Hardware founders’ networking session in Pune as part of Velocity – Kotak BizLabs

NSRCEL hosted a closed-room networking session in Pune, as part of Velocity – Kotak BizLabs, which brought together a group of hardware founders for an honest, practitioner-led conversation on unit economics. The session was led by Pramod Ghadge from Unbox Robotics, who shared insights shaped by building and scaling a hardware start-up from early prototypes to multi-customer deployments.

One theme came through clearly: many hardware founders think about scale too early and unit economics too late. BOM architecture, supplier strategy and manufacturing design are not just operational considerations – they define cost floor, margin ceiling and ultimately, the ability to scale sustainably. A model that works at pilot stage can quickly break at scale, especially when deferred costs like warranty, servicing and inventory begin to surface.