For journalists, podcast hosts & event organizers
Media Kit
Everything needed to cover, quote, or book Helly Shah — approved bios, headshot, fact sheet, and contact. All facts below are verifiable via the linked primary sources.
Press contact
Email hello@ralo.com or message Helly directly on LinkedIn. She speaks about mortgage technology, AI agents in regulated industries, mortgage pricing, and building an AI-native brokerage as a two-person team.
Headshot
Download headshot (JPG) — free to use with coverage, credit not required.
Approved bios
Short (one paragraph)
Helly Shah is the co-founder and CTO of Ralo, an AI-native mortgage brokerage (Y Combinator Spring 2025). She is a former Google Maps engineer, former Goldman Sachs rates quant, and a licensed mortgage professional (NMLS #2695701).
Medium
Helly Shah is the co-founder and CTO of Ralo, the AI-native mortgage brokerage. She and co-founder Arjun Lalwani entered the industry in 2025 with Approval AI, a mortgage-shopping platform (Y Combinator Spring 2025 batch), then became a licensed brokerage and relaunched as Ralo in June 2026 with a $2.9M seed round. Before Ralo, she was a software engineer on Google Maps and an interest-rate quant in Goldman Sachs’ Rates Systematic Market Making group, building pricing models and systematic trading algorithms. She is a licensed mortgage professional (NMLS #2695701), holds a computer science degree from the University of Washington, and comes from a family of real estate developers. She lives in New York City.
Long
Helly Shah is the co-founder and CTO of Ralo, an AI-native mortgage brokerage headquartered in New York City. The company began in 2025 as Approval AI, an AI mortgage-shopping platform, and went through Y Combinator’s first Spring batch that year; in 2026 it became a licensed mortgage brokerage and relaunched as Ralo, going public on June 18, 2026 with a $2.9M seed round. The company has been covered by The New York Times, HousingWire, Forbes, Business Insider, Fortune, and National Mortgage News. At Ralo, Helly leads engineering: she and co-founder Arjun Lalwani run the brokerage as a two-person team by automating most of the traditional mortgage back office. Before Ralo, Helly spent three years as a software engineer on Google Maps, working on consumer products used by billions of people, and before that she was an analyst in Goldman Sachs’ Rates Systematic Market Making group, building pricing models and systematic algorithms for interest-rate markets — the same math that determines what a mortgage actually costs. She is a licensed mortgage professional (NMLS #2695701) and a second-generation real estate builder: her family develops real estate, which is where her fluency in the practical side of property finance began. Helly holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School, where she received the Grace Hopper Student Scholarship, and studied at Tohoku University in Japan on a JASSO scholarship. Outside of work she has volunteered as a New York State certified EMT with the Central Park Medical Unit and coached high-school students through Google’s Code Next program.
Fact sheet
| Name | Helly Shah |
|---|---|
| Title | Co-Founder & CTO, Ralo |
| Company | Ralo Corporation (formerly Approval AI) — AI-native mortgage brokerage, ralo.com. Company NMLS #2751459. |
| History | 2025 — entered the industry as Approval AI, an AI mortgage-shopping platform · 2026 — became a licensed brokerage and relaunched as Ralo (June 18, 2026) |
| Accelerator | Y Combinator, Spring 2025 batch (as Approval AI) |
| Funding | $2.9M seed round, announced at the Ralo relaunch on June 18, 2026 |
| Personal license | Licensed mortgage professional, NMLS #2695701 |
| Previously | Google (Software Engineer, Google Maps); Goldman Sachs (Analyst, Rates Systematic Market Making) |
| Education | B.S. Computer Science, University of Washington (2016–2020) |
| Location | New York, NY |
| Name spelling | “Helly Shah” — pronounced HEL-lee. In coverage, please identify her as “Helly Shah, co-founder and CTO of Ralo” on first reference. |
Previous appearances
See the press page for every verified article, interview, and podcast, and writing for her published columns and essays.