Hi, I'm Shashank!
I'm a tech entrepreneur (founder of Twine) and an animal welfare volunteer. Here's my story...
Early life and college
I was born in Ludhiana, Punjab, and raised in New Delhi. After my schooling, I pursued my B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay. I also completed a minor in Computer Science and Engineering there, and all my internships, most of my projects, and a lot of my coursework focused on AI. During college, among other things, I volunteered in Computer Literacy, worked as a Software Engineering Intern with Stryker Corporation, and was the mentor of an Augmented Reality project.
College and volunteer work
Nestled beside a national park and two serene lakes, the IITB campus hosts a lot of animals, from cats, dogs, and cows to snakes, leopards, and crocodiles. Inspired by the college's ethos of coexisting with animals, I began feeding the campus animals and tending to the injured ones, sparking my commitment to animal welfare. This commitment solidified after adopting Snoopy, an abandoned Indie dog, during the pandemic. Adopting an Indie dog, i.e., an Indian Pariah or an Indian street dog, further made me realize how all street dogs and cats of the world are victims of our neglect and how they are just as loving if not more than household pets. They deserve a family and belong in our homes, not on the streets where they are subjected to all sorts of cruelty. Since then, I have helped hundreds of birds and animals of all sizes live, heal, and find a home. I adopted another senior Indie street dog and have helped pigeons, squirrels, rats, dogs, cats, cows, even an odd baby eagle, and more!
(Sharing volunteering efforts in such a way might feel a bit distasteful to some of you. But there’s a good reason, at least from my point of view, for choosing to write about it so openly and extensively. To understand why, I invite you to read this essay. It's about an important belief that I hold.)
(Sharing volunteering efforts in such a way might feel a bit distasteful to some of you. But there’s a good reason, at least from my point of view, for choosing to write about it so openly and extensively. To understand why, I invite you to read this essay. It's about an important belief that I hold.)
Volunteer work, job, and entrepreneurship
I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I completed my degree one semester early and honed my skills in building large consumer apps as a Software Engineer at Amazon. Then, I quit my job and briefly worked on a project that aimed to promote the adoption of animals in India and to improve the quality of lives of community/street animals. After that, I started my own company.
Entrepreneurship, volunteer work, and Twine
When you care deeply about something, you start noticing what’s broken—and you can’t stop trying to fix it. You notice every problem, even the tiniest ones, and especially the ones only insiders can understand. And you start caring (a lot) about solving them.
For me, that started with animal welfare work in India. The space is largely unorganized and full of difficult problems. We’re a developing nation, after all. Just to give you a glimpse: the punishment for animal cruelty in India, for the longest time, has been—and still is—60 cents! Enforcement of crimes against animals is non-existent.
Participating in large, informal online groups that organize animal welfare volunteering in India is emotionally and mentally draining. There are struggles—and those struggles lead to valuable insights. The first couple of startup ideas I pursued (which didn’t work out yet) were born from those very insights. The same is true for Twine as well.
Starting in 2024, there was a wave of deliberate and convenient misinformation and manipulation, which eventually led to the creation of Twine. I’d be lying if I said that was the only reason. It may have been the biggest motivation, but there were also other global events that made me question which news was real and which wasn’t.
I began to wonder: if I could feel this uncertain, how must the average person—someone who isn’t very tech-savvy or doesn’t have the time, resources, or sometimes even the ability, unfortunately, to do their own independent research—feel? How misled could they be? And even if someone does their own research, what’s the point if every source might carry bias?
I can’t publicly reveal specific details about Twine yet, since we’re still in stealth mode (set to end around September or October 2025). But please get in touch if you’d like to learn more.
The motto of Twine is “Weaving Nuance Into News”—and it’s something I believe is urgently needed. It makes me immensely proud that the roots of Twine lie in volunteer work, and that it carries a bold mission and positive values. It took multiple iterations and setbacks to arrive at the right startup idea. Calling the journey “hard” would be an understatement, but the love and awe we receive make it worthwhile! :)
The motto of Twine is “Weaving Nuance Into News”—and it’s something I believe is urgently needed. It makes me immensely proud that the roots of Twine lie in volunteer work, and that it carries a bold mission and positive values. It took multiple iterations and setbacks to arrive at the right startup idea. Calling the journey “hard” would be an understatement, but the love and awe we receive make it worthwhile! :)
Creating products to solve problems is both my job and my hobby. Life is good when you get to do something you love all the time! I am passionate about all technologies that promise to change the world for the better, and I have been lucky to follow my dream of working with them for years now.