# Pushp sees India as a better base for Airbound Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/pushp-sees-india-as-a-better-base-for-airbound/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Naman Pushp](https://realalpha.app/people/naman-pushp/) · Naman Pushp is founder and CEO of Airbound. - Host: [Ashlee Vance](https://realalpha.app/people/ashlee-vance/) · CEO, Core Memory · Wrote the best-selling biography Elon Musk; covered tech for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist and The New York Times. - Show: Core Memory - Episode: [He's Taking On Amazon With A New Kind Of Aircraft](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/), Nov 4, 2026 - Moment: 41:02 to 45:58 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/pushp-sees-india-as-a-better-base-for-airbound/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2462 ## Quote > “I think India is the **better place to build this tech**.” > — [Naman Pushp](https://realalpha.app/people/naman-pushp/) at [42:04](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2524) · Core Memory ## Takeaways 1. He says Airbound has enough funding to operate in the U.S. 2. He points to India's engineering talent and lower operating costs. 3. He says more classmates now plan to return after college abroad. ## About this segment Naman Pushp says India became a business choice, citing talent and a growing willingness among peers to return. That helps explain why Airbound plans to keep its center of operations there. From “He's Taking On Amazon With A New Kind Of Aircraft”, Nov 4, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/) ## Transcript From the transcript Core Memory publishes with the episode. [41:07](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2467) 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? I think in our folks early on, [41:21](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2481) 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. [41:53](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2513) 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. [42:20](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2540) 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. [42:55](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2575) 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? [43:12](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2592) 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. [43:42](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2622) 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. Can we break that down for a second? [43:59](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2639) I mean, you're saying land is cheaper, a building's cheaper, the people are cheaper, all of that? Yeah. [44:05](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2645) 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. [44:30](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2670) 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. [44:59](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2699) 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? [45:28](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=2728) 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.