Gurucool: shipping Shloka, then bringing the app to iOS

Problem

I joined Gurucool as an app engineer and got two very different mandates back to back. First, build a brand new app from scratch. Then, fix the one the company already had: a React Native product that shipped on Android but had no iOS version at all.

Shloka, built from scratch

My first project was Shloka, an app built to bring users back to something calm and daily: the shlokas of the Bhagavad Gita. The backend held the full set of verses, and each one carried its translation, transliteration, commentary, and meaning. I built the app around that: a clean reading experience that pulls a shloka and its layers of context from the backend and presents them simply. I built and shipped it on both iOS and Android from nothing.

Bringing Gurucool to iOS

Gurucool itself is an astrology guidance app: people consult certified astrologers about love, career, marriage, health, and money through daily horoscopes, chat, on-call sessions, and live video, drawing on Vedic astrology, tarot, numerology, and vastu. That focus on real-time consultation is exactly why the app leans so hard on chat and live sessions, the two things I went on to build and fix.

Then I moved onto the Gurucool app team. The app was a single React Native codebase, but only Android had ever been built from it. There was no iOS app, and, as I found out, no ios folder in the project at all. So the first job was to make iOS exist: I created the ios project and its native scaffolding inside the existing React Native repo, then worked through the long tail of everything that breaks when a codebase has never targeted iOS. Pods would not install, the app would not build, the app would not start. I fixed each issue until it compiled and ran, brought the iOS app up to full parity with Android, and published it to the App Store.

From there, iOS was mine. I owned the iOS app end to end and co-handled both platforms with the team.

What I worked on

A chat system on GraphQL subscriptions. I built the app’s chat so messages ride GraphQL subscriptions, keeping conversations live without polling.

Live video. Agora was already integrated but buggy. I worked through the issues and fixed the bugs so live sessions actually held up.

CleverTap for engagement. I integrated CleverTap so the team could see how the app was used and run lifecycle messaging.

Structure and optimization. I reorganized the app’s files and folders and cleaned up the project so it was maintainable and fast, not just working.

Outcome

Both apps shipped. Shloka went out on iOS and Android from a standing start. The Gurucool app went from Android-only to a full iOS presence I built and published from a codebase that had never compiled for iOS, then ran with me as the iOS owner across a two-platform team. The through-line is simple: I take an app from wherever it is, missing, half-built, or messy, to shipped and maintainable.