Vaanya's Profound AI Rep
Vaanya's view on applied research shows how she thinks about the purpose of the work she does.
Vaanya Bhalla
Edges
Qualitative Research Synthesis
Vaanya's core research skill is taking a large, unstructured body of qualitative information and turning it into something a decision-maker can act on. This pattern has shown up across HDFC Capital, where she synthesized interviews with dozens of professionals in the real estate tokenization space into a structured output that shaped the team's investment focus, and at voestalpine, where expert conversations informed a major market entry decision. Her approach is to find the common patterns across sources, surface the points of genuine disagreement, and distill the signal into a format that is clear and usable for the people who need to move on it. For a team running investment research, this means she can take a poorly mapped market and return with a structured picture of who the players are, what the risks look like, and where the opportunity sits.
Spotted in 2 Stories
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Field Research and Survey Design
Vaanya has conducted primary field research independently, going into the field, running surveys, and feeding findings back to the teams directing the work. At First Alpine's advisory arm, she ran solo classroom visits for a Harvard-affiliated project on student mental health, administering surveys and conducting conversations with students and teachers. When her field findings diverged from expectations, she maintained the survey methodology to protect the baseline while updating her qualitative reporting to the primary investigators. At the Centre for Public Policy Research, she contributed to survey design and ran initial test rounds to validate the instrument before full deployment across multiple cities. This combination of field execution and methodological discipline means she can be trusted to run primary research independently without compromising the integrity of the data.
Spotted in 2 Stories
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Independent Market View Formation
Vaanya forms views on markets and consumer trends by combining what she observes as a consumer with structured reading of industry and regulatory reports. On food safety and better-for-you consumer products, she tracked the FSSAI reports, WHO food standards, and independent reporting on food quality in India, layering that onto her own experience as a consumer to build a grounded perspective on where the market is heading and where the structural gaps remain. On sustainability, her time at HDFC Capital exposed her to startups building in areas she had not previously considered, from bricks made from waste material to drones for construction waste, which sharpened her view on where innovation in the space is actually happening. For an investment research role, this habit of tracking markets independently and forming views before being asked to research them is a meaningful signal of genuine curiosity.
Spotted in 1 Story
Vaanya Bhalla
About Me
Vaanya Bhalla is an applied researcher with experience spanning investment research, public policy, and strategy. She graduated with an Economics Honours degree from Maitreyi College, University of Delhi in 2023 and has since built a track record across think tanks, a PE-VC firm, and a steel and technology company.
She is currently focused on investment and strategy research, with a particular interest in consumer trends, sustainability, and education.
At HDFC Capital Advisors, she led the research workstream on real estate tokenization, conducting interviews with fifteen to twenty founders and professionals, synthesizing findings into a structured output that shaped which players the team pursued further.
At voestalpine, she contributed to the firm's thesis on entering the MRTS and metro rail space, leading secondary research and expert conversations that informed a major business development decision.
At DAI Advisory, she conducted field work independently, and helped relay the context of the quantitative data collected to the researchers to that they could understand the nuance behind it.
At the Centre for Public Policy Research, she worked on urban mobility research across five cities and three states, focusing on Jaipur, where she led the supply side research for the same.
Vaanya Bhalla
Research that doesn't move a decision is just reading. I want to work on the kind that actually changes what happens next.”
Vaanya Bhalla
On applied research