She was in pain, and I had nothing real to give her

Designing her

Every screen started as a pencil sketch before it became a pixel. Mood check-ins, back-pain tips, a calendar that counted down instead of just marking dates, all worked out on paper first. Shruti built the icon in Figma layer by layer.

The icon wasn’t one decision. It was three ideas layered until they became one mark: a drop, the body it comes from, the woman living it, and finally, a friend drawn simply enough to recognise at a glance.

Building it

A whiteboard split into “Need to Done” and “Completed,” filled with sticky notes that read Track Flow, Period Cycle Flow, PCOD Level Flow, Emergency Assistance Flow. Each one got built, tested, and moved across the board. What had been a notebook page became a working app, with a calendar, symptom logging, and predictions that were actually right.

What the flows actually look like

Behind every screen is a flow someone had to design on paper before it was code: what happens when she taps Track, what happens when she taps the emergency button at 2am with no one around. Four of those flows, mapped the way the team actually mapped them.

The world notices

Uttar Pradesh’s first and only iOS Development Centre, powered by Apple and Infosys, opened its doors, and Team Sakhi stood at the booth with the app open on screen for anyone who walked past. Weeks later, seven Apple delegates, including Greg Joswiak, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, heard the same pitch.