About Khara Index

Why it is called Khara

खरा (khara) means pure and genuine in Hindi, as in khara sona, pure gold, and khari baat, the plain truth. Gold is graded in karats, so we grade apps the same way: every app starts at 24 karat, and each trick we confirm lowers its grade.

Who runs it

Khara Index was founded in November 2026 by Ryan Sethi. Ryan is 17, a builder and entrepreneur from India, and an Emergent Ventures India grantee (Mercatus Center at George Mason University). He conceives products and thinks through the systems behind them: he specifies how things should work, leads collaborators and directs the build, often through AI agents.

At Khara Index, Ryan designs the method, chooses the apps, confirms every finding against the evidence and writes to every company before it is named. AI tools help with the checking and the writing, and a person makes every final call.

Before Khara Index, his work included Checkoutify, UPI self checkout and the merchant systems behind it; Privilege, on product psychology and experience; Memento, a game design experiment with Arnav Srivastava; Cyanoplastic, a materials experiment with a student team; and MoneyInvariant, research on financial correctness, now paused. His full body of work is at ryansethi.com.

How we stay independent

• No company we might rate pays us, sponsors us or advertises with us.
• We are funded by the founder, grants and, later, reader donations.
• We are not affiliated with the Government of India or any regulator.
• Every company gets 5 days to reply before it is named, and we publish its reply in full.
• If we get something wrong, we correct it in public, with the date.

The Emergent Ventures grant supports Ryan as an individual. It is not an endorsement of Khara Index or of any finding.

Get in touch

Tips, corrections and company replies: hello@kharaindex.in. Journalists: see the press page.