Walk into the café

CAFÉ DALEEL · BOMBAY

Harshit Parikh

A mosaic of everyone I met.

est. 1 a.m. · proprietor of opinions

Who I amfront of house

Have you met Harshit? That's me. Front of house is who I am; the STAFF ONLY door is what I build.

I grew up in Bombay and went to an international school. After junior college, a gap year turned into Zomato. Somewhere in there came a BSc in IT, because my mother asked me to. I live in Bangalore now.

I'm a history and philosophy nerd who falls down rabbit holes on purpose. I have data-backed hypotheses and an opinion on everything. I'm deep on financial markets and operations, and I can hold a conversation anywhere. Exquisite coffee and a good chai rank exactly equal for me: Bangalore filter coffee, Blue Tokai, and chai with thepla, which is love. I love to eat, love to sleep (never get to), and work too hard.

What I buildback of house

Back of house. What I build, racked between the tea sacks.

Member of Technical Staff

ASTRM, Bangalore · – now

I work in defence technology at ASTRM, which is building the unmanned integrated battlefield: autonomy, spatial intelligence, command-and-control software, and the GPU infrastructure underneath it all.

Zomato

–

  1. Sales intern
  2. Analyst
  3. Program manager (sales)
  4. Data platform engineer / PM

I started as an intern in my gap year after junior college and went full-time a few months later. It turned out to be much more than tech: sales, managing discounts, managing and protecting data, on-calls, learning infrastructure on the job, and automating everything in sight.

Toolbox

  • Rust
  • Elixir/Phoenix
  • Flutter
  • Go
  • Data engineering
  • Mobile security
  • LLM tooling

Writing6 napkins

Kids, this is the napkin where I argued it out.

  1. Life Is Too Short, Life Is Too LongSubstack
  2. Many Happy ReturnsSubstack
  3. The Closed LoopSubstack
  4. Panopticon: Observability behind the packetblog
  5. World is my Oyster, I am the OysterSubstack
  6. The Homelab I Actually Wantblog

Rules of the house

  1. Evidence first, story after.

    People like to talk from imagination and their biases. Show me data, or even better, two independent data signals that are correlated: Indians' life expectancy went up, affordable healthcare went up, and hospital capex went up.

  2. Strong opinions, loosely held.

    You always have to keep an open mind. New things will keep coming, but that doesn't mean you don't take the decision now. Hence strong opinions, loosely held.

  3. Your data stays yours.

    Privacy. I hate the fact that you're the product.

  4. Done it twice? Automate it.

    Why waste time? A true software engineer will spend a week automating what takes 5 minutes every month (this is satire). Though LLMs have collapsed it.

  5. Rabbit holes are entered on purpose.

    How far can you imagine? Everyone talks about 1st, 2nd and 3rd order effects. A true rabbit hole reveals how far you can think.

  6. Work hard, eat well, sleep eventually.

    I recommend at least 8 hours.

  • No ASI-goes-kaboom talk before the second cutting.
  • No combing hair. No credit. No sleeping here. Look up.

By order, the Management

On the radio

Titles only here. In the café they play on the valve radio.

  • Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 30
  • Sunidhi Chauhan, Beedi Jalaile
  • Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Saanson Ki Mala
  • Taylor Swift, 22
  • Taylor Swift, Bad Blood
  • Mithoon & Shilpa Rao, Wo Ajnabee
  • Rekha Bhardwaj, Raat Ke Dhai Baje
  • Ludovico Einaudi, Experience

On the tellyThe Story So Far

S1 · E1

Bombay

childhood

Kids, every story starts somewhere. Mine starts in Bombay. Vada pav and samosa pav after school, then cartoons on the telly. Years later, I graduated to exotic cafés and dal khichdi.

S1 · E2

The International School

school

My parents wanted me to have a simple, relaxed childhood. Life had other plans: my school switched from SSC to IGCSE, then A levels. Kids, some people come and go. Some help you grow. I met a lot of the second kind.

S2 · E1

The Gap Year

after junior college

After junior college, Covid hit and I got bored. Internships paid for my Starbucks, and I was happy with that. Then Zomato happened.

S2 · E2

The Ladder

Nov 2020 – Oct 2025

I treated it like a game: sales intern, analyst, program manager, data platform engineer. Every level got harder. Managing people, teaching them, getting scolded, keeping intricate systems reliable. Crazy amazing mentors and colleagues. But life is short, kids, and I had to progress.

S2 · E3

The Degree

BSc IT

Somewhere in there, I did a BSc in IT. Because my mother asked me to. Kids, listen to your mother.

S3 · E1

Bangalore

Apr 2026 – now

Then I moved to Bangalore. Member of Technical Staff at ASTRM: wild chances, and amazing, smart people. A chance to upgrade myself and deliver value. Kids, life works in funny ways.

S3 · E2

To be continued

now

And that, kids, is where we are. A mosaic of everyone I met. Stay tuned.

Say hello

Meet me for chai. It will be a fun conversation.

Say when, on X x.com/harshit2283