Dhananjay Mondal
Founder, SharpRoot · 21 · Dhanbad, India

I didn't follow
the typical path.

Stepped into the workforce before college. Enrolled in a CS degree at BITS Pilani while working. Then started building software — because that was always the plan.

21Years old
4+Products shipped
1Startup founded
BITSPilani, CS
Timeline
Posted at BCCL, Coal IndiaCivil Engineering dept. Enrolled in BITS Pilani CS degree in parallel. The founder inside never clocked out.
Built SETUWatched the tendering mess from the inside. Built a platform to fix it.
Founded Devectra (high school)Dev studio. Client websites. Learning by shipping real things.
SharpRoot — built in 2 weeksAI-native PM platform. Live. Charging customers. Full-time now.

Built from the outside in.

After class 12, I didn't get to choose the typical path. I was posted at BCCL (Coal India) — one of India's largest PSUs — in the Civil Engineering department. No CS classroom. No startup ecosystem. Just a government job at a coal company, at 18.

But the computer engineer and founder inside me never died. I enrolled in an online CS degree from BITS Pilani while working, and started building in whatever time I had. Civil engineering wasn't my passion — but I used it as a problem space. I watched the tendering process up close: slow, manual, drowning in paperwork. I built SETU to fix it.

That mindset stayed. Find a broken workflow. Understand it from the inside. Ship something that actually fixes it. I started Devectra as a dev studio in high school to take client work and keep building. Then I went all-in.

SharpRoot — my current startup — I built the entire product in 2 weeks. AI-native from the ground up. It's live, it's charging customers, and it's the thing I'm building full-time now. Same instinct as always. Just bigger scope.

Live · AI-native · Built in 2 weeks
My Startup
YC S26 RFS ✦
SharpRoot
"Cursor for Product Managers" — aligned with YC Spring 2026 Request for Startups

SharpRoot is an AI-native PM platform — AI isn't a feature bolted on, it's the entire product. Drop in customer signals from anywhere — interviews, support tickets, Slack, Zoom calls, Intercom threads, Google Drive docs — and SharpRoot turns them into a cited PRD and Jira/Linear tickets in under 12 minutes.

Every claim in the PRD links back to the exact customer quote it came from. No hallucinated insights. No manual synthesis. Just raw signal in, defensible product decisions out.

React Claude API Jira / Linear MCP server SOC 2 $49/month Solo built
01product:"SharpRoot"
02thesis:"Cursor for Product Managers"
03yc_rfs:Spring 2026 · aligned ✦
04status:live · $49/mo · 30-day trial
05built_in:"2 weeks"
06signals_from:["anywhere"]
07output:["themes","PRD","Jira tickets"]
08time_saved:"40h → under 1h"
AI pipeline
Capture signals from anywhere — Slack, Zoom, Intercom, Drive, tickets
Speaker-labelled transcripts in 2 minutes
Evidence-ranked themes, verbatim-anchored
7-section PRD, every claim cited to source
Ask Your Research — query across all signals
One-click push to Jira or Linear
Integrations
Jira · Linear · Slack · Zoom · Notion · HubSpot · Intercom · Zendesk · Gong · Google Drive · Confluence · Zapier · MCP
Live · Civil-tech
SETU — Smart Engineering for Tendering Utilities

Built for BCCL (Bharat Coking Coal Limited) — India's largest coking coal company. SETU digitizes civil construction tendering: an industry still running on manual paperwork and fragmented systems. AI chatbot for 24/7 tender queries, smart documentation suggestions, workflow automation, real-time collaboration, and role-based access control. Built from direct domain exposure — not research.

Next.jsAI chatbotBCCLGov / infraClient project
Client · Confidential
WinterLine AI

An AI product built for a client in the research domain. Helps users surface, synthesise, and navigate complex information faster — using LLMs as the core engine rather than a layer on top. Details are under NDA, but the problem space is one I find genuinely interesting: making AI useful for serious research work, not just search.

AI / LLMSaaSResearch domainNDA
Frontend
ReactNext.jsTypeScriptTailwindHTML/CSS
Backend & infra
Node.jsPythonPostgreSQLAWSVercel
AI / LLM
Claude APIOpenAIMCPCursorHelicone
Product
PRD writingUser researchJira / LinearGTM strategy
Domain
Civil tenderingSEO systemsCost analysisMerchant export
Languages
Bengali (native)HindiEnglish
SharpRoot
Founder · 2024 – Present
Current main focus. AI-native PM platform — live, paying customers, full-time building.
Devectra
Dev studio · Founded in high school
Started as a development studio while still in school. Built client websites and early products — SETU and Regner came out of this phase.
BCCL (Coal India) — Civil Engg. Dept.
Posted employee · then Builder
Joined as a posted employee in the Civil Engineering department. Watched the tendering process break in real time — then built SETU to fix it. The founder instinct never switched off.
Regner Impex
Web design · Client work
Full marketing website for a global merchant export firm. Multi-vertical product catalogue, enterprise-grade design, deployed on Vercel.
SEO Content — Indian Brands
Content Strategist · 2023–2024
Long-form SEO content for Tata Play Fiber and other Indian internet and infrastructure brands. Search-first writing at scale.
BITS Pilani
B.Tech Computer Science · Ongoing
Online degree, pursued while working and building. Formal CS foundation built in parallel with real-world shipping.
What I bring to VibeCon
Shipped real, live products — not just prototypes
Non-traditional path: learned by building, under real constraints
Domain depth in civil + product + AI — rare combination
Full-stack: own design, product, code, and GTM solo
Hungry to meet the people actually building India's next wave
Currently thinking about

AI-native SaaS that replaces entire workflows, not just assists them. The gap between "AI-powered" and truly AI-native architecture. How India builds its next wave of enterprise tools. What defensibility looks like for a solo founder in the age of vibe-coding.

Let's build
something real.

Whether it's VibeCon, a collaboration, a client project, or just talking about what's being built in India — I'm reachable.

[email&#