Nitin
Khanna

Founder, BarterX Tech

Code, products, and the messy bits in between.
Software for a more thoughtful internet.

Nitin Khanna

Writing

Thoughts on software, products, and engineering craft.

Personal·Mar 13, 2026

26: A Small Birthday Note

A personal checkpoint at 26: taking stock of growth, ambition, discipline, and the kind of year I want to build next.

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AI·Feb 25, 2026

What My Agents Can't Do Is the Point

The instinct with AI is always to give it more access, more capability, fewer guardrails. But the best results come from going the other way. Not dumber models — sharper roles.

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Fintech·Feb 20, 2026

India Just Got Its Own Financial Brain — And It Changes Everything About UPI

NPCI launched FiMI at the India AI Impact Summit — a domain-specific AI model for India's payments ecosystem. They published the recipe but kept the model. Here's why that's the most strategic move in Indian fintech.

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Fintech·Aug 20, 2025

Why India's Affluent Are Underinsured Against Job Loss

1 in 4 Indians can't last a month without income, and 40% of income goes to EMIs. Why aren't we building insurance products for the way people actually live?

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Field Notes

Notes on ideas, products, and concepts I keep returning to.

Research·Mar 30, 2026

The Insurance Problem in Utility App Design

The insurance problem shows up in products people install for reassurance, not routine. Backup tools, VPNs, password managers, and other utility apps are supposed to stay quiet until something breaks, which means the usual obsession with engagement can actually make the product worse. I get into why these products need trust more than attention, and what good design looks like when the most important moment is rare, stressful, and hard to predict.

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Research·Mar 29, 2026

The Permanent Underclass: Origins, Theory, and Modern Echoes

The idea of a "permanent underclass" has been around since the 1960s, but it keeps showing up in conversations I didn't expect. The core argument: some people aren't temporarily poor, they're structurally stuck. Bad schools feed into bad jobs feed into bad neighborhoods, and the loop doesn't break on its own. This piece traces where the concept came from, how it's been debated across economics and sociology, and what changes when you layer tech and capital concentration on top of it.

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Research·Mar 28, 2026

The Hypertail: Why the Future of Software is Personal, Niche, and Built by Everyone

The long tail suggests we're not stuck with a handful of giant products forever. The next wave might be smaller tools: narrow use cases, tight communities, sometimes even one person. I wrote about what that implies, and whether depth can matter as much as scale.

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Profile

I founded BarterX Tech. We make software for a more thoughtful internet: useful, intelligent, written with care. Before that, I spent 7+ years shipping fintech, commerce, and AI products. I've scaled multiple apps from zero to launch into audiences in the millions — including building mobile from scratch at a YC-backed startup. I write code, think about products, and question what I'm doing in between. When I'm not building, I'm usually at a poker table, shitposting on X, or skateboarding badly.

Building

BarterX Tech Private Limited

Useful, intelligent software, written with care — for a more thoughtful internet.

The internet isn't short on capability. It's short on taste. BarterX works the other way.

Every product clears the same four-part test: Beauty, Utility, Authorship, Endurance. Not one category. Different problems, same bar.

barterx.tech

Let's Talk

Whether it's about BarterX, building software, open source, or just good conversation.

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