet. But I’m very much part of building.
We don’t all need the same tools in the same way
Vijay is a developer. His workflow has evolved toward working with his own agent.
Mine looks different.
I might be researching a topic, exploring a visual direction, writing a product explanation, or trying to communicate an idea to our team.
With 9xchat, I use live web search, generate images, and build and deploy agents. I connect favourite apps through MCP and use screenshots, shortcuts, and the floating window to bring the workspace into what I’m doing.
But I don’t wake up thinking about a list of features.
I think about the work in front of me.
- Can I understand this topic?
- Can I show someone what I’m imagining?
- Can I explain this clearly enough for us to move forward?
Vijay and I use the workspace differently because our work is different. Seeing those differences helps us think about the people we’re building for, too.
A small change that used to take two days
I paint passionately, so I often think visually.
Sometimes I can see what I want in my head, but describing it doesn’t quite get me there.
A simple design change used to take my designer two days. Now I can explore those changes myself in Image Studio, see different directions, and work out what I actually want.
It doesn’t replace a designer’s experience. It helps me arrive at the conversation better prepared.
Instead of sending another long explanation, I can show a direction and say, “Something closer to this.”
That’s a small example, but small improvements matter when they become part of your everyday work.
The ideas were mine. The grammar needed help.
The same thing happens with writing.
I have plenty to say. Sometimes too much.
English isn’t my strongest language, and a message can become a mixture of ideas, spelling mistakes, and sentences that made more sense in my head.
My workspace helps me organise that.
Recently, I was talking to someone who runs a furniture business. He described turning something imagined into a physical piece of art.
I understood him because I paint. I wanted to explain how a tool could help him explore a design without replacing the craftsmanship that made it his.
The understanding was already there. I needed help expressing it clearly.
That’s very different from asking a tool to have my opinions for me.
I want help communicating my thinking, not replacing it.
I still read, edit, question, and decide what sounds like me. A polished sentence isn’t useful if it changes what I meant.
I believe useful tools should be affordable
Building something useful is only part of the job. People also need to feel comfortable trying it.
I believe in affordable tools. I don’t want someone to feel they need a large budget just to explore whether a piece of software could help them.
That belief shapes how I think about what we build and how we offer it.
For 9xchat, we use credits that people can top up as needed. Different models and tasks can have different costs. My goal is for those costs to be understandable, rather than another thing users have to guess at.
Affordability isn’t only about the price. I also think about the time and effort it takes someone to get value from a tool.
If people spend more time figuring out the software than doing the task they came for, we still have work to do.
My ambition isn’t to give everyone another app to manage.
It’s to make tools useful enough to earn their place.
The people made the difference
I haven’t done this alone.
Vijay, my family, and our team have been part of this journey. Pangur Care, our wellness brand, also came to life with the support of my family and partner. We started and built it together.
At 123sudo, I’ve found a team that feels like family. They give me space to ask questions, learn, and contribute without pretending I already know everything.
That has changed my confidence.
I’m planning to learn coding and explore vibe coding with Vijay’s help. I’m excited to understand more of how our ideas become working software.
I’m not waiting to know everything before I participate. But I’m not finished learning either.
What I want the next two years to mean
In some ways, these last two years have felt like twenty years of healing within two.
Not because everything became easy, but because I found room to create, work, learn, and feel excited about my life again.
The apps matter to me. So do the conversations, the people, and the confidence that has grown through building them.
My bigger dream is to keep making practical, affordable tools that help people act on what they know and imagine.
Someone shouldn’t need to code to explore an idea. They shouldn’t need perfect English to communicate something valuable. And they shouldn’t need to understand every technical detail before a tool can be useful to them.
They do need room to learn, make decisions, and keep their own judgment.
That’s the kind of technology I want to help build.
Two years ago, I couldn’t have described exactly where this journey would take me. I still can’t.
But I know I want to keep building things we genuinely use, listening to the people we build for, and enjoying the process of becoming better at it.
What’s one everyday frustration you wish someone would build a useful, affordable tool to solve?
KAT — Co-founder of 123sudo and Pangur Care.
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