Rohit Bansal- Founder & CEO of Prana Air Shares How His Personal Struggle Turned Into a National Mission

My journey with air quality did not begin in a laboratory or boardroom. It began in 2009, in a hospital room in Beijing. I had moved to China the year before, excited to explore life in one of the world’s fastest growing cities. But within months, the heavy pollution started affecting my health. I developed severe sinus issues and eventually had to undergo a sinus surgery purely because of the air I was breathing.

That moment shook me deeply. Pollution was no longer a statistic. It was something that had entered my body, changed my life and forced me to face a truth most of us ignore: the air around us is silently shaping our future.

In 2010, while still in China, the idea of aqi.in was born. I found myself constantly checking air quality, trying to understand what I was inhaling every day. There were websites in China that showed air data, and I wondered why India did not have something similar. I told myself that one day, I would build a platform that gives every Indian the ability to see their air in real time.

Founding Prana Air: Turning a personal struggle into a national mission

Fast forward to 2016. I founded Purelogic Labs, which later became Prana Air Private Limited. From the beginning, we never wanted to simply import devices or rebrand foreign products. We wanted to build India’s own air-quality technology, designed for Indian weather, Indian dust, Indian humidity and Indian pollution levels.

And we wanted it to be accurate enough to match global benchmark devices from the US and Europe but affordable enough for a normal household to buy.

Over the years we created our own sensors, PCBs, calibration systems and software platforms. Our monitors match the performance of high-end reference machines that cost ten to fifteen times more, yet we keep our pocket friendly so they can be deployed at scale in thousands of homes, schools, offices and neighbourhoods.

A self-funded dream that grew beyond expectations

Prana Air is a 100% self-funded company. We never raised external investment. We never took venture capital. We never ran ads or promotions for aqi.in. And yet, the platform has grown organically because people genuinely trust the data.

People often ask us, “What is your business model? How do you make money if all data on aqi.in is free?”

The truth is simple:

We do not earn anything from aqi.in.

Every rupee we earn from selling Prana Air monitors is what keeps aqi.in alive and running. We built the platform because we believe clean air information should be freely accessible to every citizen. We did not build it to monetise people’s fear or health concerns.

What makes me and my team happiest is seeing our app screenshots being widely shared across India. We started very small, hoping that a few people might download our app. Today, our screenshots are being shared in WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, on Instagram stories and even by journalists and policymakers.

The reason is simple: our data is minute-to-minute, while most other apps show data that is one or two hours old. People want the real picture, not a delayed version of reality.

The Community Monitor Revolution: India’s largest citizen-driven air network

To take hyper local data to the next level, we launched the Community Monitor Campaign. We made our monitor available to anyone in India for just ₹990 , not for profit, but to ensure people actually use it.

In just a short time, we have deployed over 5,000 monitors across India. Homes, schools, offices, shops, apartments and neighbourhoods now have their own live air-quality station. For the first time ever, citizens are not dependent on a far-away city monitor. They are tracking their own street, their own home, their own reality.

This is how change begins ; when people start seeing the invisible.

The Vision: Becoming the Weather.com of India for Air and Weather

My long term vision is bold but simple.

I want Prana Air and aqi.in to become the Weather.com of India, a platform where every Indian can check real-time air and weather conditions at a hyper local, minute-by-minute level.

India is experiencing unpredictable weather patterns.

It rains heavily in one part of a city while another part stays dry.

Pollution spikes in one lane while the next lane remains normal.

But we still rely on broad, city-level numbers that paint an incomplete picture.

We want to build India’s first street-level environmental map, covering:

• real time rainfall intensity
• wind movement
• humidity
• temperature
• air quality
• individual gas pollutants
• micro-weather events

No Indian should ever have to guess what the weather or air quality is like around them.

This vision is already gaining national traction. Our data is used daily by TV9, Jio News, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Navbharat Times, Indian Express, TV18, Moneycontrol, Dainik Jagran and many others. Their trust in our data inspires us to keep pushing boundaries.

Why I continue this journey

From that day in a Beijing hospital to today, nothing about this journey has been easy. But every time someone shares our app screenshot, every time a parent installs a monitor in their child’s room, every time a journalist quotes our data, I am reminded why I started.

Clean air and honest information should not be luxuries.

They should be right.

And I will continue working until every citizen in this country can breathe a little easier and live a little more informed.