I grew up by the River Seetha in Udupi. After studying computer science at RVCE (2014), I started my career in financial research at D.E. Shaw India and later completed my MBA at the University of Calgary.
Along the way, I built and shut down two small businesses—a textbook delivery service in Bangalore and a student housing venture in Canada. Dealing firsthand with working capital cycles, vendor terms, and thin operating margins taught me more about business mortality than any financial model.
Since 2020, I have been at Zerodha, where I lead private market investments at Rainmatter and work on long-term ecological and rural livelihood initiatives through the Rainmatter Foundation.
How I Invest
Because Rainmatter invests solely from Zerodha's balance sheet with no external LPs or fixed fund lifecycles, we can underwrite 15- to 30-year compounding without forcing premature exits. When backing early-stage founders, my focus comes down to four principles:
- Unit Economics Before Scale: Growth without contribution margin only magnifies fragility. We back businesses where unit economics work early and customer acquisition isn't subsidized by venture capital.
- Structural Counter-Positioning: Business models that incumbents cannot easily copy without undercutting their own core revenue streams.
- Hard Moats & Patient Capital: Across fintech, climate, healthcare, and Indian deeptech, we prefer backing proprietary engineering, physical supply chains, and regulatory infrastructure that take years to replicate.
- Capital Discipline & Alignment: Founders who treat equity as their most expensive asset, keep fixed costs lean, and build trust with customers rather than optimizing for the next valuation markup.
If you are building with a similar long-term lens, reach out.
The Weekly Signal
Reading notes • Capital & marketsThree papers, essays, or discussions from my reading each week—and how they connect to investing and building in India.
Week of October 12, 2026
- Venture Capital • The Odin Times (Dan Gray)
In venture capital, chasing 'access' to hot, consensus deals is usually a trap. The best founders and investors learn faster from direct, real-world feedback than from polished credentials.
- Business Models • Collaborative Fund (Craig Shapiro)
For a century, companies extracted profits first and gave back through charity later. The most enduring businesses of the next 50 years will build models where unit economics improve only when customer and community outcomes improve.
- Behavioral Finance • Behavioural Investment (Joe Wiggins)
We are wired to react to vivid, emotional threats while ignoring slow-moving statistical risks. In markets as in technology, abstract risks on a spreadsheet rarely feel real until the damage is already done.
Week of October 5, 2026
- Business Moats • Pivotal
As AI makes generating code and content nearly free, value shifts to what cannot be automated: trust. Durable moats will belong to businesses built on skin in the game, reputation, and clear accountability.
- Fintech • Open Standard (Visa / Stripe)
Instead of keeping interest income on reserves like Tether or Circle, Open USD shares 100% of yield and network ownership with the platforms distributing it—a modern take on how Visa was originally built as a member-owned network.
- Product Strategy • Build with AI (GrowthX)
When software can take a user from prompt to output in seconds, traditional onboarding funnels stop mattering. The real bottleneck shifts from building features to having clear product judgment.
Week of September 19, 2026
- Risk Management • Moontower Meta
Kris Abdelmessih breaks down position sizing under uncertainty—why even a great bet can ruin you if you size it too aggressively, and why survival always comes before maximizing returns.
- Fintech • fintechbrainfood.com
How Nubank is entering the U.S. market through partner banking rails and using low-cost cross-border settlement to connect everyday retail banking with global transfers.
- Livelihoods & AI • New York Times
A sobering look at how generative AI wiped out a 40,000-person freelance writing economy in Nairobi almost overnight—and a reminder of how fragile purely transactional digital work has become.
Week of September 12, 2026
- AI Policy • darioamodei.com
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei makes the case for tying frontier AI deployment speed to measurable safety benchmarks rather than racing blindly ahead.
- Governance • Business Standard
Why public markets often price in a 15–25% discount when second-generation heirs take over from founders—and how hard it is to pass down founder-level urgency and cost discipline.
- Capital Markets • A Wealth of Common Sense
A clear look at why momentum persists across centuries of market data, and how simple index funds quietly act as long-term trend-following machines.
Week of September 5, 2026
- Early Stage • paulgraham.com
Paul Graham's classic reminder that startups don't take off on their own—in the beginning, you have to recruit users manually, solve their problems by hand, and resist automating too early.
- Strategy • notboring.co
How challengers win against giants by choosing a business model that incumbents cannot copy without hurting their own existing cash cow.
- Behavioral Finance • Morgan Housel
Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and everything to do with how you behave—staying unbreakable so you can let compounding work uninterrupted.
Essays & Writing
- Oct 2026 What I learnt from a visit to Amaravati
Reflections from meeting entrepreneurs, incubators, and policymakers in Andhra Pradesh—and why early-stage investing is ultimately a bet on people and time.
- Sep 2026 I am a nobody
A personal reflection on imposter syndrome, communication, and the power of luck.
- Dec 2025 Timing and Capital - What your spreadsheets can't tell you
Why market timing, patience, and founder endurance matter more than financial projections in early-stage investing.
- Aug 2025 Thank you, Mr. Trump
Why global trade friction is a wake-up call for India to double down on domestic digital and physical infrastructure.
- Feb 2024 Venture Capital demands from budget 2024
Key policy, tax, and regulatory asks from the Indian startup and venture ecosystem ahead of the Union Budget.
Podcasts & Video Discussions
- The Startup Blueprint — Special Episode • Nithin Kamath (Co-founder, Zerodha) & Dinesh Pai
Nithin Kamath's Guide to How Startups Think of Risks & Moats →
How Zerodha scaled without external capital or marketing spend—and how Nithin thinks about tail risk, regulatory survival, and long-term capital allocation.
- How VCs Think — Episode 7 • Sajith Pai (Blume Ventures) & Dinesh Pai (Rainmatter)
How VCs Measure Product-Market Fit →
Separating true product-to-problem fit from subsidized top-line growth, and the metrics that actually matter at Seed and Series A.
- How VCs Think — Episode 1 • Kushal Bhagia (All In Capital) & Dinesh Pai (Rainmatter)
What VCs Look For in the First Meeting →
How investors evaluate founder-market fit in a first conversation, earned insights from the field, and early cap-table mistakes that hurt later rounds.
- How VCs Think — Episode 4 • Dinesh Pai (Rainmatter) & Portfolio Founders
How to Hire and Retain Early Employees →
Practical lessons from founders on hiring the first ten engineers and operators, structuring ESOPs honestly, and keeping teams together through slow compounding.
- The Startup Blueprint — Episode 1 • Ashish Goel (Co-founder, Urban Ladder) & Dinesh Pai
How to Find a Co-founder →
How to test for complementary skills, stress-test values before incorporating, and structure co-founder roles and equity splits.
- Subtext by Zerodha • Aditya Shukla & Aditya Muralidhar (Partners, Bain & Company India) & Dinesh Pai
Decoding Bain's India Venture Capital Report →
Examining private capital flows into India, the rise of domestic family offices and LPs, and why exit liquidity is shifting toward domestic public markets.
Tools & Side Projects
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onepager →
A tool I built to parse corporate financial statements and compute Altman Z-Scores, Piotroski F-Scores, and DuPont decompositions in under two minutes.
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LegalOS →
A workflow tool for founders and investment teams to review Indian fundraising documents—flagging non-standard clauses across Term Sheets, SHAs, and SPAs.