A finance student and builder from Rajkot, interested in how capital moves, where it actually ends up, and what gets built with it.
"Build it. Watch it break.
Fix it. Build again.
Be there for the game,
not the scoreboard."
- Nakul NandhuI was born in Surat and grew up in Rajkot, surrounded by traders, small manufacturers, and family businesses. Business was always part of the air, and somewhere along the way I got genuinely curious about how it all worked. I'm someone who reads into things and struggles to leave an interesting problem alone.
During the lockdown in sixth grade I was teaching myself about artificial intelligence. A few years later I was spending weekends in villages around Rajkot, working with farmers on Zero-Budget Natural Farming and helping them move off chemical inputs. The project reached hundreds of farmers, was recognised by the District Council, and led to a conversation with Gujarat's Agriculture Minister. I wasn't chasing any of that; the problem was interesting and I wanted to see how far I could take it.
At some point my curiosity settled on capital and how it moves. In high school I interned at an early-stage VC fund, reading pitch decks and sitting in on deal evaluations. This past summer I worked in investment banking, on the Industrials coverage team at Equirus Capital in Mumbai, and got a close look at how companies are valued, positioned, and financed. Maths and Economics gave me the tools for it: statistics, regression, and the habit of turning messy real-world data into something you can reason about.
I'm now at Emory University, Class of 2030, on the Pre-BBA track toward the Goizueta Business School, and the first in my family to attend university. Outside class I'm learning fundamental investing through Algory Capital, writing long-form pieces on the industries I want to understand, starting with the US power grid, and building small iPhone apps to learn what it takes to make something people actually use.
AI, then farming, then a VC desk, then a banking floor: the throughline was never the subject, it was wanting to get to the bottom of it. Finance is where that keeps landing, and building something of my own is where I want it to lead. For now I want to see as much of the field as I can, and build the foundation to be excellent at whatever I commit to.
Representing the freshman class in BeFirst, Emory's business club for first-generation students. As the first in my family to go to university, I want to help the students coming in after me find their footing at Emory.
Spent the summer on the Industrials team at an Indian investment bank — building comps and connectivity maps, contributing to sector notes and pitch materials, and automating parts of the workflow. The bigger takeaway was watching senior people ask sharper questions than I knew how to, and seeing how much of the job is judgment rather than output.
Chaired a clean-up drive at Nyari Dam, leading 70+ students to clear 785 cubic feet of trash, and ran an e-waste campaign collecting 62 kg. Co-led a cross-cultural project with a student club in Tunisia and contributed to health drives spanning anaemia awareness, blood donation, and teaching English and Maths to underserved children.
Ran a multi-year chemical-free farming initiative across villages near Rajkot. Workshops, seminars, and YouTube content reached hundreds of farmers and village leaders, and taught them to make their own biopesticides and biofertilisers. Awarded by the District Council and invited to discuss grassroots issues with Gujarat's Agriculture Minister.
Founded the Saurashtra region's first high-school finance club, leading sessions on asset classes and financial statements, hosting industry guests, and launching a virtual stock-trading competition, where I placed first of 24 with a 172% return over the year.
Led a needs analysis at a rural school in Rajkot and raised ₹3,00,000 in funds and donations. Coordinated agencies and contractors to secure free fittings and labour, then rebuilt toilets and repainted classrooms, which lifted attendance and morale. Felicitated by the Rotary Club for the effort.
Evaluated 20 startup pitch decks against structured rubrics, looking at founder profiles, product data, and market fit, and ran mystery-shopper trials to pressure-test product and customer experience.
Built at Equirus: a Python scraper that pulls preferential-issue filings from the BSE and NSE into one structured list, instead of checking exchange announcements by hand.
Built and maintained a database of 430 Indian specialty chemicals and home and personal care companies for the Industrials team at Equirus, the base layer for sector work and screening.
For a specialty chemicals sector note at Equirus, I compiled Bloomberg tickers and wrote a Python script (openpyxl) to populate financial models for 74 companies.
My Maths Extended Essay: maximising profit at a local Pav Bhaji restaurant using the two-phase simplex method, with sensitivity analysis on real-world effectiveness and limits.
My Maths IA: a multiple linear regression on Kolkata tea prices, isolating the key economic and environmental factors that drive how prices shift over time.
How America turned electricity into a regulated monopoly, then spent thirty years taking it apart. A history of the US power industry from 1879 to 2005, told through who owned what, and who got paid.
Read the articleShale gas, cheap renewables, fifteen years of flat demand, and then AI data centers. Why power is suddenly scarce again, and who gets paid now.
Read the articleNothing here yet. It's on the list.
Open to conversations about finance, markets, building things, or anything you think I'd find interesting. Email is the quickest way to reach me.