Sonal Solaskar

Prev Design Intern @puch_ai | Ex Design Intern @Newralhq | Create something beautiful everyday :) | 22

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

JUST PUBLISHED! 🗞️🗞️🗞️

My newspaper inspired portfolio is now live 🥳 Check it out! Would love to hear everyone's feedback🥹

https://t.co/CaL2FFFSOO

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

Took me a few mins!! loving figma motion already!!

[Figma @figma]

FIGMA MOTION IS HERE
FIGMA MOTION IS HERE
FIGMA MOTION IS HERE

Live from Config 2026

[Figma @figma]

Mark your calendars. See you in Bangalore.

[Aleks @aleksliving]

figma, the everything app

[Figma @figma]

FIGMA MOTION IS HERE
FIGMA MOTION IS HERE
FIGMA MOTION IS HERE

Live from Config 2026

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

Did this today🫡

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

Redesigned Instagram Instants

Case Study🔗: https://t.co/3N4DYb7ReX

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

Redesigned Instagram Instants

Case Study🔗: https://t.co/3N4DYb7ReX

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

New casestudy 🚉
https://t.co/U7YcdTjs6M

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

Cats will really wake up from a deep nap just to escort you to the bathroom, eyes barely open, all groggy and confused, but still worried about your safety.

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

Sun blessed us yesterday :)

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

@shravlmao @alve_om Thankss!!

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

Graduation ♡

[Om Alve @alve_om]

No way someone during their graduation speech just said "The average age of everyone is 21 years but some of y'all look 40 and still act like children"

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

Posted a new case study 🫡
https://t.co/BcYTURES28

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

@alve_om 🥺🫶

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

He said meow back

[NASA @NASA]

@alltooriah Tell your cat the Artemis II crew said pspsps

[Sonal Solaskar @solaskarso]

A monkey breaking into my house on a monday morning????? AND STARTING A FIGHT WITH MY CAT 😭😭😭😭😭

[Tanay Vaswani @iTanayVaswani]

Siddharth and Arjit are two of the most brilliant minds you will come across. It is easy to judge from the outside and only see the “wrapper” but whether it is a wrapper or something deeper (you never know), building meaningful products takes days and nights of effort

That said, reducing Puch AI to “just a wrapper” especially after recent news misses the point entirely

There are countless companies with deeply complex products and exceptional engineering that struggle to raise even a single dollar. Why?
Because success isn’t just about the product, it is about vision!

It is easy for many of us to look at numbers like ₹25,000 crore and think in terms of “generational wealth” but entrepreneurs like them don’t operate on that wavelength

Their thinking is long term, their ambition is larger than what most people even consider and what they are building goes far beyond what is visible today

Sometimes the best thing to do is take a step back and watch

This is just the beginning for @puch_ai and there is a lot more ahead

[Om Alve @alve_om]

As someone working closely on this, I’ve seen how much thought and engineering goes into making AI actually accessible beyond tech circles and running inference at this scale.

A lot of people ask why we don’t have our own app or call us "just a wrapper."

We’ve built and self-hosted everything from the ground up. LLMs, image and video generation, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech all of it is built on top of finetuned existing open source models. We don't even use a single external api for our models.

We’ve written custom inference systems to make providing all of this for free at scale even possible. Still think we're a "wrapper"?

And the platform? we chose WhatsApp deliberately. For shopkeepers, parents, senior citizens, downloading and learning a new app is still a barrier. We're trying to give them an AI that can talk to them in their own native language.

Take some time to think back before calling us a wrapper.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

Clarifying a few things, starting with the MoU.

Are you taking taxpayer money?
No. The MoU signed with the UP Government is structured as a public-private partnership. It does not involve any cost to the taxpayers of Uttar Pradesh. On the contrary, it brings investment into the state. The project will be executed in phases, with support from external investment partners. We have not taken any money, any GPUs, or any other form of support from the Government. The only part of this MoU that involves citizens is that they'll receive free access to AI, in their own language and through familiar interfaces, via AI Commons.

Is your revenue ₹42.9 lakh?
No. This is a bug in Google’s AI, which has confused Puch AI with another company called Pucho AI. The ₹42.9 lakh revenue figure belongs to Pucho AI, not Puch AI. Puch AI’s revenue is not public.

What’s your valuation/annual revenue? Are you bootstrapped?
We’ll share those details when the time is right. For now, as a private company, we’re not required to make our valuation or revenue public. But, if you’re curious, we're not bootstrapped. We’re a well-funded startup.

Do you have a foundational model of your own?
No, and we do not believe it is necessary for our mission to build one at this stage.

What is your mission?
We want to bring AI to everyone in India. Today, many people already use tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, but millions still cannot. Your parents, shopkeepers, drivers, and many others are being left out because AI, in its current form, is not built for them.

What exactly is Puch AI doing?
Puch AI is building the domestic consumer AI offering for the masses. We're bringing AI to people through simple, familiar interfaces like WhatsApp and voice calls, so that it is easy to use even for those who cannot type and prefer to interact through voice.

Why don’t you have your own app?
We understand the frustration people feel about this, and at times it is frustrating for us as well (currently fighting Meta on the WhatsApp policy). But so far, this has been a conscious choice. A new app becomes one more thing to learn and one more barrier for the millions of people who are currently not using AI. Try teaching your parents a new app!

So are you asking me to not use ChatGPT or other AIs in the name of nationalism?
No, not at all. People should use whatever AI works best for them. Our effort is simply to expand access to AI by bringing it to millions who, today, are unable to use the existing tools.

Is Puch AI just a wrapper?
Wrappers are generally defined as making API calls to AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic. So no, Puch AI is not a wrapper. We do not use any APIs. We have built our entire infrastructure in-house on top of open-source models, and engineered it for the Indian context. However, if you define a wrapper as any company that does not have a foundational model pretrained from scratch, then yes, Puch AI is a wrapper.

What is the point of Puch AI if you haven’t even built a model?
The problem is data. Today, ChatGPT and Gemini are the default go-to AI apps for almost everyone in India who uses AI. As more people use them, these companies keep getting more and more data to improve their models. That data will never help Sarvam, BharatGen, or any other domestic AI model builder. More importantly, the bulk of India will end up accessing information through OpenAI or Google: their systems and their narratives that may ultimately be shaped by foreign actors. With Puch AI, we are trying to build sovereign distribution, so that India has at least one alternative, no matter how hopeless it may seem to compete with OpenAI or Google’s marketing.

Puch AI seems relatively simple. I can build it in a weekend. Are you even doing anything?
The choice of a simple interface is deliberate, but the underlying infrastructure is far from simple. Happy to give ₹50 lakh to anyone who can build it in a weekend, match our performance in Indian languages, and offer it for free at our consumer scale.

How was your experience building for India?
It is a very interesting situation, where the Government understands the importance and wants to do good, but it becomes difficult to do any good when so many bad actors are rooting for you to fail. Thousands of paid accounts are ready to try to shape narratives to fit their own political agenda. Everything from Community Notes to actual news articles and journalism gets weaponized against you, because your failure gets more views.

Will you keep fighting?
Not sure. Quite exhausted. Maybe this is the time to sign off.