I have long advocated for spotlighting India’s founders beyond the major cities. India’s entrepreneurial talent is boundless, yet the conversation rarely strays from Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. So when I first heard about Arjun Pillai, a founder from Kerala, back in 2013, I was immediately intrigued. When I learned he had not only built a successful company but pulled off a landmark exit, the first tech product acquisition from Kerala, he was in rarified company. I tried to make contact, but was reliably informed he was on his way to the Bay Area. He entered the record books, and I filed him away as one of those enigmatic founders who had achieved escape velocity.
As luck would have it, two years ago, I finally had the chance to meet him. I will embarrass you here, Arjun, but by then, you had genuine celebrity status. Two companies built, two sold, and a third already underway. I shook hands and nodded.
We stayed in touch, and a few months of exchanging emails later, Arjun suggested an idea. “How about I host a workshop?”
The subject was raising capital. We expected a polished deck, some data, a little philosophy. But that was not what Arjun had in mind. He wanted it to be an informal conversation. He pushed us to run brainstorming sessions beforehand, and showed up to each one humble and genuinely curious about what made the audience tick.
And then he did something unusual.
On the day, he invited the audience to question him. Rather than answering one by one, he grouped the questions and answered them through stories and anecdotes. The session was scheduled for an hour. It ran well past that. At 15 minutes over, someone tried to catch his eye. At 30 minutes over, he seemed to find a second wind. Our time at the venue was nearly up, and we still had sponsors and friends to thank. He finally relented. Then, just as I was wrapping up my closing remarks, Arjun motioned that he wanted to say a few words himself. He asked the founders in the room to believe in themselves, to trust their instincts, to forge their own paths and not feel weighed down by others’ expectations. It was the kind of send-off nobody had planned for, and everyone needed.
After the event, he jumped into a shared car with us and kept going, stories that made us laugh, stories that made us think.
Later, when I learned more about where Arjun came from, the pieces fell into place. Every morning at six, as a child in Thiruvalla, he would press his forehead against a squeaking window and watch his father walk to the tin-roofed rubber band factory at the edge of the paddy fields. The man ran his days with clockwork precision. The factory bled for years, but his father never entertained the idea of giving up.
Arjun absorbed all of it. When he and three college friends started Profoundis, they survived on Rs 13,000 a month and shared a single Pulsar bike. Eventually, their product found success; Profoundis was acquired by FullContact in 2016, and Insent.ai by ZoomInfo in 2021. He is now on his third venture, Docket AI.
That is who Arjun is. Someone who fills a room without trying to, who takes ownership of a stage he was only invited onto, and who carries the discipline of a rubber band factory in Thiruvalla all the way to Silicon Valley. We often describe AIBoomi as a large family. Many speakers do their talk, answer questions honestly, and step back. Few take ownership of the room. Arjun did all of that, and more, on Day 1.
We’re proud to have a volunteer like Arjun in our midst. Please keep surprising us, my friend.
