About Arjun Lalwani

Who is Arjun Lalwani?

Arjun Lalwani is the co-founder and CEO of Ralo, the AI-native mortgage brokerage, based in New York. He is a former Google and YouTube product manager, holds a U.S. EB-1A “extraordinary ability” green card, and is a licensed mortgage professional, NMLS #2753950.

From India to the Allen School

I grew up in India and moved to the U.S. for college, studying computer science at the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School. At UW I founded HuskyTech, a student technology organization I grew to 30+ members with $25K in sponsorships from Google, Facebook, and Expedia, and I interned at Microsoft — on Azure Maps and on Office — and at Smartsheet before graduating in 2020.

Google: the APM program, Hotels, and the Office of the CEO

I joined Google in 2020 through its Associate Product Manager program — a cohort of roughly 45 selected from about 8,000 applicants. On Google Hotels I launched eco-certified hotel badges in Google Search, working with major hotel chains on certification standards; I then worked on product strategy in the Office of the CEO.

YouTube Shopping: building a marketplace from zero

At YouTube I led the Shopping Monetization team and launched the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program, building a new commerce business inside YouTube from zero. Marketplaces — matching supply and demand, aligning incentives, earning trust on both sides — became my specialty, and in 2024 the U.S. government granted me an EB-1A “extraordinary ability” green card for that work.

The mortgage that started the company

Years before Ralo, I applied for a mortgage in San Francisco — and was denied, restarting the whole process with another lender. For someone who built billion-user products, the experience was jarring: “the experience was very outdated,” I told National Mortgage News later. It felt like the 90s: emailing PDFs, chasing paperwork, and bouncing between loan officers just to compare rates.

Ralo: from shopping platform to AI-native brokerage

Helly Shah and I entered the mortgage industry in 2025 with Approval AI, an AI-powered mortgage-shopping platform we took through Y Combinator's first Spring batch. Shopping offers for borrowers taught us the deeper problem was the process itself — so in 2026 we became a licensed mortgage brokerage, company NMLS #2751459, and relaunched as Ralo on June 18, 2026 with a $2.9M seed round. Ralo uses AI agents to automate rate shopping, document collection, and loan coordination, passing the savings back to borrowers through a thin-commission model. The company has been covered by The New York Times, HousingWire, Forbes, Business Insider, Fortune, and National Mortgage News — every piece is indexed with links on the press page.

I lead product and the business, and I'm a licensed mortgage professional myself — NMLS #2753950. My co-founder Helly Shah leads engineering; we run the entire brokerage with a team of two.

Outside work

I meditate thirty minutes a day, train at the gym daily, and read mostly non-fiction on entrepreneurship and technology — my standing recommendation is Range by David Epstein. I also write occasionally on Medium about product management and the immigration path for founders.

For the full record: press coverage · essays · media kit · what I'm working on now.

Fact sheet