Darpan Pathak

I’m Darpan. I’m the solo founder of Portrai, and I’m building it in public from India. Portrai is what you’d call early-stage — small enough that I still write most of the code and reply to most of the emails myself, focused enough that the product has a real point of view.

I care about three things, in this order: how the product feels, how the product looks, and how the product turns a small win — a card view, a saved contact, a first QR scan — into a moment worth coming back for. Most of the work I do day-to-day is spent on those three.

You can read how I’d use the product on day one in my getting started post. If you want to see what a finished card looks like, mine lives at portrai.in/card/darpanpathak.

Every paper card I’ve handed out in my life is, statistically, in a drawer or a bin. The contact that mattered didn’t get saved. The link I wanted them to click never got clicked. And the second I gave the card away, I lost any way to update it, track it, or learn from it.

That felt fixable. A digital card lives at a permanent URL, opens in a tap, saves to a phone in another tap, and tells you afterward whether your follow-up actually landed. No app. No login on the recipient’s side. Just a link or a QR.

The bet I’m making with Portrai is that the difference between “a tool I tried once” and “a tool I use weekly” is craft. The card needs to feel good to look at, the dashboard needs to be quick to edit, and small moments — copying a link, picking a color, scanning your first QR — need to feel like wins rather than chores. That’s what I work on.