Sajith Pai

After a fabulous two years at Kae Capital, I knew it was time to build the fund I wished had existed when I was a founder. Today, I’m launching Boundless Ventures, an early-stage, AI-native venture firm backing India-rooted founders who are building globally defensible companies at the intersection of science, systems, and culture. Boundless starts with a simple belief: the next decade’s breakout companies won’t “add AI” as a feature. They’ll be AI-native from day one, rethinking consumer products, enterprise workflows, and infrastructure with new primitives. We’ll write the first cheque ($200–400K), and then double down. We’ve proud to have already partnered with six category-shaping founding teams: • Superhealth: rethinking healthcare from the ground up • Armatrix: autonomous snake-arm robots for engine inspection • PierSight: real-time ocean intelligence • KNOT: AI-native fashion discovery and logistics • Two stealth companies in infra and consumer AI Our thesis spans four arenas: • The AI-native stack: infra, agents, and memory protocols • Make-in-India hardware: autonomous systems, design-led manufacturing • New-India consumer: culture × code • Science × story: where deep tech meets narrative leverage India is not catching up. It’s compounding. Boundless exists to back originals, with speed, belief and storytelling firepower. Link to our website & thesis below.

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Natasha Malpani Launches ₹200 Crore Fund to Power India’s AI Startups Former Kae Capital partner Natasha Malpani has launched Boundless Ventures, an early-stage venture fund with a corpus of ₹200 crore, dedicated to supporting homegrown AI-native startups across India. The fund will focus on pre-seed and seed-stage investments in companies innovating across consumer AI, infrastructure, agent tooling, healthcare, logistics, deep tech, and make-in-India hardware. Boundless has already written its first cheques to startups including Superhealth, Armatrix, PierSight, Knot, and two stealth ventures in AI infrastructure and consumer AI. Beyond capital, the fund promises to bring narrative and network support to founders. As Malpani puts it, India today has a once-in-a-generation advantage talent density, digital rails, and ambition to build global AI leaders from day one. At Startup Veda, we’re thrilled to see local capital fueling the AI frontier. This fund signals rising maturity in India’s venture ecosystem—placing conviction behind AI-first founders well before the rest of the world catches on. Join the conversation: Which early-stage AI ventures excite you the most? How powerful is the mix of capital + storytelling for building AI startups? #Startup #AI #VentureCapital #DeepTech #StartupIndia #FounderStories

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Diipa Khosla launching ‘Hot Sauce a fiery DLT lip plumper’ inspired by ghee + chilli
is a masterclass in how personal brand fuels revenue, scale, and market domination. That authenticity has become the heartbeat of Indē Wild. It’s Ayurvedistry, her mother’s Ayurvedic wisdom meeting modern science. The best seller? A hair oil straight from her mom’s recipes. The new launch? A lip plumper inspired by her childhood. And it doesn’t stop at products. Walk into one of her offline events and you feel the same energy: warmth, intimacy, aspiration, connection. Here’s the nuance most founders miss:
When your business is an authentic extension of you, you’re not competing on product features, you’re competing on identity. That creates a moat no amount of paid marketing can buy. That alignment is exactly what now flows through every SKU of Indē Wild and why the brand cuts through in a saturated beauty market. Business Breakdown (Why this works): * Trust Before Transaction → Years as a beauty/fashion authority built credibility. So when she launched, her audience wasn’t “trying” her brand, they were investing in someone they already trusted. That’s why first day sales hit fast. * Personal Brand = Product Roadmap → Founders often chase market trends. Diipa anchored her roadmap in identity, her mother’s Ayurvedic blend, her upbringing, her cultural heritage. That’s not sentimental, it’s strategic differentiation. * Consistency = Compounding Attention → Same voice online, offline, and in product launches. No disconnect. Consistency compounds into equity and equity lowers acquisition costs. * Science Meets Storytelling → Ayurveda provides emotional pull, science provides rational proof. This duality wins both consumer loyalty and investor confidence. * Cultural Moat → There are a thousand hair oils. But none with the credibility of “this is my mother’s recipe.”That’s a moat competitors can’t replicate. * Influence → Infrastructure → A strong personal brand doesn’t just sell products, it buys leverage. Retailers stock faster, investors listen longer, media amplifies harder. * Authenticity Converts to ARPU → Premium positioning works because authenticity is aspirational. That’s how founders command higher price points without discount wars. Takeaways for Founders: * Your personal brand isn’t vanity, it’s the lowest cost, highest-ROI customer acquisition channel you’ll ever own. * Every story you tell today is compound interest on tomorrow’s sales. * If your products don’t reflect you, they’ll drown in noise. * Authenticity isn’t soft. It’s a revenue strategy. * Personal brand is the difference between being another product on the shelf vs. building a category defining business. 
Indē Wild isn’t just selling lip plumper.
It’s selling an identity people want to belong to. And that’s the highest form of brand building: when your personal brand becomes the operating system for business growth. #PersonalBranding #FounderTips #Entrepreneurship

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A founder who has spent 32 Years building IP-Owned Tech in India's Defense Sector. Ashok Atluri, Founder of Zen Technologies Limited shares a growth story bootstrapped from Hyderabad: -Revenue: ₹60 Cr (FY21) → ₹930 Cr(FY24) -Market cap: 40 Cr (2012-13) → 13000 Cr today -Growth: 400X in 12 years Takeaways from our conversation: 1. India historically imported 65–70% of its defense equipment. Today, defense exports have grown more than 30× over the past decade, with the private sector contributing around 60% of exports. Domestic defense production has increased to ₹1.27 lakh crore, a 174% rise since FY 2014–15. 2. For over two decades, Zen built advanced simulators but struggled to sell them in India because single-vendor bids weren’t accepted. The IDDM policy in 2015 gave preference to IP-owning Indian companies and allocated 75% of the capital acquisition budget to local sourcing. And decades of R&D became a real market worth ₹200 billion. 3. Defense tech startups in India have raised $184 million in VC funding since 2020. Zen’s journey shows that IP-owned Tech built with self-funded R&D can build the most defensible advantage, similar to how Apple captures value through IP rather than manufacturing. 4. Zen’s anti-drone systems were proven in field operations, leading to export inquiries from over 20 countries. This mirrors the broader trend of India’s defense exports growing from ₹1,940 crore (FY14) to ₹21,083 crore (FY24). Field-tested solutions build trust far faster than lab demos or pilot projects. 5. Government fundings are rewarding innovation over manufacturing. Programs like iDEX provide up to ₹10 crore for proven concepts, while DRDO offers ₹50 crore per system under the Technology Development Fund. This shift allows companies to reinvest profits into next-generation R&D. 6. Ashok believes that not all technologies should be patented. Highly secretive or complex innovations can be reverse-engineered if patented. Instead, patent what is obvious to outsiders to protect your competitive edge. 7. Build with a focused approach on Pareto technologies with maximum impact. Instead of chasing every opportunity, Zen concentrated on the 20% of technologies delivering 80% of results, anti-drone systems and simulators. Prioritizing high-leverage areas compounds impact effectively. 8. Time market entry around overlooked gaps: In 2018, drones were a hot topic, but there was little attention on anti-drone systems. Zen entered this gap and was ready when the need became urgent, from regional conflicts to domestic security. Opportunities often lie where others are silent. 9. Create policies around your innovation: Self-funded R&D firms face unique risks that conventional procurement rules often overlook. Zen advocated for new categories rather than adapting breakthrough technologies to unsuitable frameworks, ensuring their innovations could be evaluated on merit. Full Episode https://lnkd.in/gnAFEj3f

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