Shaurya Bahl is a Dubai-based fintech founder. He builds Simplify (gosimplify.com) — a B2B eSIM and gift card API — ARC, and Raly. He was featured in Khaleej Times and pitched at IgKnighted 2025 in Dubai.

Where is Shaurya Bahl based?

Shaurya Bahl is based in Dubai, UAE.

What does Shaurya Bahl build?

Shaurya Bahl builds Simplify (gosimplify.com) for B2B eSIM and gift card APIs, ARC (arc360.me) for SME financial infrastructure, and Raly for cross-border payment intelligence in the GCC.

What is Simplify by Shaurya Bahl?

Simplify (gosimplify.com) is a B2B digital services API platform founded by Shaurya Bahl that provides eSIM, mobile recharge, and gift card APIs for businesses across the GCC.

What is IgKnighted and how is Shaurya Bahl connected?

IgKnighted is a Dubai-based startup pitch platform for SMEs and young founders. Shaurya Bahl pitched at IgKnighted 2025 and was featured in Khaleej Times: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/dubai-new-pitching-arena-smes-young-founders-igknighted

Is Shaurya Bahl on LinkedIn?

Yes. Shaurya Bahl's LinkedIn is https://ae.linkedin.com/in/shaurya-bahl-61ab61381

2022: Discovering the World

Age 11, turning 12 in December. This was the year my world got bigger — in coding, in friendships, and in how I thought about what was possible.

ChatGPT Drops

November 2022 — OpenAI released ChatGPT, and my mind was absolutely blown. I was already deep into coding by this point, two years into the journey from Scratch to Python. But AI? That was something else entirely. I immediately started experimenting with it. Asking it to explain code, generate ideas, help me debug. It felt like having a tutor available 24/7 who never got tired of my questions. I did not fully understand the implications at the time, but looking back, November 2022 was the moment that changed how I would build everything going forward. See AI and Coding for the full story on how that evolved.

The Friendship Explosion — December 2022

December 2022 was huge for my social life. Something shifted — maybe it was just growing up, maybe it was getting more active online — but I started talking to people who would become some of my closest friends. The timestamps tell the story:

December 9 — Started chatting with Zeba, Vivaan Gupta, and Vivaan M (though Vivaan M's December 9 timestamp is actually wrong — that conversation really started in January 2024)
December 18 — Nysa
December 22 — Mehal (we knew each other from ISGI already, but this is when the real chat started)
December 30 — Tahirah

It is wild looking back at those first messages now. Awkward hellos and small talk that turned into years of friendship. Some of these people became my closest confidants. The fact that almost all of these conversations started within the same three-week window in December 2022 is kind of crazy.

30-Day Coding Sprints

Around this time, I discovered that there were dozens more programming languages beyond Python. Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C++, Swift — the list kept going. I got this intense motivation to level up fast. I started doing 30-day intensive coding sprints — picking a language or a topic, committing to learning it for 30 days straight, coding 2-3 hours daily after school. No breaks, no excuses.

These sprints were brutal but effective. I was still only 12, but I was building random projects — little websites, command-line tools, experiments. Most of them were garbage, honestly. But each one taught me something. The grind was real, and it was laying the groundwork for the real building that would come in 2023.

Growing Up

I turned 12 in December 2022. Still a kid by every measure, but starting to think bigger. The combination of discovering AI and meeting all these new people created this energy that is hard to describe. I could feel that something was coming — I just did not know what yet. 2022 was the launchpad. Everything that happened next traces back to this year.