Why does the world move?

I was maybe 7 years old. It was a hot and sunny day in Gurgaon. Probably hitting 40°C, everybody in the street was covered in sweat. And we had just finished grocery shopping for the day.

Neither me nor my mother spoke perfect Hindi, yet we had to now return from the market (if I remember right) back to our home.

And back then, hand pulled rickshaws were common. My mom somehow communicated to the man who came to "pull" us where we needed to go. And I still remember - as soon as I sat on it and started moving, I felt an innocent wave of amusement and adventure sweep across my face.

That was one of the oldest experiences of my childhood - riding on a rickshaw in Gurgaon.

The world has since then changed on a lot, or at least India has, in terms of how things get moved.

When I sat on that rickshaw almost 18 years ago, little did I know, the opportunities that would come my way to work on some of the most cutting edge technologies and challenges that shape up mobility.

Thanks to having had my father also being in the automotive supplier and OEM industry, the scent of a hot manufacturing plant , touching a forged part (not a hot one) and then see how it actually gets machined into something that fits a vehicle somehow became a part of my teenage and university days.

Subconsciously or for the sake of comfort and ease of access due to my father, I had also chosen mechanical engineering - without a strong why.

But in the last 4-5 years, I am beginning to see how deep this industry actually runs. How many layers there are beneath what we simply call "vehicles."

It’s easy to think of mobility as cars or transport. But very quickly, I realized that there’s a whole invisible system behind even the simplest movement — suppliers, manufacturing lines, material science, simulations, testing, logistics, regulations, cost models, timing. And each part — no matter how small — decides whether something moves on time, safely, affordably, or not at all.

And then it struck me recently - My early exposure to this world didn’t come from a textbook. It came from conversations at home, visits to plants, watching the pressure of delivery timelines, and seeing how hard it is to actually build something that works in the real world. And now, working inside the AI and automation side of this ecosystem, I’ve started to understand something peculiar. Even though software can penetrate a lot of industries faster, it is not so easy when it comes to the ecosystem around mobility engineering.

And that is also something that bothers and excites me at the same time - that mobility today is full of problems waiting to be solved. Not glamorous ones — but real, critical, high-leverage problems.

Take this: Plaid (a fintech API company) was founded in 2013 and hit unicorn status by 2020. Rivian, one of the most well-funded EV startups, was founded in 2009 and shipped its first car in 2021.

In fintech, 7 years is enough to reach IPO readiness.
In automotive, 7 years might not even get you past tooling and certification.

India’s UPI transformed a billion-person financial system in 6 years. Meanwhile, many Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers in the same country still run production planning on Excel and rely on PDFs for BOM approvals. Some Tier 3 suppliers in India do not even have an legal software in place.

It’s not because people don’t care. It’s because hardware is hard and less rewarding. And mobility — especially in a real-world industrial context — is really hard.

Like how to make the quoting process for automotive suppliers 10x faster.
Or how to handle the shift to EVs when your supply chain was built for combustion.
Or how to enable technology adoption across all different verticals of mobility.

Look at any economy — its output, trade, logistics, access, or even energy demand — and at the core of all of it is movement. Moving people, moving goods, moving data, moving decisions.

Mobility is also not just cars and roads. It is:

• 7% of global GDP tied to logistics and transportation alone.
• 60 million people employed in the automotive industry worldwide.
• Over $4 trillion in market cap from public mobility-related companies (including traditional 10-12 traditional OEMs, the newer Tesla, BYD, and then the airlines, shipping, rail, ride-sharing, micromobility, and logistics).
• And more quietly, trillions in dependent value — e.g., how fast a country develops, how products reach markets, how supply chains respond to shocks.

Despite all this, innovation in mobility hasn’t kept pace with its economic footprint.

Software has seen explosive cycles — social media, SaaS, fintech, creator tools, and now AI. But mobility is still catching up. Even the biggest names in mobility are often decades-old companies with legacy systems. The few exceptions — like Tesla or Ola Electric — are proof of how much value is left to unlock.

So unlike SaaS where everyone’s already building, this world is still full of unsolved bottlenecks for mobility and hardware. Still full of engineers stuck doing work that AI could already handle. Still full of business workflows designed for 2010 realities in a 2025 world.

These problems aren’t always visible from the outside. But they’re massive. And solving them now is going to define the next decade of this industry.

That’s why I’m writing this blog. Not because I’ve “walked long enough” or seen it all — but because I’m choosing to walk into it and understand what are the misunderstandings and challenges to tackle to keep this industry moving.

I’m writing this as someone who wants to understand the full picture — not just the cool technologies or the trends, but the gaps, the frictions, the overlooked opportunities.

There’s a lot to be built. There’s a lot to be learned. And I believe mobility — especially in markets like Europe and India — is one of the most valuable, underappreciated spaces for the next generation of builders and investors.

Over the next few months — and maybe even the next few years — I’ll be using this blog as a place to share what I’m learning. Not polished takes or loud predictions, but observations, breakdowns, and patterns I come across as I continue working in this space. Some will be from talking to engineers, the factory floor, some from the AI lab, some while being stuck in traffic jams, and others from the messy and pothole filled roads.

If you care about how the world moves — or want to build in this space — I hope this becomes a useful place to start.