This is not financial advice. This is me thinking out loud about things I find genuinely interesting.
Why think about this at all
Compounding works on time, not money. The earlier you understand how markets work, the more time you have to act correctly when you eventually do have money. Learning now costs nothing and has asymmetric upside.
Also: the Indian startup and investment ecosystem is going through something real right now. SEBI has opened up derivative markets to more participants. UPI has made payment infrastructure a commodity. The shift from "India is a consumption story" to "India is a technology production story" is happening in real time. I want to understand it while it's happening.
AI infrastructure as the actual investment
Most retail investors look at AI companies that make products. The smarter money looks at the companies that make AI possible — the picks-and-shovels play.
In the current cycle: chips (NVIDIA, but also the Indian government's push for domestic chip design), data centres (power infrastructure is the real constraint), and the model layer (a few foundation model companies will capture most of the value).
In India specifically: the companies building on top of AI to serve Indian-language markets are undervalued by global investors who don't understand the Bharat user. That gap is an opportunity.
The incumbent moat question
The question I keep thinking about: which AI incumbents have actual moats, and which ones just got there first?
Getting there first is not a moat. Distribution is a moat. Data is a moat. Switching costs are a moat.
Google has all three. Their position in search gives them query data that nobody else has. Their suite gives them switching costs. Their cloud gives them distribution to enterprises. I'm more bullish on Google's AI position than most people seem to be.
OpenAI has brand, but brand is fragile. The moment a model is demonstrably better and costs less, brand doesn't protect you.
What I actually do
I read company filings when they're available. I track SEBI circulars. I follow a small number of people on Twitter who think carefully about capital allocation — not the ones who post charts, the ones who post arguments.
I paper trade. Not with real money, but with a fake portfolio where I track my decisions and their outcomes. The goal is to build intuition about what kinds of reasoning lead to correct calls.
When I have money, I'll have a decade of thinking already done. That's the real investment.