Nikhil Deshpande

About

I sit between a business problem and the system that solves it. Twenty-one years of it, across sugar refineries, auto aftermarket, marketing, healthcare and now AI.

Anybody can build systems now. The work is knowing which one to build, and whether it actually worked.

I have been CTO three times and a founder or early partner three times. I built a digital transformation unit from inception to 30% of a company's revenue, which led to a founder exit. Most recently I spent two years putting agentic AI into live production at a healthcare platform, and I still write and review code.

The pattern only became obvious in hindsight. A nutritionist does not think in schemas. A mechanic outside Pune cannot read enough English to earn and burn his loyalty points, and he will not tell you that. A farm officer walking the fields for a sugar refinery in Gadchiroli had never used software before it landed on him. None of them asked for a system, all of them got one, and the only thing that ever mattered was whether it turned up in a form they already understood.

Right now I am consulting, writing, and building. I take a small number of engagements a year, usually where AI has to go into production and the cost of a wrong answer is real.

Publications

Kanappaly, Jogitha, Deshapande, Nikhil, Maiti, Sandip, Herlekar, Mihir (2026).

Influencing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Brands Using a New Framework for Sustainability Marketing

Redefining Sustainability, ICZS 2024. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-88376-7_10

Consumer research with 124 participants on why stated intent to buy sustainable brands does not turn into purchases, and a framework for closing the gap.

I am the second author. Springer has my surname as "Deshapande" in the published record; the correction is requested.

Also running

Bobhata बोभाटा. Marathi infotainment. Six hundred thousand followers, still going. The longest-lived thing I own, and where I learned what "in their own language" actually costs.

Vartaforge. An editorial platform for regional Indic dailies and hyperlocal publishers, built on the principle its brand book calls editorial sovereignty: the publisher keeps their own voice.

Kathaforge. A thirteen-agent Marathi fiction and microdrama pipeline, with work published on Pratilipi. The essay about it is the one where every agent approved the chapter and the chapter was dead.

The record