MOHANDAS PAI

Pai was born in Bangalore in 1958 into a middle-class family. He trained as a chartered accountant and also picked up a law degree.

He spent years in finance before joining Infosys in 1994 as Chief Financial Officer. That timing was perfect.

He ran the books while Infosys grew from a scrappy software firm into a global brand, and he was CFO when it listed on NASDAQ in 1999, the first Indian company to do so. In 2006 he handed off the CFO job and took over Human Resources and Education and Research, building the systems that trained tens of thousands of engineers.

He left Infosys in 2011. Since then he has been chairman of Manipal Global Education and a full-time angel investor and public commentator.

Infosys was his main stage. He was CFO from 1994 to 2006, then ran HR and education, and sat on the board until 2011.

Aarin Capital is the family office he co-founded with Ranjan Pai of the Manipal group, focused on consumer and education startups. 3one4 Capital is the venture fund he chairs, which his sons Pranav and Siddarth Pai actually run day to day.

He is also chairman of Manipal Global Education. Across all of it, he has helped start more than ten different funds.

Pai bets early and bets on people. He likes first-time founders building for India, especially in education, fintech, and consumer.

His whole pitch is that India does not lack ideas, it lacks patient money. So he writes checks early and pushes for more domestic capital to back homegrown companies.

He is not a passive check-writer either. He mentors hard and tells founders things they may not want to hear about discipline and spending.

His biggest win was Infosys itself. As CFO he steered the finances of a company that went from small to globally respected, and in 1999 he helped take it public on NASDAQ, the first Indian company ever listed there.

His own Infosys stock made him wealthy, the clean way, through equity in a company he helped build. As an angel, 3one4 Capital under his chairmanship has backed startups that grew into major Indian companies, proving his bet that India could fund its own winners.

Pai's weakness is his optimism. During the 2021 funding boom he was one of the loudest cheerleaders for Indian startups, throwing out huge numbers about unicorns and value created.

Then 2022 hit. Funding dried up, valuations collapsed, and a lot of the companies he had hyped struggled or shut down.

Critics pointed out that the man preaching discipline to founders had been swept up in the hype himself. To his credit, he kept talking through the down years too, not just the up ones.

Respect capital. That is his whole religion.

He says money is not free and founders who forget that get punished. He tells entrepreneurs not to pay themselves big salaries, to work brutally hard, and to stay frugal until the business actually works.

He also believes India needs to fund its own companies instead of waiting for foreign money. As he puts it, you cannot build a global industry on cheap labour, and you cannot build great companies on no capital.

Pai is based in Bangalore. The most interesting family fact is professional.

His two sons, Pranav and Siddarth Pai, actually run 3one4 Capital, the venture fund he chairs. So the family business is now backing the next generation of Indian founders.

He keeps his personal life private and lets the work and the public commentary speak.

Pai went to St. Joseph's in Bangalore and earned a commerce degree from St.

Joseph's College of Commerce. He also holds a law degree from Bangalore University.

On top of that he is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. Numbers and rules, basically, which is exactly the toolkit you want in a CFO.

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