Sanjana Bhatia

Strategy Operator, at the edge of AI and human behavior

I sit at the intersection of human need, AI, and business strategy. Parsons Strategic Design. Tuck MBA. Recovering consultant, now a 0-to-1 operator, based in SF.

In the age of AI, I'm most curious about:
What women actually need and want as consumers.
What organizations need to transform at the speed of frontier AI.

building

Problems I couldn't stop thinking about, so built the solutions myself. Where were we before vibe coding?

Consumer AI · Agentic App · Solo Build

Plum Kitchen: Dinner, decided

I kept getting inspired by recipes and then never actually cooking them. The real gap wasn't inspiration, it was the walk from inspiration to committed action. So I built an agent that closes it: drop in ingredients, a recipe link, or a vague craving, and it reasons across your goals, constraints, and history to hand you a week of meals and a grocery list.

Role
Sole builder, idea to production
Stack
Lovable · Supabase · Claude API
Outcome
Live and in daily use · three weeks of real usage cost $0.67 total
Read case study

In Progress

Pearl

Currently building: an AI tool for the weight-loss and management space, the same instinct as Plum applied to a much bigger, much more human category. More soon.

selected work

Different problems, very different rooms, same approach: start with the human problem, own it through execution, and let the results speak.

Enterprise AI · Banking · 0-to-1

PNC's First GenAI Platform

Nobody had built a Generative AI platform at PNC before, so there was no playbook. Just a business case to scope, an engineering team to keep pointed the same direction, and a lot of “will people actually use this?” Fourteen months later: yes.

Role
End-to-end strategy lead, only non-engineering member of the deployment team
Scope
Thousands of documents across 3 knowledge repositories
Outcome
90% weekly active users · 98% answer acceptance · 4.8/5.0 satisfaction
Read case study

Consumer Fintech · GTM Strategy · 0-to-1

Beyond the Signup at Jago Merchant

Bank Jago was rebuilt from a small local bank into a startup, then tasked with launching a merchant financial services product from zero. Everyone was optimizing for downloads. I made the case that downloads weren't the point, and built the framework to prove it.

Role
GTM Strategy, MBA Internship
Scope
New merchant product launch, 0 to 500K+ users
Outcome
500K+ users · $6.5M+ in deposits · became MFS's core analytics framework
Read case study
thinking

I've always thought about a life well lived: one of beauty, joy, and taste. When I was younger, fashion brought that whimsy into my life: it's why I went to undergrad at Parsons the School of Design of all places! This fascination continues today, but I've broadened my horizon: I now channel that excitement into the artefacts and choices of daily life, for mine and others, ruminating constantly: what makes people feel true joy, make them feel beautiful, help them learn and be curious?

In the age of AI, there's so much more to explore: the way we shop, live, and experience the world is changing every day. Sanjana's Pearls, my substack, is a documentation of these experiences, as a consumer, observer, and builder. In essence, love letters to where we are in technology now and how we're directing it to feel and experience life better.

Portrait of Sanjana Bhatia
Sanjana with Firu, the neighbor's labrador, in the parkSanjana with her husband on a sunny walkSanjana with her mother over dinner
about

I grew up moving around the world. Seven countries and even more cities by the time I landed here in San Francisco. That's probably where my curiosity comes from: paying close attention to how people are different, and why they care about the things that they do.

Parsons taught me to see these cares as problems to solve and design for. Tuck taught me to make the business case for fixing them. I've spent the years since doing both: solving and building alongside technical experts, whether for Fortune 500 consulting clients (Accenture), an Indonesian fintech startup (Bank Jago), a super-regional bank (PNC), or a problem I came across in my own life (Plum, Pearl). The throughline: I take solutions from start to finish, no matter the problem or the technology behind it.

In my off time, current obsessions include (but are not limited to): struggling through pickleball lessons, playing with our neighbor's labrador Firu, and cooking with my husband.

If this resonates, I'd love to hear from you.

Say Hellosabha1116@gmail.comMy LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/sanjanabhatia01My Substacksanjanaspearls.substack.com