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Founder & Product Lead @ AI Kaptan

I turn ideas into AI products people actually use.

Founder & Product Lead at AI Kaptan. I take work from a blank repo to real users — growth infrastructure spanning email, LinkedIn, and social, shipped 0→1. If you need someone who ships, that's the whole job.

Shipped & live2020 → Now
4
Products shipped 0→1
6K
Emails / day capacity
15K+
AI tools indexed
5K+
Workflows open-sourced
700+Students & builders mentored
1:1, hands-on — Project Mart
AI KaptanEmaReach AISocial Kaptann8n Library

0 → launch, every time

About

From engineer to product founder

Ritik Makhija
Bangalore, IN2020 → Now

I started as a full-stack developer and transitioned into product — that technical background shapes how I make product decisions under startup constraints, understanding feasibility, timelines, and hidden risk.

Today I'm the Founder & Product Lead at AI Kaptan— an AI-native product studio building growth infrastructure for founders, marketers, and sales teams. Under AI Kaptan sit EmaReach AI and Social Kaptan, forming one connected growth system spanning email, LinkedIn, and social. I build in public and believe in removing friction over adding features.

Product StrategyMarketing StrategyWeb DevelopmentLeadershipNegotiation0→1 Development
Experience

A timeline of building

Three chapters, one throughline: shipping products end-to-end.

Founder & Product Lead

AI Kaptan · Full-time

Nov 2025 — Present · 9 mos

Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India · On-site

Building a multi-channel outreach and social automation platform from 0→1. AI Kaptan is the parent company — an AI-native product studio building growth infrastructure for founders, marketers, and sales teams. Under AI Kaptan sit two flagship products: EmaReach AI (cold email infrastructure and outreach automation) and Social Kaptan (AI-powered social media management), together forming one connected growth system spanning email, LinkedIn, and social.

  • Full product lifecycle — discovery, roadmapping, sprint execution, QA, and go-to-market
  • Built and launched AI Kaptan (aikaptan.com) — an AI tools directory with 15,000+ tools, searchable and filterable by use case, category, pricing, rating, and provider
  • Built and launched EmaReach AI — cold outreach infrastructure under AI Kaptan (30 sending domains, 150 mailboxes, 6,000 emails/day capacity)
  • Built and launched Social Kaptan — AI-powered social media management platform under AI Kaptan for content creation, scheduling, and multi-account management
  • Designed multi-channel outreach system: LinkedIn content → engagement → connection → DM → email (warm pipeline model)
  • Led go-to-market strategy including positioning, early user acquisition, and feedback loops
  • Managing cross-functional execution across product, engineering, and growth
Product Strategy0→1 Product DevelopmentProduct DiscoveryRoadmappingUser ResearchGo-to-Market StrategyGrowth ExperimentsAI/LLM IntegrationsProduct AnalyticsFigmaCursor AIAWSAgile/ScrumGitHub

Software Developer and Mentor

Project Mart (Freelance)

Oct 2023 — Present

Remote

  • Helped 700+ Students and builders with software development, AI solutions, technical consulting, problem-solving, and one-on-one mentoring across web development, automation, and software engineering.
  • Built AI-powered document processing workflows in Python (~80–90% accuracy).
  • Developed full-stack web apps, e-commerce stores, and payment gateway integrations.
  • Implemented technical SEO, keyword research, and topical authority strategies.
PythonReactNode.jsREST APIsLLM IntegrationsAutomation
Verified proof721students registered
Project Mart · Admin dashboard
Project Mart admin dashboard showing 716 active registrations out of 721 total
Live from the Project Mart admin panel — 716 active registrations, 721 total. Every 1:1 mentee, tracked in one place.

Full-Stack Developer

Tech Arts Pvt Ltd (Freelance)

Mar 2022 — Aug 2022

London, UK (Remote)

  • Built full-stack apps, dApps, and Discord bots.
  • Created Ethereum smart contracts (Solidity, EVM, web3.js).
  • Automated tasks via Python/Node.js bots.
HTMLCSSJavaScriptReactNode.jsSolidityPython
Selected Work

What I've built

A mix of shipped products, infrastructure, and open source.

AI Kaptan preview

AI Kaptan

AI-native product studio and parent company — plus a directory of 15,000+ AI tools (aikaptan.com), searchable by use case, category, pricing, rating, and provider.

Product StudioDirectoryAI Tools
EmaReach AI preview

EmaReach AI

Cold email + outreach infrastructure under AI Kaptan — 30 sending domains, 150 mailboxes, and 6,000 emails/day capacity.

OutreachInfrastructureAI
Social Kaptan preview

Social Kaptan

AI-powered social media management under AI Kaptan — content creation, scheduling, and multi-account management.

AISocial Automation
n8n Automation Template Library preview

n8n Automation Template Library

Open-source, searchable library of 5,000+ production-ready n8n workflows across AI, CRM, finance, e-commerce, marketing, and RAG use cases. Featured on GitHub + LinkedIn (1,000+ impressions).

Workflow AutomationDeveloper Tooling
Toolkit

Skills & tools

The stack I reach for when going from idea to shipped. Filter by category.

Product
05
NotionJiraLinearSlackConfluence
Engineering
09
ReactNext.jsTypeScriptNode.jsPythonPostgreSQLDockerGitGitHub
AI
07
OpenAIClaudeCursorPerplexityHugging FaceLangChainGemini
Automation
05
n8nZapierMakeAirtableRetool
Cloud & DevOps
06
AWSVercelCloudflareTerraformKubernetesGitHub Actions
Growth & SEO
06
Google AnalyticsSearch ConsoleAhrefsSemrushGoogle AdsMailchimp
Learning

Education & certifications

Education

Master of Computer Applications (MCA), AI/ML

Amity University Online

Jan 2024 — Jan 2026

Focus: Data Science, Automation

Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA)

Presidency College, Bangalore

Sep 2020 — Aug 2023

Focus: Data Structures, SQL

Certifications

  • Project Management Assessment

    LearnTube.ai · Jun 2026

  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

    Amazon Web Services

  • Be A DevOps Pro

    iNeuron.ai — Prometheus, Grafana · Jan 2023

  • +28 total certifications
Recognition

Honors & awards

🏆

1st Prize · Hackathon

Jain University Bangalore · Feb 2023

Built a blockchain chatbot explaining blockchain principles in 24 hours.

🥈

2nd Place · Spider Web Design

St. Anne's College · Aug 2022

Built a fully functional, visually striking website using HTML/CSS/JS.

Community

Leadership

President, TECHNOZIA

Presidency College · Aug 2022 — Jul 2023

Managed HR, planned events, led marketing strategy, delegated team tasks.

Core Team, TECHNOZIA

Presidency College · Sep 2021 — Aug 2022

Oversaw timing and coordination of events.

Contact

Let's build something together

Open to conversations about product, AI automation, or collaboration.