Sandhya G Rao

I love building products that delight users, and the sometimes inspiring, sometimes messy process of getting there.

Big tech taught me how systems work at scale. Early-stage startups taught me how to create something from nothing with very little. Adding users one by one, rejoicing at the first 20, 50, 100. I now envy the resources bigger startups and companies have!

Right now I'm deep in the AI rabbit hole. Excited about what it's unlocking, both in how we build software and what becomes possible. Currently learning and vibe coding tools, apps, and what I'm calling an attempt at a personal OS!

Equally comfortable digging into technical details and operating at product and business strategy level. And beautiful design in products makes me flutter. I'm a true generalist at heart (and I think this is a great time to be one).

Experience
CPO at Miyara Health & Kin Parenting. Product roles at Yahoo/Interclick. Software Engineer and Project Manager at Microsoft.
Background
Cornell MBA (Strategy & Marketing). MS & BS in Computer Science.
Based in
Zurich, Switzerland. Previously Silicon Valley, NYC, Seattle, and Bangalore.

Projects at Miyara

Miyara Health App

A women's midlife health/menopause companion, first of its kind in India, offering end-to-end support: 30+ symptom tracking with severity logging, a clinical-grade Miyara Score that tracks over time, health insights with pattern discovery across symptoms, an AI companion, a content library, and expert consultation booking. Now live on the App Store and Google Play. I led this from concept to launch as CPO. Defined the product vision, requirements, UX flows, and built the initial AI design prototype myself. Led the engineering team through development.

iOS Android AI Prototyping Product Leadership Health Tech
Home: AI companion widget and health assessment score

Home

Tracking: Daily symptom logging with severity sliders

Symptom Tracking

Insights: Pattern discovery and symptom trend analysis

Health Insights

Mia: AI companion with contextual health guidance

AI Companion

AI Health Companion

An AI health companion I built for women 35+ navigating midlife health issues focused on perimenopause and menopause. Powered by a curated knowledge base built from the latest scientific evidence. Provided empathetic, evidence-based guidance on symptoms, health screenings, and wellness programs. Triaged by symptom severity, routed to appropriate services, and stayed within scope guardrails to avoid medical advice it shouldn't give. Deployed on web chat and WhatsApp, now integrated into the Miyara mobile app. Served 1000+ women.

OpenAI Assistants API RAG Flask PostgreSQL WhatsApp Replit Vibe Coded
Web chat: Welcome screen with starter questions

Web Chat

WhatsApp chatbot: Symptom tracking with quick reply buttons

WhatsApp Bot

Health Assessment Tool

A preventative health assessment I built with coding agents to help women identify early symptoms and health risks related to perimenopause and menopause. Covers demographics, lifestyle, medical history, and 20 symptoms. A scoring engine determines symptom severity, likely menopause stage, and generates a personalized report with program recommendations. Completed by 500+ women, building one of the first structured datasets on Indian women's midlife health. For many women, especially those dismissed by doctors or told "it's just stress" or "lose weight," this was the first time they got a clear picture that their symptoms were real, connected, and manageable.

Node.js Express Google Sheets API SendGrid Tailwind CSS Replit Vibe Coded
Assessment result: Symptom score 54/60 with menopause stage determination

Assessment Result

Personal Projects

AI Travel Planner

Built to plan our family's Japan trip and others. Also an attempt to understand RAG and agents in action while building something useful. Many of us who travel revel in researching about a place (sometimes more than required!), gathering recommendations from blogs, Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and articles, then trying to synthesize it all into an itinerary. This app automates that. Ingest content from multiple sources, build a searchable knowledge base, and chat with your curated research conversationally. Built with Claude Code. MVP complete, itinerary planner not yet finished the way I wanted, but the RAG pipeline, places database, and tips extraction all work end-to-end.

Claude Code RAG ChromaDB Google Places API Reddit API Streamlit Vibe Coded
AI-generated day-by-day Tokyo itinerary

AI-generated itinerary with transit info and Knowledge Base stats

Knowledge base with multiple source ingestion

RAG Knowledge Base

Extracted travel tips with sources

Tips extracted from sources

Habit and Health Tracker

A personal PWA I built to track daily habits, health symptoms, and emotional well-being. Modules cover everything from daily habits (career, German, exercise..) to symptom severity tracking, sleep quality, medication logs, emotional check-ins using a mood meter (inspired by How We Feel app/Yale research), journaling. All of these summarized with an insights dashboard with trend visualization. An AI chat (Claude API) surfaces correlations across the data. I defined all the product requirements, UX flow, and design direction; implemented with Claude Code. Deployed on Replit. I have used almost daily for 3+ months.

Claude Code Next.js TypeScript Claude API PWA Replit Vibe Coded
Check-In: Mood meter with energy/emotion quadrants

Mood Check-In

Health: Symptom journal and sleep tracking

Health Tracking

Journal: Gratitude, highlights, reflections

Journal

AI Chat: Ask questions about your health data

AI Chat

German Vocabulary Flashcards

A swipe-based German vocabulary flashcard app I built to help me prepare for my B1 exam. Upload vocabulary via CSV, practice with swipeable flashcards (right for known, left for review), track progress across sessions, and switch between German-to-English and reverse modes. Each card shows the word with an example sentence in both languages for context. Built with Replit, deployed as a mobile-first PWA so I can practice from anywhere, anytime. I use this almost everyday too.

Replit React TypeScript PWA Framer Motion Vibe Coded
Home: Progress stats and daily goal

Progress Dashboard

Practice: Swipeable flashcard with German word

Flashcard Practice

Known Words: List with example sentences

Known Words

Settings: Daily word count, reverse and shuffle modes

Settings

Let's Connect

I'm always interested in talking about AI, product building, consumer or women's health tech, or opportunities to collaborate.

Email: sandhya.mg.rao@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sandhyamg