The Boy Wonder Of India’s New Tech Scene - EP 95 Naman Pushp

Ashlee Vance: I mean, it's nuts to sort of be like, I'm 18, I'm going to design aircraft better than anyone has done before.

Naman Pushp: Our goal is really to make aerial transports that are cheaper, faster, and more versatile than 80% of the entire logistics market and 90% of the human transportation market. Still built that aircraft, it got like a quarter second of airtime. To quote Toy Story, we were not flying, we were falling with style. So at 16, I ended up moving out. A lot of people asked like, oh, how did you convince them to like let you move out? And I'm like, it was their idea. What we've managed to do is we're lifting five kilos of payload with a three kilo aircraft. That's when, you know, it sort of hits that like, oh shit, you know, this is an actual company now. I also don't think that peak democracy is necessarily the best way to run a country.

Ashlee Vance: This week's guest is part of a revolution. His name is Naman Pushp. He is the founder and CEO of a startup called Airbound. They are based in India and they are trying to make the world's lightest, most efficient aircraft for A moment for delivering goods, basically deliveries like you might see Amazon and DoorDash and Zipline trying to do today. And then he thinks he can build a whole new class of aircraft for carrying people one day in the future. I say he's part of a revolution because Naaman is one of these kids. I just got back from a trip to India where there are a ton of 18, 19, 20, 21-year-olds building a new class, a new, far more... Ambitious class of startups in India than we've seen before. They're doing hardware. They're doing very difficult technology. They're not trying to do internet startups or mobile apps or software and services. They're really getting into it. Naman is one of the leading examples. Airbound has raised millions of dollars. They've already built one generation of aircraft in a second, the first. It's so light that I could pick it up with a couple of fingers. The larger second generation, I could hold the whole thing in my hand and it's able to deliver about 10 pounds of goods through the air. And we saw them fly. It was pretty amazing. They're very quiet. They can hover. They kind of take off vertically and then fly like a plane. They can hover. Super impressed by the factory that I saw this dude. Strikes me as quite possibly the real, real deal. It had, um, early Peter Beck from Rocket Lab vibes for me, at least. And so there's a lot of people now like Naman that want to stay in India, build their startups, raise money and try to do things differently and dramatically use, use some of India's limitations, things like traffic as the impetus to, uh, To invent around them, get up in the air and move things around. All these kids are super into carbon fiber. We're going to have tons of podcast episodes coming with some of these entrepreneurs. We are going to have videos on our main video YouTube channel. We will have one on Airbound shortly, which you should check out. Please, as always, like, subscribe, leave a review, tell people about the show. It would be an immense help. I think you're going to love it. This chat, he's thoughtful, he's brimming with confidence and enthusiasm, and he has ideas about how ambitious India can be in the future. I am Ashlee Vance. This is Core Memory. Here we go. [music] This is very exciting for me. Well, I do this podcast from Playground, which is where we first met like seven or eight months ago, I think.

Naman Pushp: I think close to a year ago, yeah.

Ashlee Vance: Something like that. And you immediately struck me as a super bright, interesting person. And then just, I don't know when this podcast will air, but two weeks ago, basically, I went to visit you and Airbound in India, in Bangalore.

Naman Pushp: Yeah.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah. And, uh, and so we got to, people will have video that comes out. People will get to see the aircraft flying both generations and, and a bit more on the factory and how these all get built and, and, um, so it'll be, it'll be a cool episode. That was, it was a amazing day. I, People won't get to see it on this podcast, but they will see it in the videos. We had aircraft everywhere. I think we put up like 26 if I remember. 28, I think. Oh, yeah. So 26, I think, first gen and two of the second gen. I was surrounded and it was glorious. And they were super quiet. I got to... Pick them up. They are indeed super light. And it was awesome. I was just interviewing somebody else, Shruti, who works at Emergent Ventures, who funded you guys. And I was giving her the report card from the field. I was really impressed by what you guys had done. Your factory... I've been to so many aerospace, or I've just been to so many factories, and there is like a, there's a certain aesthetic, I guess, that I notice sometimes just with people who take stuff seriously. It was all, it was like super well organized. It was clean. You could tell people were taking their jobs seriously. You know, it reminded me a little bit of like Rocket Lab and Peter Beck who takes these things very seriously. So anyway, I was impressed. Let's get into your background a bit because it's fascinating. Or you know what? So I just gave my two cents on describing it around. But do you want to describe it first just so people have a feel for the way you're thinking about the company and then we'll go back maybe to how it got started?

Naman Pushp: Yeah, yeah. So I mean I think around what we're doing has evolved a lot over time. But I think by way, today we deeply believe in this idea of what I would call a universal transport. And it's a fact that anything that we use for movement is generally evaluated on sort of three axes. Your cost, speed, and versatility, right? Cost and speed are obvious. Versatility is sort of how easily can I get from point A to point B without needing to use any other transport? So, for instance, trains, not very versatile. And the other is, you know, how much payload do I need for this to make sense, right? Trucks and buses, not very versatile. Cars and scooters, very versatile. And... We believe that if you want to displace a form of transport, if you are cheaper, faster, and more versatile, you are pretty much guaranteed to win in that market. So our goal is really to make aerial transports that are cheaper, faster, and more versatile than 80% of the entire logistics market and 90% of the human transportation market.

Ashlee Vance: And so it's this massive goal and you talk about it so confidently. I love it. You know, so. You guys have made this huge bet on carbon fiber. I mean, that's really one place where you start. And when we were talking in India, I mean, correct me if I'm mischaracterizing this, but it's sort of, obviously we use carbon fiber in aircraft today. There's rockets made of carbon fiber. In Boeing or Airbus, as I understand it, they've been Replacing bits and pieces of their aircraft over time with carbon fiber. It's very light. It's very strong, but obviously didn't go in to making the plane with carbon fiber in mind. This is like something that's come on over time. And when I was talking to you, it just seemed like you seem to be saying, If you knew about carbon fiber from the very beginning and you were going to go all in, you would design your aircraft differently. And we're starting from that thesis and that first principles approach. You're looking at me like, maybe I'm getting this wrong. But so that was a bit of my impression of talking to you is – People, even though carbon fiber has been around for a long time, it has a reputation of being expensive. It was a little bit harder to make for a while. And you felt like we'd reached a point with it where if you really took it seriously, you would do things differently.

Naman Pushp: Yeah. Yeah. So I was right. Yeah, you're definitely right. I think I've also just found some ways to make this a bit more intuitive and easy to understand. I think one of the things that people often don't realize, but is actually really obvious once you start thinking about it, is that the way we design anything in this world is a function of Our manufacturing limitations, right? If you look at the mic that you have, the sort of, you know, metallic mesh that you have there, you wouldn't see a mesh like that made out of any other material because it is uniquely easy to manufacture a shape like that out of metal. And the best engineers, whether they do this consciously or subconsciously, they're always designing with the production limitations of a material in mind. Now the problem when you move across material classes is if you are designing based on metal intuition and you are designing for carbon fiber, then you are somewhat limited to the overlap of parts that can be made out of metal and can be made out of carbon fiber. And we feel like that overlap is, like there's not a lot of great stuff in that overlap, right? Similar to how there's not a lot of great stuff that can be made in the same way out of wood and metal. And we realized that actually the best parts you can make out of carbon fiber would be impossible to manufacture if you try to make them out of metal. So it's a lot of both breaking the intuitions we have around how we make things around metal and also just about actually pushing the frontier and building new manufacturing processes for designs that we've known for a long time are impossible to make out of the old era of materials but suddenly become possible with the new era of materials.

Ashlee Vance: And you, and I think one way also to explain this, maybe for people, well, I don't know, this is totally fair, but my sense was you don't love it if people call your vehicles drones. You prefer aircraft. And that's because, and I want to describe it to people who haven't seen them. I mean, they're not like you're, they're not a drone. Like most people think of a drone like a DJI. It's not this quadcopter thing with four propellers. You guys have two. I mean, it looks more like an aircraft. It looks, um, God, how did this shape is kind of unique. It's hard to, it's hard to describe. I mean, it's, it's sort of got this curved fatter middle bit than with the wings on the, on the side and, and then just two propellers. And obviously there's a spot for the batteries and the flight controller and some of the avionics, but I mean, it was, it's, it's quite simplified. I, the, the first generation, I mean, how light it was so light.

Naman Pushp: It was, um, Yeah, like, I mean, the aircraft shell itself is around, what, like 300, 400 grams?

Ashlee Vance: 300, 400 grams, and that one can fly two pounds of?

Naman Pushp: Yes.

Ashlee Vance: Two pounds?

Naman Pushp: Yes, one kilo, 2.2 pounds.

Ashlee Vance: Okay, and then the bigger one, what was the wingspan on it?

Naman Pushp: Bigger one was 2.4 meter wingspan. Okay. And it can carry about five kilos, so 11 pounds.

Ashlee Vance: And how much does that one weigh, the frame?

Naman Pushp: So the structure itself weighs about 700 grams.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. And so they take off vertically, vertical takeoff and landing, and then the propellers kind of shift to then let you fly in a way that would look very similar to a plane or kind of a bigger drone and just super quiet. I mean, like, They were up there flying with all these birds, and it was sort of hard to tell which one was which, to be honest. I mean, it had just like a little hum to it. And then they, as you know, I got super hung up on... I mean, they can hover like a helicopter just with the two propellers, and I was... I mean, so they're kind of gimballed, and I was... I was sort of shocked. I mean, it's not a violent movement. It was like very fine grained controls to do the hovering.

Naman Pushp: Yeah. I mean, it just comes down to, you know, the same way you have three axes of movement, you have three axes of rotation, pitch, roll, and yaw. And if you can control your aircraft in all of these rotational axes, then you can achieve great control. So that's really it. It doesn't matter whether you use one propeller, two propeller, five propellers to do it. It just matters how finely can you control this and how quickly can you respond to, you know, any disturbance.

Ashlee Vance: And so in these early days with the one kilo, two pounds of capacity flying things like medical goods, remind me how long they can fly and what distance? Maybe do both the first and the second gen.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, so the first gen can do about, you know, 30 kilometers of distance. And that's, I mean, flies at 60 km, so roughly around like 30, slightly longer than 30 minutes of flight time. The version 2 can do up to 800 kilometers, and that would generally correspond to a flight time of around an hour. Okay. But it depends. I mean, you can go faster and, you know, drain that range more quickly.

Ashlee Vance: And for the moment, I mean, this is vaguely comparing to Zipline or what Amazon is trying to do with delivery. I am most familiar with Zipline by far, just because I spent a bunch of time with them. I mean, they had pretty lightweight aircraft. It was made of sort of like a styrofoam material in a lot of parts. They do this thing where the big drone is covering the distance and then they pop out this little baby drone on a tether. And that's what's like bringing your sandwich or your coffee down to the ground. And they have mechanisms on that, if I remember right, like kind of little propellers to try to... Combat the wind while it's lowering this thing down on the tether. Is your approach similar? I remember. I mean, there is a bit of a tether.

Naman Pushp: So I think one of the main differences in our approach is that we realized weight alone is not the issue. Volume is actually a much bigger issue. And so you can build an aircraft with like 3 kg, 5 kg of payload capacity. But if you have to fit that all in a tiny space, you'd be hard pressed to find payloads that actually use up the full capacity. So what we focused on is just making like a big, what we call a big payload basket where you can just dump items in and you can put like, frankly, a disgusting amount of stuff inside of each aircraft. And that's the thing, right? Like you can put five, six orders in there. You can use this to restock, you know, dark stores, restaurants, small warehouses, et cetera. Like it's viable for a lot more than just single package delivery.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. And then in one contention, I mean, well, I guess this is just math and metrics. I mean, Zipline and Amazon, they're just heavier machines than what you guys make. I forget off the top of my head. I mean, do you know the comparisons?

Naman Pushp: Yeah, so generally sort of industry best is around for every kilogram of payload that you lift, you need about four to five kilograms of aircraft. I think Zipline's at about 5.8. Amazon is even higher, I think somewhere in the six to seven range. So, you know, vast majority of the weight is the aircraft there. What we've managed to do is we're lifting five kilos of payload with a three kilo aircraft, right? Yeah. As compared to, you know, industry standard would be a like 25 to 30 kilogram acre.

Ashlee Vance: Right. Okay. Okay. So, okay. Both those companies have been at this for a very long time. I think beyond a decade. And, you know, I know Zipline takes a lot of pride in safety and some of this engineering they've put in, I think they would argue is to get the thing down on the ground without... Plunking someone in the head and also to withstand pretty gusty wind and weather conditions. I'm kind of going on a tangent to my main question, which is. There were very well-funded companies who have been trying to do this for a very long time. You're a young man, you know, starting well behind them. And so clearly that didn't intimidate you. You're just betting on this theory that you can design just a far more efficient vehicle than what they've done.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, because I... I think what we have, you know, moving later is the benefit of foresight and, you know, the benefit of just being able to see how everything plays out. When a zipline or an Amazon started, drone delivery, you know, was really a question of if, not when. Today it's a question of when, not if. And so we get to see that, hey, things are panning out, regulations are being made, we can, you know, build according to those, we can see, you know, how the market is adapting to this. And so rather than having to invest our energy across multiple different fields of, you know, not just the aircraft, but how do you think about, you know, figuring out the loading, unloading when there is zero standard for it that exists? How do you figure out, you know, noise, the customer experience? How do you figure out the infrastructure, the regulations? You know, like you're sort of being the aircraft, the airport, And the airline, and that's a lot to do, right? You know, excellence there really means being good at a lot of things. Now, our belief is that as a lot of this becomes more standardized, we feel like there's actually minimal differentiation in doing the airport right or doing the airline right. It really comes down to the aircraft. And so we have the luxury to focus all of our energy on the aircraft, on making that as efficient as possible. Because at the end of the day, you know, we believe that autonomy is getting soft. Autonomy in the air is much, much easier. Easier than autonomy on the ground, right? The systems that like the 28 systems we put up in the air are all fully autonomous. We also believe that safety is the kind of thing that comes with maturity of development and you're already starting to see great safety with a lot of these platforms. The key thing with both of these is they're sort of binary checkboxes, right? If you're autonomous, great. If you're safe, great. But nobody's going to choose you over someone else because you are 10x more autonomous or 10x safer. But when it comes to efficiency, that's not the case. Unit economics are something that continuously matter. And if you are able to have a structurally lower cost than your competition, regardless of what their costs are, you have an edge over them, which is not true when you apply that to safety or how quiet the aircraft is or anything else.

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Naman Pushp: Core Memory.

Ashlee Vance: I think we're fine to talk about this because we talked about it in India. I mean, you're not just hoping to do cargo. I mean, you have a vision all the way up to transporting people one day.

Naman Pushp: Yes.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, I tweeted about this and people seem to, like, this was the first time they'd heard it, but I guess I had already tweeted it, so.

Naman Pushp: No, we put it up on our manifesto, but yeah, it's something that, you know, I understand if, you know, you didn't read the full 10-pager, which, you know, most people in the world have not read that.

Ashlee Vance: I should have if I was a teaser reporter. Perfect.

Naman Pushp: I just mean people. I think the manifesto came out after your trip. So I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

Ashlee Vance: But so that is the goal is all transporting objects and flesh.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, and I think that's sort of that idea of the universal transport that I began with, that, you know, this is, it has to work for everything, right? It has to work regardless of whether you're moving flesh, whether you're moving, like, you know, physics doesn't exactly care whether the payload you're moving has a soul or not. It's all the same at the end of the day. Yeah, sure. You need to add like, you know, windows and seats and like a little bit of HVAC to keep the humans happy inside. But, you know, in the grand scheme of things, there's not a big difference between a system that has that and one that doesn't, especially in aviation, right? It's practically the same aircrafts that move cargo and the ones that move people.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. Okay. So I have some, I mean, I've got some Questions, they're vaguely tough, I think, about the technology, but I'm going to save those just for one second. And I just want to go back to the origin story a little bit because you're a fascinating dude. So you're, I mean, if I remember right, you're about 16 years old when you start to put together this idea and look for some funding behind it.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, yeah, around that age.

Ashlee Vance: So what happens? You're sitting around at 16 and you're like, I think I can make a better aircraft than anybody else. How does this happen? Yeah.

Naman Pushp: I wish I started with that level of conviction. But no, I think I had very realistic ambitions when I started out. Airbound actually started off as OpenDrone. So it started off as a project to create an open source delivery drone design that anyone could use and 3D print and just make drone delivery in their own locality.

Ashlee Vance: Just because you wanted to do it or you were into drones?

Naman Pushp: Yeah, I think just... I actually... So that's like a funny thing where I've just never been into drones. The first drone that I ever flew and the first drone that I ever built were both an airbound drone. And it was actually... Less than a year ago that I first owned a drone that was not an Airbound drone. So I'm definitely not the drone guy. But I was like, a lot of why I'm doing this sort of goes back to much, much earlier. I think one of my core memories from when I was a child, like when I was around first or second grade was... Yes. You know, shameless plugs. So this was when, this was like, I think me learning about the Fermi paradox, you know, where are the aliens out there? And I just found the concept really fascinating that there exists a question, right? And actually there exist many questions that a first or second grader is capable of understanding, yet no human in the world is capable of answering. It just opened my eyes to like there is so much out there that is not yet discovered. There is so much that can still be done with humanity, which, you know, at first when you look around, you're like, damn, we like solved everything. There's nothing else left. So that was there. I'd been sort of deeply obsessed with kind of the scale of humanity and like what it takes to, you know, answer these questions, do something that hasn't been done before. And at first it just feels impossible, right? Like there's 8 billion people in the world. Statistically, like, you know, each one of us is insignificant. You're insignificant. I'm insignificant. But somehow that is not true, right? Somehow there are still people that in spite of the odds move forward and really like measurably impact humanity as a whole. And I've been deeply interested in being one of those people. I think it comes through leverage. And the strongest leverage we have is technology. If you invent a new technology that changes the way people live, then you would have by proxy change. And so I always wanted to invent something. And I think why I just landed up in this space was honestly more coincidence than anything. I'd actually seen some videos on Zipline. I was deeply inspired by what they were doing. And I just wanted to see what I could do to contribute to this space.

Ashlee Vance: And so you're 16 and you start tinkering to try to build one.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, yeah. I sort of, so this was around COVID 2020. I sort of joined this, you know, hackathon project. There were these like online groups where people had come together to volunteer their time. So did a hackathon there, managed to get a $500 grant. And I was just like, you know, I want to build this. I want to see how this goes.

Ashlee Vance: And that was the Emergent Ventures credit or different?

Naman Pushp: No, this was Emergent gives more money than $500, you know, yay for Shruti. So that's there. This was at 15. This was just like the conception of the idea. Then I realized. I realized that, oh God, I like messed up the design completely. I learned a bunch through the process, still built that aircraft. It got like a quarter second of airtime. And then I was like, okay, here's what I need to fix. I designed a new aircraft. That one is the TRT, like we still use it today. And I think with that design, I managed to get $8,000 grants, still not Emergent Ventures. You know, use that to like, I could finally afford a 3D printer, start working with carbon fiber instead of fiberglass. And so I was just building this, had these weird sims in my bedroom. And I think somewhat in parallel, I ended up getting, you know, our first investment, which was like a $25,000 investment from Trad Capital. And I also got a, you know, roughly like $12,000, $12,500 grant from now Emergent Ventures.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. Okay. And how did you hear about them?

Naman Pushp: So this was actually through the $1,000 grant. So I got this from 1517. I don't know if they still do. They used to run a grant program. And so they just had these weekly calls with people from the community. And they were like, oh, you should check out Emergent Ventures. And so I did. And it didn't look very interesting because it was this weird fund. And then they're like, no, no, no, you're on the wrong website today.

Ashlee Vance: There are a couple, yeah.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, there are like VCs called Emergent Ventures. And I was just like, is this what they want? No, it's like, you know, the market. Now it's the first thing that comes up when you search Emergent Ventures. Back then it wasn't. So after like going to the wrong website, I finally made my way to the right one. I sent an application. I think two weeks later, I got a call from Shruti and she was like, cool, we will give you money.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, yeah. And you're telling your parents about all this? What are they making of it?

Naman Pushp: I think they're just deeply confused. I think they were trying to figure out whether all of this is a scam or not. And I think they were just confused as to how do you scam a 16-year-old by giving him $10,000? Like, honestly, with the Grad Capital investment, the founder of Grad Capital, Abhishek, said he literally had to get on a call with my dad to convince him why he should let his son take money from them. And why, like, they are not a scam or, like, a money laundering scheme or something.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, yeah. I guess I could see that. Yeah.

Naman Pushp: What do your parents do? They're both in the banking sector.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. Yeah. Oh, so they were, yeah, they're. Actually,

Naman Pushp: my mom used to work in anti-money laundering.

Ashlee Vance: Do you have brothers and sisters?

Naman Pushp: No, I'm an only child.

Ashlee Vance: Okay, so you're, I mean, you were mentioning it a bit, but so describe your bedroom to me at peak prototyping.

Naman Pushp: Oh, God. There's too much to describe. I should actually send you a photo of it. I have it on my phone. But it was like, because I was basically trying to run an entire workshop out of my bedroom, and my desk only had space for one thing at a time. So I would just have like a random 3D printer on the side. The floor would like always be filled with newspapers because I would work with like resin and carbon fiber a lot and my parents were like, you're going to destroy the floor. So just like replace the newspapers every day. I spent a decent amount of time like taping newspapers to the floor.

Ashlee Vance: Shouldn't you have some like airflow for this?

Naman Pushp: Yeah, yeah, this is like what I learned later. I was working with these chemicals and my parents were complaining about the smell and I'm like, no, no, no, don't worry about it. It does smell weird, but it's safe. Like, you know, I checked the, I checked like the material safety data sheet, you know, I'll show it to you. And I just whipped out the material safety data sheet. And I was like, oh, shit, no, this is like, this has a toxicity rating of four on a scale of one to four. And it is like a class three carcinogen. And I was just like, okay, I should buy a restorator. That was also like a lot of the impetus for like, you know, hey, when I get money, I should probably move out. Like, I don't have the space. Like, I don't. Like, yeah, it's a small apartment, right? So I had to build out of my bedroom. I needed to go to a place where, you know, I could sleep and build in different rooms. That was like the ultimate luxury. So at 16, I ended up moving out, got my own place. Oh, wow. Just sort of had like master bedroom for this, had like a tiny half bedroom for me to sleep.

Ashlee Vance: What did your parents think of that?

Naman Pushp: They actually suggested it. So actually, so... I was living in Mumbai at the time, and my plan was to move to Bangalore because I was like, that's where all the startup stuff is. And they were like, no, you are still in school. And it's online school. I can just, like, they don't know whether I'm in Bangalore or Mumbai. And they're like, no, nothing doing. You know, we know some localities nearby. You can get your own place, but it has to be in the city. So a lot of people ask, like, oh, how did you convince them to, like, let you move out to, you know, this other part of town? And I'm like, it was their idea.

Ashlee Vance: Okay, so you did stay in town, though. Okay, this is fascinating. And you're teaching yourself carbon fiber on YouTube. I mean, you're learning these skills from YouTube.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, YouTube is awesome.

Ashlee Vance: It's kind of amazing, right? Yeah, it is. Okay, so you're moving along, you're getting some money, and then how does this start to become a company?

Naman Pushp: It's a good question. And I think like different ages of Naman would give you different answers, right? I think that, you know, while I was in school, while I was, you know, spending a bunch of my time building this out, I was still like juggling classes at the same time. It was really just like me. It was basically me just being, you know, paid by like the nice VCs of the world to learn engineering. And like, thank you to them. I will hope to make you money someday. But... That's there. Like, I think Airbound was really a science project while I was in school, which I think teenager number one would take a lot of offense to me saying that. But I think it's true. I think a lot really changed, you know, around when we got our pre-seat round. So this was, you know, I graduated from high school. I was like, look, I really want to pursue this. Let me just defer my admission by a year. You know, still have a seat at college. Worst case, I'm just late by a year.

Ashlee Vance: In the U.S. or India?

Naman Pushp: In the U.S., yeah. India doesn't really do different.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. Which school?

Naman Pushp: This was CMU. Okay. So that's there. I deferred my admission. And in that year, I was figuring out a bunch of things, but we ended up raising. You know, one and a half mil round led by Lightspeed. And that's when, you know, it sort of hits the like, oh shit, you know, this is an actual company now. This is not just me. Like, it's hard to spend a million dollars, like, you know, just building tech out of your bedroom. But, you know, it's really, that's when we started to hire people. That's when we started to, you know, build a real business and not just, you know, me creating some tech for fun.

Ashlee Vance: So there's like part of this that would fit in the Silicon Valley lore. Clearly been funding college dropouts for decades, you know, and some of them have done all right. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the list goes on. But, I mean, there's something wild about like an 18-year-old saying, you know, I'm going to design aircraft that nobody else have ever done. You know what I mean? Because it's a field, obviously... 100 years of people trying to design aircraft. You didn't have any of the typical credentials people might want to see. When I talk to you, I mean, I think anyone who talked to you would understand you're incredibly bright. So I'm sure... This was playing a factor in everything. You know you're convincing when you talk about this stuff. You don't come off as just like totally crazy. But I mean, it's nuts to sort of be like, I'm 18. I'm going to design aircraft better than anyone has done before. Trust me. So, I mean, that seems like almost like the highest bar to talk a VC into. Maybe it's a hard question for you to answer. Maybe I should ask them. But yeah, why do you think they sort of bought into the pitch?

Naman Pushp: I'll have to be like, eh, it's just me. And I'm like, I'm just great at this. I floored them. No, I think this is just the natural evolution of, I think, VC as a whole. Look, I think the frank reality is that if I started doing this even five years earlier, I don't think everyone would have ever gotten off, just off into even being a company, off to hiring our first employee. I think a few different things that have come together for this. One is that case studies like SpaceX and Tesla, which you know very well. I'm familiar. You're familiar. Have, I think, proven that you can build great tech in this manner. Musk was also a complete outsider. Sure, he wasn't an 18-year-old, but he started these companies without having done any engineering before. He learned everything on the job. And it's that, hey, actually, if you're just really good at thinking from first principles and building this, it's a different skill set, but it's a similar skill set to just building a business. You just have to be exceptional at the tech. So I think that's one of the things that helped, you know, obviously young founders being successful was becoming more and more common. And, you know, there were just starting to be funds that were contemplating the idea of like, hey, maybe I'll fund a kid that's still in high school.

Ashlee Vance: And you had, you built something.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, I'd also built something.

Ashlee Vance: Like I could see it. Yeah. It was flying. It was not flying. Was it not flying?

Naman Pushp: It was not flying for a while. I think we got to actual flying meaningfully after the light speed round. Yeah, we were... You know, to quote Toy Story, we were not flying, we were falling with style.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. And so, and you were, you finished, you said you were at online school, you finished high school? Yes. And then, then you're kind of getting this light speed check at the same time, roughly. And then you're, how many people are you hiring?

Naman Pushp: I think we were slow to hire early on, but I think by the time we raised our seat round, we were maybe around like 15, 20-ish people. Holy cow. Okay.

Ashlee Vance: Wow. Wow. And, and the, I don't, God, I don't think I'm being like too egregiously stereotypical or something. I just feel like, I feel like, you know, in the US, if you come from a family where you're supposed to kind of like be on the path to college, there's a lot of pressure to drop out. Although obviously sort of become a thing in the, in the tech world. I just feel like all my Indian friends, everything I know is just that You're meant to become a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer. And those are kind of like all the options. And not going to Carnegie Mellon is definitely not on the recommended path. Is that changing? Or was that a really difficult conversation?

Naman Pushp: I think, again, a mix of both. I do think it's starting to change. I do think, you know, especially like... I mean... It's obviously nowhere close to Silicon Valley, but India is the third or fourth largest startup ecosystem in the world. We have seen enough cases of really young kids go out and be hyper successful. And I think the government is also pushing a lot On making these stories more visible. So the idea of being a startup founder is becoming less and less alien. There are more comparisons. Somehow my parents had a friend that had done a startup, which I wouldn't have imagined happening with their parents for sure. And I think the other thing is a lot of this is sort of about wealth at a country scale. I think India is a country where, you know, my generation is sort of the first generation where you have at least some people that do come from, you know, a decent amount of wealth, right? Like, I think for me, the biggest luxury is that I knew... No matter, you know, what happened, I would always have food to eat and I would always have a roof over my head. And at the end, like, how much more do you need, right? And I think that's what, that's the luxury that I had that my parents ever did, right? Like for my dad's success meant, you know, always being able to put food on the table for your family. And he had seen a lot of people in his family run businesses. And to him, running a business meant that if the business doesn't do well, you can't, You can't eat. And so he wanted the opposite of that. He wanted that stability. He was never thinking about, oh, this is what I enjoy doing, etc. But it was because of that that my parents were able to let me have passions. I think one thing that was a bit unique about my childhood is... My parents never pushed a career path on me. I do think it helped that I never wanted to become an artist or something that doesn't make money. I always wanted to get into engineering and physics. I'm going to

Ashlee Vance: be an industrialist.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, um... But like one of the things that my mom told me from a really early age is just, you know, do whatever you want, but be the best at it, right? Like you can go and cut hair for all I care, but then you better be the best barber in the city, right? Like everyone should say like, I want Naman to cut my hair, right? Like that's what I want you to do. Do whatever career you want, just be excellent at it.

Ashlee Vance: Okay, okay, okay. So they didn't try to talk you out of it or anything. Did anyone try to talk you into moving to the US to build the company?

Naman Pushp: I think in our folks early on, I just never saw a very compelling reason for it. I think, yeah, I don't know. I think a lot of people move to the US because it's just like, oh my God, there's more money here, right? And I mean, you have a lot of accelerator programs that just have A standard investment deal, but the standard deal gives you double the valuation if you move to the US. There's a lot of these early stage money things where you can just be like, oh, just move to the US. But to me, there's no compelling reason for the business. I am trying to build great technology, and that great technology can be built anywhere. I think there is a lot of talent in India and I think I can build it here. And over time, I think it's gone from, you know, this ambivalence of like, you know, just why move to the US to like, no, actually, I think India is the better place to build this tech. I think there's a lot of unique things about India that make it a better place to build a company like Airbound than the US.

Ashlee Vance: Like, let's get into those. Because, look, we've got... Multi decades of this brain drain of India to the US. You and I were hanging out playing board games one night and something you guys were talking about really struck me, which was, and please correct me if I'm misremembering sort of how you put it, but that people didn't have, young people maybe didn't have like pride in India. And so maybe that was another reason you sort of want to go to the US and make your mark. And so You're talking about, oh, I think there's business reasons to stay. I don't know. Walk me through both sides of that. Was some of it emotional and wanting to build a company like this in India or was it just quite practical?

Naman Pushp: I think in the early days it was mainly practical. I can't deny that I think there are emotional reasons now. I think especially when you get to a point that you realize that you could genuinely be one of the people that pushes your nation forward, that if I succeed hard enough, I actually become part of the reason that India is becoming better, then it's pretty hard to leave India and to give up on that ambition. But yeah, I think early days, it was really purely practical, right? I mean, first off, just early days when you don't have a lot of money, it doesn't make sense to, you know, come here, you know, ramp up your burner bunch. But I think like, yeah.

Ashlee Vance: Can we break that down for a second? I mean, you're saying land is cheaper, a building's cheaper, the people are cheaper, all of that? Yeah.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, like, yeah, just, I mean, cost of living is much lower, right? Like a dollar goes much further in India than it goes in the US. But, you know, as you scale up, that stops being a good reason, right? It just becomes that, hey, you know, we've raised like 37 mil now, and that is actually enough money to like run a company out of the US by like a decent margin. I think for me, there's a few different reasons. I think one of the biggest ones is the people, right? I think Indians are sort of one of the greatest talent pools that exist globally. I remember seeing this little diagram of like, What is the highest paid nationality in each state in the US? And I think 70% of the states were just Indians. Indians do really well. And I think pretty much all of the great businesses you see here are built on top of Indian talent. There's an obscene number of Indians in Tesla, SpaceX. And I mean, now they're just running multinational companies. So I don't think there's any question that Indian talent is not good. I think Indian talent is great. And especially if you're able to get that talent early, it works really well. There's also an increasing... Like moving out of the country is becoming less and less popular, right? And this has changed like dramatically, even at a timescale of like three to five years, right? Five years ago, when I was looking at going to college, it was just like, duh, I mean, if you can afford to go to the US, why would you ever stay in India, right? Like nobody was thinking about staying in India. And, you know, like in my school, about 80% of the class would go to college abroad. And now a decent chunk of those people are planning to come back to India after they're done with college and spend the rest of their lives in India.

Ashlee Vance: Is it because the US got shittier or India's nicer? I think it's a mix of both, right?

Naman Pushp: Like, I think it's interesting because, you know, like, again, 10 years ago when you go to the US, it's just an objectively higher quality of life than India. But, you know, I Well, I don't know, like, I feel like today it's more just a different quality of life, right? The US is better in certain regards, but it's also worse in certain regards. And suddenly it's not as clear that, you know, India is the worst place to live.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, I mean, I'll run the risk of giving my three weeks in India survey of things. I would say I feel like life is probably like at least, you know, again, sorry, audience, this is my limited experience as a momentary traveler, but it feels like I feel like life is like easier day to day here, just like a little smoother. You know, there's just shit tons of traffic. Not that we don't have traffic, but the traffic in Bangalore and Hyderabad is bad. There's no joke. I mean, both cities feels like... My assumption is they grew so much quicker than anyone had ever planned for. And there was no central planning at all. And so it's just kind of like hanging on for dear life. I think India in general is that bit more like chaotic and frenetic and full of energy. And all of that like is actually awesome. And then, but also adds this like friction to just getting around doing your daily life. And so, I mean, it's like what, but I mean, what a... And I, reminds me of like when I went to Nigeria, which I, it's like in Lagos, which I feel like most people, it's a lot of people do not like. I love the energy and like the, not just like the chaos, but like just the, everybody's doing something and is like out, quite ambitious, trying to make their way in the world. And there's just, and then, oh man, I just love obviously like all the culture, the colors and the food and everything. But I mean, what do you like? When you're doing the pros and cons, what do you love about staying in India then?

Naman Pushp: Yeah, I think, look, I think the U.S. has like a lot of obvious benefits, right? I think traffic is definitely better. The roads are a lot better in the U.S. The air is a lot cleaner. You know, there's much more nature present. But then there's a bunch of things like in India, If you're living in India, your day-to-day life becomes a lot easier. Most homes have house help. You're generally looking at getting deliveries is a lot easier. Food comes a lot faster. You're able to just get anything in 10 minutes. Like I had to go for a wedding and I couldn't find my kurta, which is like Indian version of a suit. I couldn't find my kurta. And so I just ordered one and it came in 20 minutes. I don't think like anyone in the US can imagine like not having a suit for a wedding and getting that in 20 minutes.

Ashlee Vance: It is hard to explain. I was like at a party and I'm like, oh, I'm not feeling my best. And then everyone's ordering me. Medicines, teas, all these, and they're just arriving. But as I'm trying to leave the party, they're like, no, no, it's gonna be here in two minutes. And it's like, it's just a total cultural thing with these delivery apps.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, it's like one of those things where, again, I feel like whenever, look, you'll always be biased towards the place where you are, right? And I think as an American coming to India, you're going to notice the things that like India doesn't have that the US has. And generally, you never notice the flip side. Indians going to the US are like, oh my God, it's just so much better here. But what I find surprising is like, I start to notice things. I'm like, oh God, I have to like pre-plan my food because I can't just order when I'm hungry and expect it to show up in like 15, 20 minutes. I have to... Like, just a really random thing, right? Like, I generally don't shave. I trim my beard. I forgot to bring my trimmer, which in India is not a problem. Like, you'll just get one in 10 minutes. I, like, I just couldn't find a trimmer here that I could get ordered. And I was just like, I really, like, Indian deliveries have just spoiled to you. I just don't have any need to, like, go to a store and buy something physically. And so I'm just like, well, I guess I'm shaving now. Yeah.

Ashlee Vance: David Nicholson, our cameraman who you met, if you remember, he also forgot his razor and had one delivered in like four minutes.

Naman Pushp: Yeah. So that's there, right? Like getting food at midnight is like a big pain over here. It's not a pain at all in India. So I think there's differences. Crime rates are actually like... Surprisingly low in India. Like you don't have, because just employment is much higher. Like you don't really have to, you know, worry about, you know, like the homeless or any other, like just safety is, I'd say like, honestly, I feel much safer walking around in India at night.

Ashlee Vance: Because this had not occurred to me and a couple people brought this up. I mean, is it anecdotal or are there numbers behind this that all the gig work in India has had this material difference on unemployment and that...

Naman Pushp: I'm sure, I'm sure there are numbers. I don't know the numbers. I think for me, it's mostly anecdotal. For me, like the biggest anecdote is just, I remember when I was like, I don't know, 10, 12 or something. And like, you know, I was going around, my parents would just be like, Don't leave your bag in the car. You know, be careful when out in the street. Someone could just snatch your bag or anything. You know, like just be really careful, right? Like what if you get kidnapped, et cetera. And now what I hear is when you're in Europe and when you're in the US, be careful about this, right? Like don't leave your bag in your car.

Ashlee Vance: Like San Francisco is a fucking nightmare.

Naman Pushp: Yeah. Like my parents. And again, like this, I don't know. It's just, it's hard when you're brought up this way. This feels like such an inversion, right? Like my parents are just... Like they went to holiday in Europe and they were in Spain and they were just like shit scared for their belongings all the time. And they were like, there was this one moment when we went, we were checking into a five-star hotel and just left your bags, you know, just down next to you in the lobby. And then they were stolen. Somebody nicked them. Yeah. Okay. And just like, you don't hear about things like this in India.

Ashlee Vance: Spain's like that. I love Spain, but it's been like that for a long time. Okay, so this is fascinating. And then you and I, we talked about this a lot when I was there. I mean, you're not alone. I mean, there's a whole... Okay, so there's a part of Bangalore called Hoscote. I kept describing it as like the El Segundo of India, meaning, I guess for people who aren't nerds, sort of like this hard tech... Centric place, people building aircraft, missiles, everything you could imagine, all in this region and setting up in these, like you guys in this kind of warehouse-y type environments. And so there is this generation, I mean, everybody I met and hung out with, all your friends, they all... Either didn't go to college, dropped out of college, or doing these startups. And again, I mean, we talked about this a lot, but there does seem to be a thing going on. I mean, this is like a moment. It feels like it, right? It is. And so this is, it's just part of, you said you couldn't do this five years ago. It's part of, it's part of what? Like what in those five years, People just, what totally changed to make everybody wanna kinda take this risk now and stay and do things different?

Naman Pushp: I feel like a lot of founders are going to hit me for saying this, but I think there's a lot of reasons, but I think it's mainly just venture capital. It is venture as much as founders like to shit on venture and be like, ugh, investors. The reality is that deep tech cannot exist without venture. Especially when you look at historical accounts of how businesses, industrialists were made in the, you know, Like early 1900s and all like it is it is genuinely insane that people are willing to throw 10s of millions of dollars at pre revenue companies to be like, yeah, just just fill the tech like we know you'll get money later. It is it is insane. Like this environment did not exist even until very recently.

Ashlee Vance: So, okay, we've been doing deep tech in the US for a very long time, although the interest in it has these boom and bust cycles. We're clearly in a bit of a boom. And so that, if I'm reading you right, that kind of carried over to India as well?

Naman Pushp: Yes, absolutely. And I think, like, lots of things the government has done combined. But honestly, like, I don't... I honestly don't think that deep tech has really been a thing in the US until this boom cycle. Obviously, you've had cases like SpaceX, Tesla, and all, but I think these are all second-time founder companies.

Ashlee Vance: I guess the way I'm describing it is... Like we did semiconductors for decades and it was expensive and it took years to pay off. We did gene sequencers. We, you know, we have, I've lived, I've lived through these periods. Like, you know, what tends to happen is like the dot-com boom comes along and then it's like, wow. It's way easier to make money potentially off of a website than it is to like fund semiconductors. So people pull away, you know, and then something like, like you're saying, then something like Tesla comes along or SpaceX and it's like, oh, well, if you hit this right, it's fucking massive, you know? And so then it swings back and then obviously we have this kind of political, um, National moment of wanting to manufacture again and all that. But I think Um, I think you're we did actually used to do deep tech. It slightly different.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, but I think, again, like back then, it wasn't really like venture that funded it, right? Like these were large research bodies. These were, you know, traditional investments. Like you had weird structures if you wanted to get money for this, right? Either you get a government grant. Because it's like spun out of a PhD program. You're doing this from like a very big college that has a lot of money behind it. Or you're somehow able to figure out how to commercialize early. You get like weird debt things. And I've like researched a lot about like this innovation like 100 years ago. So like free semiconductor era. Like if you look at a lot of like surprisingly insightful conversations between inventors happened in debtor's prison.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, okay.

Naman Pushp: Because that was the only way they could get money.

Ashlee Vance: Okay.

Naman Pushp: And because they couldn't pay it back fast enough, some of the greatest minds were just locked up in prison.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Naman Pushp: Because financing structures were terrible back then.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, and I guess, I mean, the definition of deep tech, I guess, could be very... I was just thinking back to, like, you know, it's like when... I mean, really... Some of the first instances of what we think of as venture capital of the day would be like Fairchild Semiconductor and then Arthur Rock putting money into Intel. And then you had the whole PC run with Apple and Microsoft and things like that. But anyway, we don't have to get... So this is part of what changed is that people are willing to take risk on an 18-year-old who has... Wild idea on aircraft in this moment in time. And so, okay, so it's, it's sort of like a big, big picture change. And then, and then your friends are like, we might as well do it here. There's structural advantages. I like living here and money can get here, but you guys, you seem to like done. Pretty well with the venture capitalists. I mean, almost everybody else I talked to in India, it was quite critical of the local VCs for still chasing the easier money in apps and AI and software and not wanting to take risks on the hard tech. When I was there, hung out with Aether, which is, On a path to make a million electric scooters over the next year. Has been around for almost for a decade, I think. Went to their factory. It was like, couldn't be more legitimate. There's just people making scooters everywhere. They're awesome. They're cheap. Couldn't raise money. Had to go public because nobody would give them money to expand as fast as they wanted. Like there is a local, it felt like a... A dislike for the local venture capital community.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, no, I think Ather's story is especially funny because I think Ather grew more in their first year in the public markets than they grew in their past five years in the private markets.

Ashlee Vance: Like people missed out.

Naman Pushp: People really missed out on Ather. In fact, the funny thing is that when Ather IPO'd, It was a really lukewarm reaction because investors were like, yeah, sure, they're like a unicorn now, but it took them way too long to get there. And then guess what? They like forexed in less than two years.

Ashlee Vance: Right. And if somebody had given them $200 million earlier, they would have grown. So much faster.

Naman Pushp: Yeah. So that's there. I do agree. I think this environment is starting to change and I think the change is happening fast. I think the government is also throwing a lot of fuel to the fire.

Ashlee Vance: So they open these deep tech funds.

Naman Pushp: Yes, exactly. You know, to encourage investment in deep tech. So I think what this means is that like this whole deep tech boom cycle that you're seeing in SF has, I think, transferred to India much faster than most other boom cycles do. Yeah. And I think that's great. The challenge is just, I mean, if you're If you think about like structurally how to build a fund, I think deep tech requires a very different thought process. And, you know, the large funds in India, the LPs behind them generally do not like that kind of risk appetite, right? Like they don't like the idea of, you know, throwing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars at a company that has a similar risk profile to a seed stage bet. Even if, you know, the eventual outcome can be many orders of magnitude higher. So I think it's because of those risk profiles that the large funds have not yet been able to make a great jump into doing like late stage bets. And you see a lot of early funds that are doing really well, but it takes time for a small fund to grow into a big fund. And so I think, you know, honestly, right now, if you're trying to raise like single digit millions, maybe up to 10 mil, India is honestly a really great environment to raise for deep tech. The problem is just that when you're looking for larger chunks of capital, the amount of parties that can give that just in out really quickly.

Ashlee Vance: And do you think you're committed to keeping Airbound in India as the headquarters?

Naman Pushp: I am. I do. I do see India. Like I honestly, like everything else aside, I just don't see any other place making sense as the headquarters. We will naturally expand globally. We'll have offices in other locations. But I think our like center of operations, right? You know, what like, you know, Fremont is to Tesla for us will always be, you know, India, Bangalore, ideally host cortex.

Ashlee Vance: And then we talked about this. I mean, usually if you're in deep tech land, the easiest way to make money is to get a large defense contract. And you seem like you're pretty committed to not doing defense business.

Naman Pushp: Yeah. I think, again, this is really just a function of the majority of the ecosystem now because, look, if it was between survival and getting a defense contract, like, you know, getting a defense contract or dying, I'd obviously pick getting the defense contract. And I think in an earlier world, that would be the case. Like, we would need to show revenue sooner, and defense is a great way to do that. I think what's changed now is the fact that you can raise a lot more pre-revenue. The fact that like you can use this time to really build out the tech. It gives us the luxury of being focused as a company. I think your company will be far, far worse if you try to scatter your focus and because but not a core defense company. It doesn't make sense to do that just for the sake of early revenue. And because we're able to run the business without needing that early revenue, we can be fully focused on the end state that we want, on the markets that we really want to capture.

Ashlee Vance: Are you ideologically opposed to defense? Is that where that is sort of coming from?

Naman Pushp: I think it's a very, like, complex question on, you know, ethical question on, like, whether or not I would want to do defense. I think I'm clear I don't want the technology I've built to, like, you know, accelerate, you know, sort of weaponry or any capabilities that can lead to the death of humans. Like, I... I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I don't think the nuke was good for mankind as an invention, and I really don't want to invent something like a nuke. That being said, though, I think that doesn't necessarily mean that defense is bad. I think there's a lot that can be done, but if my ambition is to 10x, 100x a market, I don't think I want to live in a world where I make defense as a market 10x bigger than it is today. I just personally would not want to cheer for a larger defense market because that means we are in a world that is more at war. But the other, like, honestly, like other really clean sheet reason for this is that defense as a market is generally not that big, considering what we're looking at, right? If we want to solve for logistics and human movement, that combined is a close to $30 trillion TAM. And that just blows the TAM of global defense spend out of the water. And it is much easier to, like, capture this as a global market than to capture defense as a global market, right? You are effectively locked to one side, right?

Ashlee Vance: Yeah. When I get optimistic, you know, I came back so optimistic about what I saw going on in India. And then I have many, many Indian friends and talk to them and they're like, dude, don't get your hopes up. That place is going to undermine itself. The government is too bureaucratic. There's too much corruption. Yeah. It's just the infrastructure is, they're like, don't, don't, don't get your hopes up. It's not fully going to happen. And then, you know, when I was there, you know, like everybody I talked to was like reticent to sort of criticize the government and push back. Obviously they would when our cameras were not on, but not when the cameras were on. I mean, is it hard to like operate in that environment? Is that true? Is it,

Naman Pushp: It is an interesting question. And I think India... India sort of plays... Because, again, I think democracy is a spectrum. And I think it is not controversial to say that India is not as democratic as the US or not as democratic as other countries. The US is also not the most democratic country in the world.

Ashlee Vance: We have our moments. This is probably not peak.

Naman Pushp: So that's there. But I also... I also don't think that peak democracy is necessarily the best way to run a country. I think that India as a country needed very, very dramatic change and it needed that change very quickly. And I think a government that can assert its will is the most effective way to get that change done. The reality is that I don't think a highly... Maybe they could, but I just think that for a very democratic government, like a government that was just constantly listening to the people at every moment, I don't think it would have been able to provide this unified vision for the country and change the country as deeply and dramatically as it has. And I do think that the country has meaningfully changed for the better. Now, is this a good long-term pathway? That is unclear, right? And I think that is really the... The sort of threat with countries that, you know, slowly lose their democracy, because if that slips away too much, then you end up in a dictatorship and you end up with a lot of issues. I don't think India will necessarily end up there. I think there are obviously risks to, you know, the way it is run. But I also think that you can't deny, like, these two things kind of go hand in hand. You can't The reason why corruption has lowered so much from 10 years ago, the reason why bureaucracy has become so much cleaner, the reason why just ease of business has improved so much from where it was previously, that trend line being so sharp is very much thanks to the government.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. I'm gonna come back to carbon fiber nerdery shortly. So just sort of one last question. I mean, play this out for me. United States, multi-decade track record of doing interesting things in technology. China, last 20, 30 years, clearly became the world's manufacturing powerhouse and then now is also pushing the edge of innovation on all sorts of France, India has a, it's got a manufacturing base. It does a lot of stuff internally, you know, has these capabilities. It has nuclear energy, has a space program, very like massive, big things. Obviously, tremendous education system and talent and all that. So, you know, if you have, I'm trying to think of like countries of size that, Would be substantial players in the tech and manufacturing field moving forward. And all three of those really jump out at me. And I see Europe as kind of like a dying. I love Europe, but I don't think it's going to be in this discussion. So yeah, like fast forward. Whatever, however many years you want, 10, 15, 20. What's like the most optimistic case for India in this spectrum between making stuff and innovating and, you know, is it, does it have its own totally unique niche compared to China in the United States? Or it's like, it's decided, yeah, we're going to take China on in manufacturing and we're going to innovate over here or...

Naman Pushp: I think India does build out. It's a very broad question. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know why you think I'm qualified to answer these questions, but I will do my best at answering them. I think India does have its own niche. I think it looks very similar to China on the surface, but I think India's superpower is like the idea of leapfrogging. I think that's a very unique Indian concept, right? Like India never had landline. We skipped straight to mobile. The interesting thing in India is that like, Most people have phones, but most people don't have Wi-Fi because it's just like 5G is so good. We have unlimited data plans. Why even have Wi-Fi in your home? Which is, again, a concept that you wouldn't really imagine here in the US, but it's really because Wi-Fi came first. If data came first, a lot of people wouldn't have Wi-Fi. So that's there. I sort of... Yeah, and maybe I'm personifying countries too much, but I sort of see China as this really sensible country, which is like, okay, first I will do A, then I will do B, then I will do C, right? Like this idea of we will first be the low-cost manufacturing hub of the world, then we will sort of scale this to getting into higher tech manufacturing, and then we will eventually use this base of difficult technologies we're able to build and incrementally innovate on them to make them even better, right? Kind of like how... China got good at cars, then China got good at EVs, and now not only are the cheapest EVs made in China, but also the highest performance EVs are made in China. It blew my mind that the fastest car in the world is an electric Chinese car. They didn't just beat the record for the fastest electric car, they just beat the record for the fastest car. So that's insane. But at the end of the day, like it is just incremental in nature. I think when China tries to do like massive leaps, it doesn't tend to work out the best. I think like the best example of this is, I mean, COMAC is generally considered to be a broad like failure of China. It's, you know, their attempt to like fight against Airbus and Boeing and build a third major aviation player. And it's just, and there's a reason why most people have not heard of COMAC. I think India is much better at this. And so I think if we're able to get our talent in order, if we're able to build a powerful ecosystem that is able to get capital into it, able to get talent into it and able to get the right founders, then I do think that India's like really uniquely positioned for these hardware moonshot opportunities, where it is tech that is just so, so meaningfully different that I don't think China's sensible approach will work. And it's also tech that just requires the sheer amount of skill and proficiency in the trades that I don't think the US has the kind of labor base to match what can be done in India. And so India gets this Kind of like, you know, I think I see US as like the innovation hub and China as the manufacturing hub. And like India can be that melding of the two, where if you need to do innovative things that are like at their core, great mass manufactured products, I think India is the right place to do that. It feels actually shockingly similar to industrialist US in the early 1900s, where you had this powerful industrial base that was powering the development of the economy, combined with these highly ambitious individuals that wanted to do crazy things and really reshape the way people live. I think those combinations exist in India, and I think in the next few decades, we can genuinely see that kind of economic boom come out of the country.

Ashlee Vance: That was a really nice note. That's probably where we should end. I do have carbon fiber questions. So I'm going to sneak a couple in. I mean, you know, just since having visited you. Yeah. And I'm excited. Like, you know, I say, anything I say, it's like with, it's not even devil's advocate. It's just like kind of thinking these things through a little bit because I... Definitely don't like to like squash people who are chasing a big idea and definitely not when they're young and when their company's young, you know, you've got, it's like, you guys got a long way to go. So, but, you know, it's like, Got excited. I'm telling people about Airbound and all my aerospace buddies. We talked about this and I know you've heard it before, but I mean, they're just a hundred. There's like carbon fibers too fucking expensive. You know, this is like a fruitless exercise. And I know you've heard this before, but you know, why would all these people be getting that wrong?

Naman Pushp: Great question. So I think there's two different layers to this problem. It's worth thinking about carbon fiber, the raw material, which I'm not even talking about the cloth. I'm talking about the raw threads used to make carbon fiber. And then there is making a final carbon fiber part out. When you look at the cost of these threads, they are expensive, don't get me wrong, but they are about 10 times more expensive per kilo than steel. Which like steel is really, really cheap, right? And I think for the scale of carbon fiber, A, you can make an argument that when this ramps up to steel level scale, this will get to similar cost to steel. And the other thing is because of the aggressive weight advantage you can get with carbon fiber. I think you can actually outcompete steel on cost even today with select parts because you are just putting less stuff in it, right? Something that would need 10 kilos of steel we can make with one kilo of carbon fiber and that is much cheaper than 10 kilos of steel. But that's not actually where most of the cost lies. When people say that carbon fiber is expensive, they actually say that making a carbon fiber part is expensive because it needs a lot of human labor in the process. It's got its own issues. My view on this is that carbon fiber is genuinely hard to manufacture with. But I genuinely believe that steel is even harder to manufacture with. Right? Because it's worth just thinking, like, what have we actually done with metals? And it's genuinely insane, right? Like, between Like, tell me, which one seems more reasonable and easy to manufacture, right? Taking this material, liquefying it to over 3000 degrees Celsius, injecting it, and also making sure that, you know, all of this is in an environment without any oxygen, because that fucks things up. Injecting this inside a mold, which again, without any oxygen inside, You need to also ensure you're able to evacuate all of the air from it because if there's an air bubble, it'll screw things up. You need the material to cool consistently and at a very specific rate so that it crystallizes the way you want to. It then solidifies and then you inject it from the mold and you're doing this multiple times a minute. Is that easier or is taking a cloth, putting some glue on it, Pressing it on a surface and letting it cure in an oven easier. We think manufacturing with metals is easy because we have been doing it for the past two centuries. Processes like this. Just describe casting of metals is just second nature. Nobody thinks about how difficult and complex this really is. So what we are doing is we are getting into this arduous journey of figuring out the zero to one of manufacturing with carbon fiber and recognizing that carbon fiber is its own material. If you ask a woodworker to work with metal, he will not be able to make anything for you out of metal. And I think the problem is today because carbon fiber is so new as a material, we're not asking carbon fiber engineers to work with carbon fiber. I'm sure everyone you spoke to is working with metals right now. These are engineers that were trained to design and make things out of metal. And if you show them carbon fiber, they're like, God, this is a shitty material. The same way that if you show a woodworker steel, They'll say, God, this is a shitty material. We need a completely new skill set to be built around carbon fiber. And we need to create new production techniques, a new design language around the material. And that is the only way that we can really make it manufacturable. Do I believe that we can fully automate carbon fiber to the level that we have automated metals and steel? I think we absolutely can, but it will take time. There will be new technologies that need to be developed for it. I just believe that the The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is very well worth it. I believe in a world where, just like how you see steel and metals everywhere around you, there's not a single part of the world you can go to where you don't see metal somewhere. I believe the same thing will happen out of carbon fiber. That, you know, if we have this conversation, maybe, you know, three decades later, you'll be chatting to me on a carbon fiber mic or, you know, this boom will be made out of carbon fiber. Like, there'll be things in this room that are made out of carbon fiber.

Ashlee Vance: So, and do you think Airbound will play, do you think you'll be vertically integrated making those machines? Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay.

Naman Pushp: That's real. I would say Airbound at its essence. If you strip away everything, you strip away the market, the drone, etc. We are really a carbon fiber manufacturing play. We are a company that is saying that we are better at making things out of carbon fiber than anyone else in the world. And we will maintain our position by continuing to be better than the rest of the world at making things out of carbon fiber. If we can do that, we have an insane edge that we think is best applied to, you know, movement and aircraft because they really care about Mars. But this can honestly be applied to anything, right? Like I think eventually when this becomes commoditized and it becomes common enough, you'll see like tables and chairs made out of carbon fiber the same way that someone in a pre-industrial era could never imagine a world made out of steel, right? If you spoke to a blacksmith in the 1700s, they would say that, look, dude, we've been working with steel. We've known how to use this material for 4,000 years now. This is not new. If there was some discovery to be made, we would have made it. It's just not possible to make this in a non-highly labor-intensive format. It takes an immense amount of care and effort to forge something out of steel. You need to have decades of experience to work with this material. And so, yeah, you'll never see a table or a chair made out of steel. That's ridiculous. It'll always be wood that makes these things.

Ashlee Vance: So maybe this is the way this has to happen, but how can you be so confident about this? I mean, you're still in your 20s. You've never worked in a big manufacturing operation before. You must have had someone far smarter than I am push back on this maybe while they were doing due diligence or something like that. I mean, it takes a lot of gusto to just to believe this. But, you know, also this is how things change.

Naman Pushp: So I think it's just that I have. The only arguments I've received against carbon fiber are all some flavor of it hasn't worked before, and things have always been this way, and the metal processes don't work with carbon fiber. I have not yet come across a real first principles argument for here's why carbon fiber can never be made manufacturable. And until I come across a highly structured and convincing argument in that format, I'm going to keep on believing in carbon fiber.

Ashlee Vance: Yeah, yeah. And this is a really difficult question. It's sort of shitty. It's like intuition I have. It's just, you know, every time I'm with like a rocket company, it's like you build the first rocket and then... First of all, it's crazy hard to manufacture that one. And then when you get bigger, a whole new world of hurt opens up and companies go under and crumble and they can't do it. And, you know, when I was looking at where you guys are, again, I was just so impressed that that. Especially with the first generation, you were able to manufacture, it was like what, like four or five a week or, I mean, I forget the numbers. More than that.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, like about two a day.

Ashlee Vance: Two a day. Okay, so clearly, you know, you had people building away, they were flying great. The second one, it looks like you guys have a lot of testing still to do on, like how long, I don't even know how long you'd been flying it by the time I'd gotten there.

Naman Pushp: Like I think a week.

Ashlee Vance: A week, okay.

Naman Pushp: Like a really, really short period. Fair enough.

Ashlee Vance: So you've got to work it out. So my general takeaway was like super fucking impressed. And then I was just playing through in my head. I'm just like, oh. There's going to be problems because there always are as you get bigger and everything. And then, and then again, this is like, this is based on nothing other than I'm just like, man, I wonder if the thesis starts to break down as you, you know, like it's working great now, but as shit gets more serious and bigger, I just, yeah, I wonder if it breaks down again. I have no math or anything to back this up, but.

Naman Pushp: I think it may, it may not. I think manufacturing is really, really difficult. I think we're not ones to underestimate it. I do think, though, historically, the reason why manufacturing and scaling is really hard for companies is because people underestimate that challenge. They think that, hey, I've made one, how difficult could making 10 be? And I think part of our edge is the fact that we know that, again, at our core, we are a manufacturing company. There's nothing else to it. Everything else is just layers of design and market and other shell and fluff built on top of a production company. All we are is a manufacturer that has found a pretty good design to use and monetize. And yeah, my deep belief is that at the core of it, manufacturing is just you take a certain amount of stuff. And you have to pay for the cost of producing that stuff, and you have to pay for the cost of bringing that stuff together into the thing you're trying to make. And I just feel like, to me, it just feels obvious that structurally, if you need less stuff to do the same thing, if you can do the same thing with 10x less stuff, That stuff might be more expensive early on, but eventually you can figure out cost, you can figure out supply chain. All of these to me feel like temporary problems. And when I say temporary, it might be like a 20 year long temporary problem. But the end state will always favor the product that needs less stuff. And carbon fiber fundamentally needs less stuff to do the same things that metal can. You can, with great design, achieve the same strength that you would with steel while using 10x less mass in carbon fiber. And so what that means is that as long as per kg our production costs can eventually get to within 10x of steel, which... We're already pretty close without having scaled up this industry at all. Then it will be a more manufacturable and scalable material.

Ashlee Vance: Okay. Okay. I'll stop torturing you. I remember meeting you for the first time you came in with just this like boundless energy and... I don't even think you had any idea. I think somebody had just sort of told us to meet. I think Junior's walking through aircraft design with me and folding this napkin. And I was like, kind of take it, but I didn't really know what to make of you. And then, you know, just going to see what you guys had built really. I don't say this often. I mean, you just, you like stand out, you know, and it was impressive. And, and just, I do not, I'm nowhere near enough of an engineer at all to sort of like approach some of this the right way. But I have been to like a lot of these facilities with people trying to do stuff like this and everything you guys are doing looks like super spot on. And so, yeah, I just wish you so much luck, man. It's been really fun getting to like hang out with you a bit.

Naman Pushp: Yeah. And I'm excited to see what the future holds.

Ashlee Vance: I am too. I can't wait to see what you guys next. So you've like set the bar pretty high next week because now I think I want to make an annual pilgrimage to India.

Naman Pushp: Oh, that would be great.

Ashlee Vance: So you're going to have to like up. We're going to have to do more.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, I think we can do more. I'm not worried about that.

Ashlee Vance: All right, you have to let me know when we should come out next year so we can kind of time it for maximum visual stunningness. And thank you. Thanks so much for spending time with us and coming by again.

Naman Pushp: Yeah, awesome.

Ashlee Vance: The Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance, and or Kylie Robison, or both of us together. It is produced by me and David Nicholson. Our theme song is by James Mercer and John Sortland, and the show is edited always by the John Sortland. Thank you so much to Brext for all your support, and thank you most of all to everybody for listening or watching. We love you. Please leave us a like, a review, a subscribe, all those tremendous things. Thank you, and we'll see you again. [music]