Ex-Apple Watch product lead Pranita Pujari launches AI health startup after her own migraines

Every IITian dreams of working at a big global company, and Pranita Pujari, who is of Indian origin, did just that. After studying at IIT Kanpur, she did an MBA in the US. She began her career with Flipkart and Amazon and then reached Apple, where she held a leadership role in the Apple Watch worldwide product planning team. After six years, she left the job and started her own startup.

Apple's smartwatch helps people keep track of their health and fitness. With her new startup, UniqueHuman, Pujari now wants to go a step further in healthcare. The AI-based platform can help people struggling with migraine and other long-term illnesses. It is said that it can be used to identify symptoms of several conditions such as migraine.

Pujari is an engineer and product leader. She studied mechanical engineering at IIT Kanpur, then went to the US and did an MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She has also worked on behavioural science research at London Business School and at a consumer organisation in Britain.

She began her career at Flipkart, where she worked from 2014 to 2017 on category management, pricing algorithms and product growth. She then worked at Amazon as a senior product manager.

Pujari joined Apple in July 2019. She first worked on iPhone product planning and later led the Apple Watch worldwide product planning team. She stayed with the company until April 2025, after which she moved towards starting her own venture.

Her decision to enter healthcare was not only about technology but also about her own experience. She herself suffered from migraine. She also spent about 10 years helping to manage her mother's long-running pain. These experiences gave her the idea for the startup.

Through UniqueHuman, Pujari wants people to make better use of their health data. Smartwatches and health apps generally record things such as step counts, heart rate and sleep. This platform will go beyond such data. It is being developed for people dealing with migraine, fibromyalgia, POTS (a condition in which the heart rate rises abnormally on standing) and long Covid. It will use data from devices such as Apple Watch, Oura Ring and Garmin, along with medical records, lab reports and information on symptoms.

UniqueHuman has an AI assistant called Niq. It will try to understand a user's health information and work out what may be making symptoms worse. For a migraine patient, for instance, the assistant can help understand whether lack of sleep, stress, dehydration, medicines or the timing of menstruation are linked to the migraines.

The platform also has a feature called "Flare-up Monitor", built to alert the user at the first signs that symptoms are worsening. Users can also keep a record of their symptoms and medicines, generate reports to show a doctor and, when needed, get help consulting other specialist doctors. Whether the AI can accurately predict a worsening of symptoms is yet to be proved. The company says the AI is meant to assist doctors, not replace them.