Balaji Balan.

Political-Tech Product Architect · Chennai

One mind,
zero handoffs.

Seven years inside India's highest-stakes campaign rooms. I'm not a software engineer. I'm the person who knows exactly what a war room needs, writes the product logic down precisely, and directs AI tools until it runs.

See the products Watch the films
Years in campaign rooms
7
Products with videos
5
Election films
8
Documented projects
58

Rooms I've worked in

  • I-PACPolitical intelligence & media
  • Buzz & ChatterAn MP's personal comms team
  • Populus Empowerment NetworkLead Analyst, Labs

01How I build

I don't write the code.
I decide what it must do.

AI coding tools write the implementation. I own the brief, the rules, the testing and the outcome. A developer who builds from my specification starts from a decided product, not a blank page.

  1. 01

    The use case, in the room's own words

    Who sits in the war room, what they need at 7 am, and what a bad day looks like. Every tool starts from a real operating need I've lived, not a feature list.

  2. 02

    The rules the code must obey

    A group is never auto-replied to unless tagged. An unread comment is never counted as neutral. A person approves anything that goes out. Rules like these are the product.

  3. 03

    What “correct” looks like

    Written reading guides and hand-labelled Tamil and Thanglish examples, sarcasm included, so a build can be tested against reality instead of argued about.

02Products

Five tools, architected
end to end.

Each one began as a problem I watched a campaign team struggle with. Scroll through all five in order, or jump to one. Each has a one-minute product video.

Product video · 1:00

Athena OS

Core running

Reads every comment on a leader's posts in Tamil, Tanglish and English, and tells the team what people actually mean, sarcasm included.

What it does

  • Collects Instagram, X, Facebook, YouTube and news around the clock
  • Reads each comment on its own: support, criticism, mockery, request or spam
  • Writes a one-page morning brief by 7 am, every point tied to counted evidence
  • Zooms into a constituency, an event or an Assembly sitting

Rules I wrote into it

Unread is never counted as neutral. Commenter names are hidden by a one-way code. It never posts on its own: a person approves.

Honest status

Core runs daily on a live workspace; newer modules are partial. AI readings are checked on small samples so far, and collection uses signed-in accounts, not official platform access.

72
Screens
~154
Database tables
310
Automated tests

Node.jsExpressSQLiteLocal LLMGemini

Product video · 1:00

Pulse

Prototype

Every headline asks one question: good or bad for us? Pulse answers it by issue, district and leader.

What it does

  • Reads seven public Tamil and English news feeds every 60 seconds
  • Merges duplicate headlines into one story, tagged by party, leader, issue and district
  • Tracks six live issues over time, each with a permanent ID
  • District map, leader pages, and an analyst chat that answers only from evidence on screen

Rules I wrote into it

Coverage sentiment is never labelled as bias. Missing numbers stay blank, never estimated. The analyst works with no AI key at all.

Honest status

Prototype stage. The classifier is a transparent Tamil and English word list, not a trained model, and its accuracy is not yet measured.

13
Screens
7
Live news feeds
6
Tracked issues

Next.jsReactTailwindRechartsd3-geo

Product video · 1:00

Social Data Exporter

Core proven

Open any page, press collect. Posts and comments become a spreadsheet, and the speech inside reels becomes text, on your own PC.

What it does

  • Instagram and YouTube posts, comments, hashtags and profiles to CSV or JSON, with Tamil intact
  • Speech to text in Tamil, Hindi, English, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, run locally, nothing uploaded
  • A fast language-detect mode to sort hundreds of reel links before anyone watches
  • Scheduled watching, with alerts to a team chat

Rules I wrote into it

Runs inside the operator's own signed-in browser and never asks for a password. No captcha solving, no account rotation. Low-confidence language results are flagged, never hidden.

Honest status

Collection and transcription are proven on real videos. The job queue and sentiment layer are still prototype, and use is subject to each platform's terms and rate limits.

22
Tabs, two platforms
6
Speech languages
₹0
Per-use cost to transcribe

Chrome MV3Node.jsPythonLocal speech model

Product video · 1:00

WhatsBusiness

Core working

Every party office drowns in WhatsApp. This turns one linked number into a searchable, trackable, answerable desk that runs on one office PC.

What it does

  • Scan a QR once and every chat and group is saved and searchable
  • Tracks the words that matter, with mood in Tamil, English and Thanglish, offline and with no AI cost
  • Instant replies by rule, with working hours and cooldowns
  • AI drafts the reply, a person approves and sends, and everything exports to Excel

Rules I wrote into it

In groups it replies only when tagged or quoted, enforced on the server. AI drafts never send themselves. Campaign sends re-check opt-in at send time.

Honest status

Built on an open-source WhatsApp gateway, with the business, listening, AI and outreach layers added by me. AI features depend on a reliable provider, and the linked-device method is unofficial, so numbers can be restricted.

33
Backend modules
21
Screens
247
Test files

NestJSReactSQLiteLocal LLM

Product video · 1:00

TN 2026 Election Intelligence

Private dashboard

Every seat of a state election across five elections, on one private screen.

What it does

  • Interactive state map, with any two layers shown side by side
  • Constituency explorer: filter, sort and export exactly the rows you need
  • Open any seat for its result, history, urban and rural share, and vote transfer between elections
  • Voter-roll deletions mapped against every result

The problem

Results are public but scattered. Comparing a seat across elections, or setting turnout against voter-roll changes, means days inside spreadsheets.

Honest status

A private dashboard, not a public product. A live walk-through is available on request.

234
Constituencies
5
Elections compared
CSV
Export on every table

Interactive mapsConstituency explorerCSV export

03Films

Concept, cut
and craft.

Eight films from the 2026 election cycle. The same person who builds the tools also conceives and finishes the creative, so an idea reaches the audience without a handoff. Landscape films play wide, reels play tall.

Cover: Enna Achu? Andha 48 Hours
Enna Achu? Andha 48 HoursReel · 9:16 · 1:45
Cover: Raasathi, Vidiyal Vandhuruche
ராசாத்தி… விடியல் வந்துருச்சேFilm · 16:9 · 2:00
Cover: Ezhundhu Vaa Pudhumai Penne
எழுந்து வா புதுமை பெண்ணேFilm · 16:9 · 1:46
Cover: Chip Vachu Oru Dream
Chip Vachu Oru Dream!Reel · 9:16 · 1:03
Cover: Your Wait Is Over
Your Wait Is OverReel · 9:16 · 1:00
Cover: Kavala Marandhu Nee Parakka
கவல மறந்து நீ பறக்கFilm · 16:9 · 1:58
Cover: Kanavugal Meippadum
கனவுகள் மெய்ப்படும்Film · 16:9 · 1:46
Cover: Yaarupa Adhu? Santa Thaathaava?
யாருப்பா அது? Santa தாத்தாவா?Reel · 9:16 · 2:04

04Selected work

Beyond the tools.

Four engagements that show the range: intelligence, forensics, organisation building and public sector work. Client identities are withheld throughout. All 58 projects →

Booth-level winnability grid

Intelligence

Booth-level election intelligence

Extracted polling-station detail locked inside official Form 20 records across a large set of Assembly Constituencies, then built the swing analysis and drill-down behind a booth-level winnability tool.

Booth level granularity, from primary records

Organic curve overtaken by a coordinated one

Forensics

Crisis narrative forensics

After a mass casualty incident at a political event, reconstructed the first twenty-four hours of public comment, separating grief, accountability and conspiracy, and surfaced coordinated content.

24h reconstructed window, now a standing template

Multi-channel organisation tree

Media operations

Multi-channel media organisation

Took a media operation dependent on external agencies and built it into a large in-house, multi-channel organisation with standardised production and hiring pipelines.

70+ raw talents mentored into creators in a year

Central governance hub with departmental spokes

Government

Public sector communications

Proposals and pitch decks for StartupTN, the Department of Information and Public Relations and the Greater Chennai Corporation, plus a governance communication framework for a state fellowship programme.

3 state departments and agencies

05Capabilities

Four disciplines,
one point of accountability.

Each is common on its own. The intersection is what's rare: strategic depth, tool-building range, creative craft and a working public sector register, in a single hire.

Intelligence & strategy

  • Electoral and market intelligence from primary records
  • Narrative forensics and crisis communications
  • Digital campaign strategy and readiness frameworks
  • Quota-controlled field and survey operations

Product & applied AI

  • Product architecture, specification and testing
  • Self-hosted AI, retrieval and agent workflows
  • Data acquisition and monitoring pipelines
  • Dashboards and decision-support tools

Creative & media

  • Editing, motion graphics and character animation
  • AI-native video, voice, music and image direction
  • Tamil, English and Thanglish writing and prompting
  • Multi-camera and drone live broadcast

Organisation & public sector

  • Media organisation design, SOPs and hiring
  • Organic growth and AI-assisted paid performance
  • Government proposals and scheme communication
  • International and diaspora communications

Build

NestJSTypeScriptFastAPIPythonReactNext.jsSQLite

AI & automation

ClaudeGeminiGPTDeepSeekOllamaDifyn8n

Create

Premiere ProAfter EffectsKlingVeoRunwayElevenLabsSunoMidjourneyComfyUI

  1. 01Creative production
  2. 02AI-assisted media
  3. 03Organisational systems
  4. 04Strategic analytics
  5. 05Product architecture

Each phase absorbed a new discipline in roughly twelve to eighteen months, without formal training in any of them.

06About & experience

Seven years,
three rooms.

I'm Balaji Balan, a political strategist and political-tech product architect based in Chennai. My work runs from booth-level intelligence and crisis communications to the software and films a campaign runs on.

I did not come from computer science, and I don't claim to write the code. I define the problem, the product logic, the rules and the quality bar, then direct AI coding tools through implementation, testing and iteration. I also edit in Premiere Pro and After Effects and run a complete AI content stack, so an idea can travel from research finding to finished film or working tool without a single handoff.

  1. Aug 2022 – present

    Lead Analyst, Centre of Excellence ("Labs")

    Populus Empowerment Network (PEN), Chennai

    • Proposed a company-wide digital strategy to the chief executive; it created the Labs innovation unit, which I lead.
    • Scaled the media arm from agency dependency into a large in-house, multi-channel organisation.
    • Built the analytical layer: booth-level intelligence, constituency scoring models and social listening.
    • Specified and delivered the tools the strategy depends on, through AI-assisted building.
    • Delivered strategy and communications work to StartupTN, DIPR and the Greater Chennai Corporation.

  2. May 2021 – Aug 2022

    Social Media Analyst, "Buzz & Chatter"

    Personal communications team of a sitting Member of Parliament

    • Owned digital presence across a network of affiliated pages during active news cycles.
    • Built crisis response playbooks, including same-day video turnaround under public scrutiny.
    • Promoted twice within the role.

  3. Jun 2019 – May 2021

    Political Intelligence & Media Associate

    I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee)

    • Selected into a small final cohort from a much larger incoming intern class.
    • Rotated through Calling Operations, Political Intelligence and Media.
    • Supported on-ground digital and intelligence work for a winning state Assembly campaign.

  4. 2015 – 2019

    B.E. Electrical & Electronics Engineering

    Dhirajlal Gandhi College of Technology, Salem · Grade A

07Work with me

Let's talk.

The fastest way to evaluate fit is a short diagnostic. Give me a real problem in your digital, AI or intelligence function, and I'll return an evidence-based assessment and a prioritised roadmap.

[email protected] LinkedIn ↗ +91 63812 52123

Ways to work together

  • Senior or lead hireSet digital and AI strategy, then direct the first working version.
  • Fractional AI leadRoadmap, tooling decisions and hands-on direction of critical builds.
  • Campaign & crisisDigital strategy, intelligence systems and narrative monitoring.
  • Government advisoryProposals, scheme communication and citizen engagement design.
  • End-to-end buildA dashboard, platform or pipeline: specified, built, tested, handed over.
  • Audit sprintA short audit of digital operations and AI readiness, with a roadmap.