About
I’m Abhinav Lal — though most people just know me as Lal. I’m an engineer from Bangalore, India. In 2008 I co-founded Practo, a platform that helps millions of people find doctors, book appointments, consult online, and manage their health — and helps healthcare providers run their practices.
Nearly two decades of building the same product teaches you things no book does: that reliability is earned one operational hour at a time, that most complexity comes from coding for a future that never arrives, and that simple beats clever almost every time. A lot of my writing here is me trying to pin those lessons down.
What I care about
Simple software. Small teams that ship. Products that respect their users’ time. Healthcare that works for the next billion people coming online. And lately, what AI tooling means for how we build all of the above.
Off hours
I’m a science fiction and fantasy reader, a podcast addict, and a sucker for accidental internet discoveries — I still miss StumbleUpon.
Elsewhere
- GitHub — code and experiments
- Twitter / X — shorter thoughts
- Instagram — pictures
- me@abhinavlal.in — say hello
