About me
I'm Kunal Kabra, an Associate Consultant at Bain & Company with a background in mechanical engineering and energy systems from IIT Bombay. I care deeply about building things that scale: companies, technologies, and institutions, especially in environments where constraints are real and execution matters more than theory.
My work sits at the intersection of strategy, engineering, and technology. I'm drawn to problems where first-principles thinking meets messy reality. Things like capital allocation, industrial scaling, system design, and long-horizon transitions.
This site is where I think in public about systems, execution, and scale.
What I believe
Enduring companies are built by people who understand both the model and the machine: how value is created and how it gets executed.
Strategy without engineering is hand-waving.
Engineering without strategy is local optimization.
The edge comes from combining both, patiently, rigorously, and over long time horizons.
What I'm working on
I advise companies on growth, operations, and transformation, often in capital-intensive and complex environments. Alongside this, I'm deliberately building my own intellectual and technical foundations:
- Deep work on energy systems (electrolyzers, fuel cells, power markets, decarbonization pathways)
- Writing and thinking about scaling in India: manufacturing, supply chains, policy, and execution
- Building tools and models for reasoning about complex systems
Long-term, I want to build companies at the core of the energy and industrial transition. Not incremental products, but platforms that shape how industries evolve.
What I'm interested in
Lately, I'm most curious about:
- Why some Indian manufacturing and technology companies compound while others stall
- How energy transitions actually scale (capex cycles, incentives, failure modes, and second-order effects)
- The role of AI as leverage in engineering, strategy, and decision-making
- How individuals build agency inside large systems without waiting for permission
I'm always open to thoughtful conversations with builders, investors, and operators who care about doing hard things well.