Navneeth Ramprasad- May 2025 Edition #21

In a world rushing toward convenience, tech, and instant gratification, Navneeth Ramprasad took a different road—one that loops through sweat-soaked table tennis courts, pivots through Silicon Valley, and finally lands at the heart of India’s deeply personal health crisis. For over a decade, he wore the Indian jersey with pride, playing at national and international levels. The discipline and mental agility he learned from sports never left him. They only evolved. His professional journey led him to Netflix and Meta, where he served as a Product Lead, shaping global user experiences and learning how humans engage with content. These weren’t just jobs—they were arenas that refined his understanding of storytelling, attention, and value delivery at scale. But beneath the sheen of tech glamour, a whisper of dissatisfaction lingered. Something was missing.

That something came into sharp focus when he turned his gaze inward, toward his family, toward aging parents, and the slowly ticking time bomb of chronic disease in Indian homes. This wasn’t just about diagnostics or prescriptions. It was about how sons and daughters—especially those spread across cities or oceans—could take care of parents who still walked and smiled, but needed someone watching their sugar levels or blood pressure, not just their smiles on a video call.

So Praan was born. Not out of market research, but out of emotion, culture, and a desperate need. It’s India’s first family-focused health platform aimed at preventing and reversing chronic conditions in elders.

It uses tech, yes—but tech that respects the emotional wiring of Indian families. With personalized care programs that understand Indian food, family habits, and intergenerational gaps, Praan isn’t trying to westernize healthcare—it’s Indianizing it in the best way possible.

Getting here wasn’t easy. Navneeth left behind a stable tech paycheck to bootstrap Praan from scratch. It meant burning savings, cutting corners, and making hard calls daily. But with his wife as his biggest support system and his parents at the center of the brand story, Praan became a true family startup. That emotional investment became their strongest equity.

Resources were limited. Capital wasn’t pouring in. But constraints bred clarity. Every rupee had to show impact. This forced discipline shaped their approach to product, hiring, and marketing. And it paid off. In just a year, they built a 430,000-strong community—a number few venture-backed startups can claim without big budgets.

What made it happen wasn’t luck. It was listening. Listening to Indian parents. To NRIs. To the unspoken fears children carry when they can’t be there in person.

Navneeth believes the real driver behind success isn’t some secret growth hack—it’s people. He bets on attitude over aptitude. He says he’s seen average ideas soar with passionate teams and great ideas flop without soul. At Praan, the hiring rule is simple: bring hunger, we’ll train the rest. Because technology changes fast. But fire, trust, and grit—those are rare finds.

His learnings are etched with both stumbles and leaps. Early in his career, he avoided uncomfortable situations. He now sees those as missed opportunities. The real breakthroughs happened only when he leaned into discomfort—whether it was speaking in public, taking risks without all the answers, or experimenting across fields that didn’t align with a “perfect” plan. “Controlled chaos,” as he puts it, taught him more than stability ever could.

And through all this, one truth keeps ringing in his ears—health cannot be a reaction. It has to be a ritual. Most people ignore their body until it screams. Praan wants to flip that script. “Health is compound interest,” he says. Small choices today, multiplied daily, bring massive gains. Or losses, if ignored.