about

About Me

Hi, I'm Pankaj  — a web developer, problem solver, and someone who enjoys building things from scratch.

I've been working in web development for more than a decade, mostly around PHP, Laravel, WordPress, Shopify, JavaScript and MySQL. Over the years, I've worked on everything from small websites to larger web applications, APIs, e-commerce systems and business automation projects.

What I enjoy most about development isn't just writing code. It's taking a problem that looks complicated and figuring out how to turn it into something that actually works.

How I got here

I started my career mainly as a developer, spending most of my time learning how websites and applications work behind the scenes.

PHP and MySQL were some of the technologies I spent a lot of time with, and eventually Laravel became one of the frameworks I enjoyed working with the most.

As I worked on more projects, my role naturally expanded beyond writing code. I started working with clients, understanding their requirements, designing solutions, reviewing code, solving production problems and helping other developers.

That experience taught me something important:

Good software isn't just about good code. It has to solve a real problem for a real person.

That idea has influenced the way I approach projects ever since.

From development to building products

For a long time, most of my work was project-based — someone had an idea or a business problem, and my job was to build the technology around it.

Eventually, I became more interested in building products of my own.

There's something very different about building a product that you don't just hand over to a client.

You have to think about the person using it.

Is it easy to understand?

Does it actually solve their problem?

Which features matter?

What can be removed?

What happens when hundreds or thousands of people use it?

Those questions are what made me interested in SaaS and product development.

Building ChatNestly

One of the projects I'm currently building is ChatNestly.

ChatNestly started from a simple observation: businesses receive many of the same customer questions repeatedly, while customers expect quick answers.

I wanted to explore whether an AI assistant could do more than just give generic chatbot responses.

The idea is to let businesses provide their own information — such as website content, FAQs and documents — and use that information to create an AI assistant that can communicate with their customers.

I'm also exploring how AI can connect website conversations with WhatsApp and eventually help businesses with things such as lead capture and customer-support workflows.

I'm still learning a lot from building it.

And that's actually one of the things I enjoy about it.

There is a big difference between building something because you can and building something that people genuinely find useful.

I'm trying to learn the second one.

What I like working on

I'm particularly interested in:

• AI and practical automation
• SaaS products
• Laravel and PHP
• Web applications
• E-commerce
• APIs and integrations
• Customer-support automation
• Building tools that solve everyday business problems
• Learning new technologies
• Turning ideas into working products

I'm less interested in technology just for the sake of technology.

If something can save someone time, remove repetitive work, or make a complicated process simpler, that's where I find it interesting.

What I'm learning now

One of the biggest things I'm learning is that building software and building a business are two very different things.

As a developer, it's easy to think:

"If I build something useful, people will use it."

In reality, there's much more to it.

You need to understand the problem, talk to users, explain the product clearly, listen to criticism, decide what not to build, and keep improving even when things don't go exactly as planned.

Building ChatNestly has been teaching me a lot about that side of the process.

Outside of code

I spend a lot of my time around technology, but I don't want everything I do to revolve around it.

I enjoy learning, exploring new ideas, working on side projects and thinking about how technology can be used in practical ways.

I also like the process of starting with a simple idea and gradually turning it into something real.

Sometimes that means writing code.

Sometimes it means deleting code.

And sometimes it means admitting that an idea wasn't as good as it sounded initially and starting again.

I'm becoming increasingly comfortable with that process.

Where I'm heading

I don't have everything figured out, and I don't think I need to.

For now, I want to keep building useful things, keep improving as a developer, learn more about AI and product development, and eventually build products that can stand on their own.

ChatNestly is one part of that journey.

There will probably be other projects after it.

For me, the interesting part is the journey of turning an idea into something that another person can actually use.