Ramya Chinnadurai 🚀

I tried to let @heyula_ai pay for an experience on its own. It got all the way to the payment page and died there 😅 Ula is our AI travel companion, it plans and books family trips. The planning part works. The booking part works, up to the moment money has to move. Then it needs a human. We tried a lot of routes over the last few weeks: 1. Plain cards. A card checkout expects a person. The OTP goes to your phone, not to the agent, and the bank's fraud checks are trained on human sessions. 2. Visa agent tokens. Live in the US and Europe, rolling out to Asia Pacific through partner banks. No bank in the market where we're launching first yet. 3. Mastercard agent tokens. There was one authenticated demo with local banks earlier this year, in a controlled setup. Nothing a small team can integrate today. 4. Some other payment APIs we looked at don't support agents at all yet. So the rails are too early for where we launch first. Agent payments on the local payment rails are being worked on, but still waiting on approval as far as I know. Here is how Ula works now: 1. Ula plans the trip and fills every form, [hotel, train, the kids' details], all of it. 2. It stops right before payment and shows the exact price. 3. You tap approve on your phone and pay with your usual method. 4. Ula confirms the booking and adds it to the itinerary. Every single payment gets one tap from a human. Honestly this started as plan B. Now I think it's the right default for family trips anyway, you want to see the final price before anyone pays for a hotel.. I'm watching the card networks and the local agent payment work closely. The day a bank here supports agent wallets with a limit per merchant, Ula will use them.

We applied to YC (@ycombinator) yesterday.. and a16z (@speedrun).. and PearX for @heyula_ai 😅 Honest confession.. I didn't write a single answer. My cofounders did all of it while I was busy building. Hey Ula is the AI travel companion we're building for families. It plans the trip, books it, and waits for your yes before it pays. A few weeks ago Ula booked its first real ticket, a temple visit for my own family. It logged in, found the open slots, filled the form from the details it had saved, showed me the exact price and waited. Then the ticket just showed up in our trip documents. That's the thing they had to explain in a few hundred words. I've rewritten "what does Ula do" so many times myself, so I know how hard that is! Now we wait. Speedrun says 4 to 6 weeks. Whatever the answer, we keep building. Families still plan trips with multiple tabs open and that's what we want to fix. Fingers crossed 🤞

How secure is @heyula_ai vault? We keep on getting this question. So thought to share a few things on how we built the vault.. An agent that books trips needs passports and IDs. That scared me too, because it's my own family's documents first. So the rule we started with: the agent can use your IDs, but it can never read them. 1. Lock before save. IDs get locked on your own phone before they're stored anywhere. 2. Only the user holds the key. It unlocks with your Face ID, fingerprint or phone PIN. Not even Ula can open it. 3. Nothing unlocks without a yes. The vault stays shut until you approve that booking. 4. Release only what's needed. Booking your dad's ticket? Only his ID comes out, the rest stay locked. 5. Copies expire. That one ID goes into the form for 15 minutes, then the copy is deleted. 6. Money needs its own tap. Ula shows the exact price and waits for you to approve. Still adding more as families start using it, like checks before anything gets shared with a new site.. will share those too! If you're building an agent that touches personal documents, bookmark this for later.6. Money needs its own tap. Ula shows the exact price and waits for you to approve. We tried all of this first on our own family's booking this week.. Ula filled the form, showed the price and just waited for my tap before paying. If you're building an agent that touches personal documents, bookmark this for later.

I created FREE directory for startup grants and investments. I kept looking for them while building @heyula_ai, and every time one had already expired or I found it too late. So I put them all in one place, and it keeps updating as new ones get posted. November deadlines still open: • a16z speedrun - nov 1, up to $1m + $10m+ in credits • yc w2027 - nov 2 at 8pm pt, $500k • era nyc - nov 2, $150k, 4 months in nyc • nsf america's seed fund - nov 4, full proposal (phase i up to $305k) • techstars spring 2027 - nov 18, $220k • thiel fellowship - rolling, $250k So I put them all in one place, and it keeps updating as new ones get posted. over 2 years, 22 and under • z fellows - rolling, $10k for one week

Wooh 1st success for @heyula_ai Ula successfully booked its first temple ticket for Tirupathi. - It triggered OTP, logged in and showed the open slots - Filled the form from my saved details ( vaults ) - Showed the exact price before doing anything. I tapped approve, paid inside Whatsapp using UPI, and ticket landed in my trip documents. Just converted the screenshots into video using claude for demo. Join our waitlist and will open spots quickly.

Just applied to @HF0 W27 with @heyula_ai 🤞 Got this card at the end of the application and I can't stop looking at it 😅 "One bot journeys many roads" is pretty much what we want Ula to be for families planning trips together

Thanks for the interest. 1. Go to - heyula.ai 2. Just tap, message ula. 3. It will ask for your whatsapp number. And you can join immediately to the waitlist.

50+ signups on the @heyula_ai waitlist 🥳 Almost half of them came in the 2 days since our launch post. Honestly didn't expect this much love for a travel planner we started building for our own messy family trips. Thank you to everyone who commented ULA, reposted and shared it. It means a lot to us. Now back to building..

Launching my new product, @heyula_ai 🥳 - Ula is an AI travel companion right inside your messaging app. - Ula understands your travel preferences. - Helps plan personalised trips. - Remembers what you save. So that you don't have to start from scratch every time. Travelling with a toddler is messy enough. Planning it shouldn't be.