👋 Hi, I am Shalki

Welcome to my page!

👩🏻‍⚖️ About Me

I'm a software engineer who spent the first half of my career in business development and startups and I've never wanted to pick a side. From India 🇮🇳, based in the Netherlands 🇳🇱.

I've always been drawn to the space where people, business and tech collide — partnerships, customer conversations, code, all of it. Growing up moving between cities taught me to read people fast, and that's stuck with me ever since.

🌱 I also have a passion for Environment and Sustainability, which led me to start refill.life sometime back.

🇳🇱 As one of my personal goals, I'm proud to have reached decent conversational fluency in Dutch (B2 level, NT2 exams) in just a year and a half — and I'm not stopping there. Going all in for C1 by the end of the year!

💬 Ask me about life in the Netherlands or working across tech and commercial. Right now I'm deep in building AI tools for people learning Dutch — that one I'll talk about for hours.

& more on GitHub


🙋🏻‍♀️ Volunteering

Sharing my amazing experience volunteering at two global tech conferences this year in Amsterdam. At JS Nation and React Summit events, I got the chance to dive deep into the world of tech, meet fellow developers from different parts of the world, get introduced to the supportive tech community and meet the instructors I learnt from in person. This unique experience propelled me to try my hand at developing projects using JavaScript, React and React Native. Happy to help anyone looking to bag a Scholarship or volunteer and give back to the community!

Read my entire volunteering and tech conferences experience in my blog here → 6 key learnings from attending my first tech conference!

Solo portrait on Day 1, JSNation Amsterdam; Jun 1st 2023 GitNation Crew on stage on Day 2, React Summit Amsterdam; Jun 2nd 2023 From learning from Wes Bos to meeting in person. JS Nation, Amsterdam Chatting with Erick Wendel at the Speaker’s dinner during JSNation

☀️ Life in NL

Growing up in India, I got unique opportunities to live in different parts of the country. This taught me to learn to adapt to a new environment quickly, make new friends, and learn the local culture. I did my Bachelor's in Computer Science with Management, which honed me with both technical and managerial skills. Post-university, I decided to be a part of the upcoming startup culture in India, utilising my education at a fast-growing e-commerce startup.

Shortly, through my work and during COVID lockdowns, I observed the insane amount of single-use plastic waste consumption and decided to do something about it. I brought my idea to life through refill.life, offering refillable personal care liquids to the neighbourhoods. But sadly, I had to shut it down due to subsequent lockdowns and infection waves. Learn more about the project through this video.

I decided to continue my interest in Sustainability and joined Utrecht University. I learnt a lot about Energy and Climate Action but felt the program to be less practical. I decided to pause my studies and pick up programming languages where I had left them. I often think about interesting user solutions and try different productivity apps that I enjoy in my day-to-day life. I started tech projects to bring some of those ideas to life. Since I enjoyed my move to the Netherlands, I decided to stay, work here, make new colleagues and build meaningful apps that help people.

Truly got accustomed to the Dutch culture. Decided to stay here and work in the Netherlands! Starting MSc at Utrecht University 2022. Loved my time there, but course not so much.

✨ My Passion

When I'm not immersed in coding or strategising for startups, I unleash my creativity. Dancing has always held a special place in my heart, allowing me to embrace and express my artistic side fully. I also enjoy teaching different art forms to my near and dear ones. Besides this, I love to paint, photograph, and bike. I challenged myself to learn Dutch, and I smashed it — went from A2 to B2 (NT2 exams) in just a year and a half. Now chasing C1 next!

Truly got accustomed to the Dutch culture. Decided to stay here and work in the Netherlands! Starting MSc at Utrecht University 2022. Loved my time there, but course not so much.

📚 Education

MSc Sustainable Development -  Utrecht University, Netherlands | Sep’ 22 – May ’23

Integrated Masters in Engineering and Management - New Delhi, India | Aug ’14–May ’19


✍🏻 Blogs

  1. Key learnings from attending my first tech conference

  2. Snap: A Simple Dutch Learning Tool Built Around AI


📩 Let’s Connect

Hi there! You can drop a message at [email protected]


LinkedIn  |  Github  |  Email  |  Twitter  |  Medium