Raj Kunkolienkar
![Raj Kunkolienkar is an influencer]()
paperplane | Prev. Co-Founder, Stoa
Goa, India
57K followers
500+ connections
About
I like to learn and get other people learning.
Built a bunch of ventures in consumer education because it enabled me to do the above.
MBAs make business education inaccessible to many because of the time and capital investment. We're bringing the B-School experience online and helping a million Indians get better at understanding the basics of running a modern business. It's fun, relevant and you go home without a debt burden. We're backed by Vaibhav Domkundwar (Better Capital), Richa Kar (Founder, Zivame), Raveen Sastry (Co-Founder, Myntra), Ganesh Rao (Founder, Suryoday Bank) and other seasoned entrepreneurs.
I have undertaken quite a few projects (some of which turned into businesses) :
🎓 Nova Semita (career accelerator for college students to break into startup tech roles)
💪🏼 Dominato.club (personal brand builder on Twitter, for founders)
🎉 Prex.club (Membership club for ambitious college students)
💸 Yuva.fund (Collective to support student founders)
🔎 Seeker Space (Co-learning space in Goa)
🤖 vrik.sh (bot to recommend learning resources)
🕹Fascination (NGO in the education space)
I grew up loving astronomy and cosmology -- my time with physics was delightful. The hunger to expand my understanding across scales led me to applied math. Love talking about evolutionary processes, game theory, financial engineering, network science, and algorithmic thinking.
The best way to reach me is via my Twitter DMs.
Articles by Raj
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The Gold Story We Refused to Hear
The Gold Story We Refused to Hear
Last Saturday, three drinks in, my friend slumped back and said what we’d all been thinking: “BC, itna dimaag lagaya…
9 Comments -
How we lost (and rediscovered) the world's largest cave.
How we lost (and rediscovered) the world's largest cave.
Fewer people have walked through Hang Son Doong Cave than have stood on the summit of Mount Everest. And yes, the guy…
13 Comments
Activity
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Workplace friendships are super underrated. Now ofcourse, depends on what culture those friendships are made in. I really got lucky joining Stoa to…
Workplace friendships are super underrated. Now ofcourse, depends on what culture those friendships are made in. I really got lucky joining Stoa to…
Liked by Raj Kunkolienkar
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I want to publicly apologize to the nation for what happened yesterday. I made a post that offended a lot of people. It said that Zoho’s messaging…
I want to publicly apologize to the nation for what happened yesterday. I made a post that offended a lot of people. It said that Zoho’s messaging…
Liked by Raj Kunkolienkar
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The next wave of talent may not sit in metros. In this conversation with Ryan Singh from Loop Health, Sanjay Singh, CHRO at CMS Info Systems, shares…
The next wave of talent may not sit in metros. In this conversation with Ryan Singh from Loop Health, Sanjay Singh, CHRO at CMS Info Systems, shares…
Liked by Raj Kunkolienkar
Experience
Education
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Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani
Int. M.Sc. (Hons.) Physics
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Graduated from the 4 year Integrated M.Sc. (Hons.) Physics program in 3.5 years. Focused on theoretical and mathematical aspects of physics - cosmology and quantum field theory.
Volunteer Experience
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Co-Founder
Fascination
- 2 years 1 month
Education
Co-founded a NGO which operated in high schools all over Goa to help alumni connect back with schools, to connect learners with mentors and organize talks on science, technology and social science for schools.
Skills
Publications
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Towards a dS/MERA correspondence
International Journal of Modern Physics D
See publicationRecent advances have suggested that spacetime itself emerges from the entanglement of the quantum degrees of freedom living on the boundary. In the case of the anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes, a particular class of tensor networks has been shown to realize the same via Multi-Scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA). In this paper, we suggest a prescription for the dS/MERA correspondence and recover a discrete version of dS Penrose diagram by using the MERA on conformal theories…
Recent advances have suggested that spacetime itself emerges from the entanglement of the quantum degrees of freedom living on the boundary. In the case of the anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes, a particular class of tensor networks has been shown to realize the same via Multi-Scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA). In this paper, we suggest a prescription for the dS/MERA correspondence and recover a discrete version of dS Penrose diagram by using the MERA on conformal theories identified with the future/past boundaries (J±ℐ±) of the dS spacetime. In this case, as anticipated, time appears as the emergent direction. We comment on the possible interpretation that the dS cosmological horizon entropy involves entanglement with degrees of freedom across the cosmological horizon as well as the implications of our construction for cosmology.
Read More: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218271817501437
More activity by Raj
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These kind of numbers need an impossible number of things to go right. insane to see this Ankush, truly inspirational. also, Loop is proud to…
These kind of numbers need an impossible number of things to go right. insane to see this Ankush, truly inspirational. also, Loop is proud to…
Liked by Raj Kunkolienkar
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2 AM. Renuka's pregnany-craving Haleem. Again. Behrouz Biryani's Mutton Haleem has been our comfort food for years now - that slow-cooked richness,…
2 AM. Renuka's pregnany-craving Haleem. Again. Behrouz Biryani's Mutton Haleem has been our comfort food for years now - that slow-cooked richness,…
Shared by Raj Kunkolienkar
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This is my grandfather. The first person in the family who truly believed in living naturally, and in effect inspired every generation going forward…
This is my grandfather. The first person in the family who truly believed in living naturally, and in effect inspired every generation going forward…
Liked by Raj Kunkolienkar
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My first Diwali in America was a quiet one. I was all alone, far away from home, in a nail-biting Michigan cold. The dinner was canned beans, and…
My first Diwali in America was a quiet one. I was all alone, far away from home, in a nail-biting Michigan cold. The dinner was canned beans, and…
Liked by Raj Kunkolienkar
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The future of college in an AI world - Most students will graduate in 2-3 years. - Attending class will be less and less important. Instead, you’ll…
The future of college in an AI world - Most students will graduate in 2-3 years. - Attending class will be less and less important. Instead, you’ll…
Liked by Raj Kunkolienkar
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Aviral Bhatnagar
Anthropic raised $13B at a $183B valuation Fundraise is greater than entirety of VC in India raised in 2024, valuation is close to that of all of India's unicorns in total The crazy part is that it's a spin-off team from OpenAI, which itself is worth $300B Different scale
42 Comments -
Vedanti Kohli
Natasha Malpani Launches ₹200 Crore Fund to Power India’s AI Startups Former Kae Capital partner Natasha Malpani has launched Boundless Ventures, an early-stage venture fund with a corpus of ₹200 crore, dedicated to supporting homegrown AI-native startups across India. The fund will focus on pre-seed and seed-stage investments in companies innovating across consumer AI, infrastructure, agent tooling, healthcare, logistics, deep tech, and make-in-India hardware. Boundless has already written its first cheques to startups including Superhealth, Armatrix, PierSight, Knot, and two stealth ventures in AI infrastructure and consumer AI. Beyond capital, the fund promises to bring narrative and network support to founders. As Malpani puts it, India today has a once-in-a-generation advantage talent density, digital rails, and ambition to build global AI leaders from day one. At Startup Veda, we’re thrilled to see local capital fueling the AI frontier. This fund signals rising maturity in India’s venture ecosystem—placing conviction behind AI-first founders well before the rest of the world catches on. Join the conversation: Which early-stage AI ventures excite you the most? How powerful is the mix of capital + storytelling for building AI startups? #Startup #AI #VentureCapital #DeepTech #StartupIndia #FounderStories
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Ashank Singh
#SEBI just clipped Angel Wings. And Founders should be thankful. SEBI’s recent New Rule to restrict #angelfund participation to Accredited Investors* has sparked concern across the startup ecosystem. Many believe it will reduce the flow of early stage capital. Others feel it goes against the idea of broadening participation in angel investing. But take a closer look, especially from a founder’s point of view, and the picture starts to shift. This change may not reduce capital. It may simply improve its quality. Earlier, the eligibility to invest through an angel fund was based on a self-declared ₹2 crore net worth, excluding the primary home. That bar was relatively low. And as a result, a lot of individuals started showing up, not because they had experience or real conviction, but because they did not want to miss out. FOMO brought them in. Startups ended up paying the price. SEBI’s shift to Accredited Investors changes that. It raises the threshold. Investors will now need to meet stricter income or net worth criteria and go through a formal accreditation process. Yes, this will reduce the number of angels in the ecosystem. But the ones who remain will be serious about investing. They will bring context, experience, and capital that actually moves the needle. Ask any founder who has raised from 15 or 20 angels to fill a ₹1 crore round: You spend weeks pitching. You convince dozens of people. And what you get is a bunch of ₹50K cheques that come with expectations, but not impact. Requests for board seats. Weekly update demands. Advisory equity asks without real involvement. Same pitch. Same effort. Very little return on time. This is where SEBI’s move helps. It does not block capital. It filters it. Founders will now deal with fewer angels, but ones who bring more conviction, more clarity, and write cheques that actually matter. Fewer names on the cap table. More value in the room. #Founders: How has your experience been raising from #angels? Have smaller cheques added more value or more overhead? And do you see SEBI’s move helping or hurting your next raise? #EarlyStageCapital ##AngelNetwork #StartupEcosystem #StartupFunding
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Praveen Gopal Krishnan
If you had to build a hypothetical, fast-moving, AI-backed startup to shake up a traditional industry ruled by incumbents, which one would you target, and how would you do it? That’s the challenge we’re throwing to smart, ambitious college students across India. I’m super excited and thrilled to launch the second edition of The Ken's Case Competition, in partnership with Zerodha. Last year’s debut was built on a format that was unique and powerful. Our intention was to radically reimagine the tired, old, formulaic case-study format to simulate the real world, with all its choices, complexities, and challenges. And so, in 2024, at the peak of India’s 10-minute delivery boom, we challenged India’s top MBA students to pick a real-world quick-commerce company and craft a winning strategy. The premise? We gave all teams a notional $1 billion in capital to spend as they saw fit. Teams from hundreds of B-schools went head-to-head over a three-month period in a fiercely contested, innovative battle for the winning prize of Rs 10 lakh—making it the case competition with the biggest prize in India. This year, we’re taking it up a notch. In most case competitions, students step into the shoes of a company and design a theoretical strategy to tackle a business problem. Our competition inverts this. The Ken’s next case-study challenge casts students as disruptors. They’ll analyse incumbents across sectors, uncover blind spots, design attack strategies, and eventually build AI-powered prototypes that show how they’d turn opportunities into products. Thus, we’re calling this a case-build competition—a first-of-its-kind, truly pioneering format. We’re doing this because the world has changed. It’s time for students to do much more than “study” stiff and constructed cases. Instead, it’s time for them to build out their true ambitions and ideas. Against incumbents in the real world. Because AI is forcing a reset of everything we knew about innovation and disruption. In the age of AI, the biggest opportunities are in identifying where legacy incumbents fall short. They’re holding onto customers whose needs have changed but don’t yet realize it. If AI can make anyone a builder, why can’t students be builders too? The winner of The Ken’s Case Competition 2025 will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh. We envision this to be the gold standard of business and technology competitions in India. Open to all college students across the country, it’ll take place over three months, lasting until the end of 2025. In each round, participants will be pushed to go deeper into the sector of their choice—they’ll evaluate what incumbents are doing, conduct market research, sharpen their approach, and eventually craft and build solutions, using AI tools to bring them to life. And just like last year, we’ll involve The Ken’s community of subscribers by publishing the best and most innovative solutions and feedback we receive. Link to case in comments.
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