Hi, I'm Pranav.
I like figuring out interesting problems. Right now that means working in the CEO's office at Jio's payments business - thinking about how money moves from consumers to merchants, at scale.
Before that, I spent a few years bouncing around interesting places: founder's office at Mensa Brands, product strategy at MPL, venture ops at BuidlersTribe.
Curious by default. I read a lot, write occasionally, and think too much. Mostly into startups, fintech, movies, poker, and the internet.
Work
- Working directly with the CEO on making payments work better for merchants at scale - a mix of strategy, operations, and problem-solving across the business.
- Learning what it actually takes to move a large organisation toward a decision.
- Helped the digital innovation team think through how emerging tech could be applied internally.
- Got my first real look at how a large conglomerate evaluates new ideas.
- Researched the web3 gaming space for MPL's game-fi team - broke down products, ecosystems, and what was actually working.
- Learned how to separate signal from noise when a space is moving fast.
- Spoke with hundreds of D2C brands to find potential acquisition targets for one of India's fastest-growing companies.
- Understood what makes a business genuinely good versus one that just looks good from the outside.
- Set up investor relations and community systems at a web3 incubator.
- Got a deep dive into the crypto ecosystem.
Projects
Made comics to simplify concepts in startups and venture capital. We reached 1M+ impressions on LinkedIn and were #2 Product of the Day on ProductHunt.
Co-founded a community at IIM Indore to reduce information asymmetry for students finding internships - held sessions, shared resources and opportunities. Grew to 350+ members, the largest student-run entity on campus.
A newsletter I co-ran covering DeFi and crypto markets - started as DeFi explainers, pivoted to curating alpha.
Writing
Now
Working on solving cross-functional problems at Jio Payments.
Reading Palace of Illusions.
Thinking about the future of work.
Curious about: how payments infrastructure actually works under the hood, what makes great film direction, India's next decade, and whether poker is really just a game of incomplete information.
Always happy to talk about startups, fintech, movies, or whatever you're working on.
reachpranavharan@gmail.com ↗