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Sajith Pai
'VC' at Blume Ventures, India
Sajith Pai is a Director at Blume Ventures, one of India's leading early-stage venture capital firms.12 Here are some key details about him:
Background and Experience
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Sajith joined Blume Ventures in September 2018 after a long career in media and entertainment.13
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Prior to Blume, he spent over 20 years at Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd. (Times Group), where his last role was Associate Vice President.1
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At Times Group, he worked across multiple roles including strategy, corporate development, and supporting startup ventures like Times Music and Times Now.1
Current Role at Blume Ventures
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As Director, he focuses on investments in areas like consumertech, edtech, HRtech, B2B commerce and SMB SaaS.12
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He was elevated to Investment Partner at Blume in March 2023, recognizing his contributions.2
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Sajith leads Blume's investments in domestic consumer internet and B2B marketplaces, including edtech.2
Education
- MBA from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad1
- BA in Economics from Chowgule College, Goa University1
Other Interests
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He actively writes about technology, business, culture and their intersections on his personal website and LinkedIn.3
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Sajith has been published in outlets like Scroll, Buzzfeed, Quartz and Arre.3
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He is known for his thought leadership in the Indian startup ecosystem.2
Sajith Pai is considered an influential figure in India's venture capital and startup landscape, combining his media background with deep expertise in early-stage investing across multiple sectors.
Highlights
Hilarious!
Excellent thread + post. Superb framing of careers as liquid vs illiquid by @Vaishsg7 . TL;DR = Liquid careers have high demand and ‘legibility’ that others can attest to your value or work, e.g., a McKinsey consultant, or an elite magic circle firm lawyer, while Illiquid careers are harder to parse for market value - a freelance marketing person who previously worked in an NGO in Africa and worked in a couple of startups before that in junior roles. Interesting, but unclear what his or her value and worth is.
Vaishnav: “When human capital is built through non-linear or less legible paths, the lack of legibility increases variance from the employer's perspective. This isn't necessarily negative, but it does increase the value of additional information. If the cost of obtaining this information doesn't justify the potential upside, candidates with less legible backgrounds may be passed over in screening processes.”
Essentially, if you are in an illiquid career, you have potentially higher alpha than in a liquid career, but it can be hard for others to parse your value / worth, without someone burning their social capital to promote you, and / or without signals or artifacts that you can provide to sell you better (say a blog, or a github repo etc).
My takeaway
- Liquidity = demand for role + legibility of the role.
- You can use legibility signals (blog, github repo, someone burning social capital to intro you) to help others parse your career better. Appearance on lists like Tyler Cowen / Mercatus’s programs / fellows could be legibility signal boosters, and perhaps there could be a site which hosts such legibility signals and allows you to claim them to your profile boosts them as an alternate linkedin for illiquid careers.
As someone whose illiquid career became relatively more liquid thanks to a fortunate move to VC, the article struck a chord.
