Ishan Ramrakhiani is the Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Shepherd (YC S26), a personalized learning assistant that combines AI and human tutors to transform how students learn.

Ishan hails from Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he was named a U.S. Presidential Scholar candidate at Canterbury School, reflecting his early record of academic excellence and intellectual curiosity.

With a background spanning AI research and product development, Ishan has published work on Drug-Drug Interaction via Foundation Transformers, achieving new state-of-the-art results on leading benchmarks.

Ishan co-founded Shepherd alongside Philip Meng and Elijah Renner, successfully earning a spot in Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch after an intensive early-decision application and in-person interview process.

Shepherd (YC S26) is building at the frontier of AI-powered education, combining personalized AI tutoring with human mentorship to deliver a next-generation learning experience for students.