Who is behind BazaarBuddy
BazaarBuddy was started by Chitra Phatak, who runs it from San Francisco. She spent her career in strategic partnerships and cloud services, most recently at Amazon Web Services.
It started with a conversation in Pune
In 2026 she was in Pune after her mother's death, and met an old friend she hadn't seen in nearly thirty years — he runs his family's logistics business. They talked about what moves between India and everywhere else, and what doesn't. On the flight home she started sketching the thing that became this.
Sixty-four days later BazaarBuddy was live. She built the whole of it herself — the site, the company, the payments, the customs research — with no team, no funding, and about $83 of spend.
Why Pune and Mumbai, specifically
Pune is not a market-entry decision. She lived there until she graduated as an engineer. The shops are ones she grew up walking into, and the friend whose conversation started all of this comes from that same life.
She has gone back a couple of times a year ever since, and more often since Covid, to be with her ageing parents. The city she buys in is one she has kept up with, not one she remembers.
Plenty of services will forward a parcel from anywhere in India. Very few have someone who knows which lane, which counter, and which of two shops with almost the same name is the one you actually meant. That is the whole reason we can say somebody goes to the shop.
You are talking to her
It's still early. If you place an order right now, the person on the other end of the chat is Chitra — not a support queue, and not a bot. That is a temporary state of affairs and we are not pretending otherwise, but while it lasts it is probably the most honest thing on this website.
In her own words
- 64 days and $83 — how BazaarBuddy went from that conversation to a live service, and what she got wrong along the way.
- Leaving Amazon, losing parents, a new chapter — the year that led up to it.
- Chitra on LinkedIn — her profile, if you want to see who you are dealing with, or say hello.