AI Vey is a podcast about AI in India: not the news cycle, but what people here are actually building with it. The software boom was cheap to join — a computer and time were enough. This one has a meter running from the first API call, and that meter is the whole subject of this episode.
Bhasker “Bosky” Kode builds internal products at OneCard by day. On evenings and weekends he runs AI Grants India, a non-profit that hands free model and infrastructure access to students, indie developers and idea-stage founders, which he co-founded with Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital. He also runs Epoch, a four-weekend programme that takes engineers to a working proof of concept.
At a hackathon in February 2025 he stuck a note on his laptop reading free API keys, and 24 of the 25 people in the room came to his table. He funded the first six months on his own credit card; now whatever he puts in is gone in a week. He has no application form and no interview — a GitHub account, an email and a phone number, and the key is yours. And when founders come back asking for the newest, most expensive model, he has a standard answer ready.
Highlights
Twenty-four of the twenty-five people in the room — the response when he first advertised free API keys, at Vaibhav Domkundwar’s February 2025 hackathon. Vaibhav became the founding sponsor; Bosky carried the first six months on his own credit card, and now whatever he puts in is gone inside a week. The first large donation landed two days before this recording, from the edtech company NxtWave.
“Anthropic did not have Opus to build Opus” — His standing reply to founders who insist they need the latest and greatest model. Take a step back, work from foundations, and build with what you have.
Deliberately no gatekeeping — GitHub, email and phone, once each, purely to stop abuse. No interview, no committee, no pitch: “In fact, there is no gatekeeping. I don’t check anything.”
He never gives the full amount — A maximum of 50%, on principle: “now find other ways to do it. You should not get everything with a spoon.” He has funded train tickets to conferences on the same terms.
The first question he asks anyone who hits a rate limit — Are you charging your customers? If yes, the problem solves itself.
Building stopped being the hard part — Roughly 700 startups have signed up with their own domain and project. About 10% are doing genuinely cutting-edge work — brain-computer interfaces, noise cancellation, energy — and about 70% are SaaS-shaped. His advice is that the journey now starts where it used to end: deciding what to build, and finding the first ten customers.
“Nine months in a cave” became nine minutes — The old failure was disappearing for nine months and emerging to no customers. Now you emerge in nine minutes to no customers. The reality check arrives sooner, which he counts as a saving.
What makes something a product rather than a weekend build — Niche plus data. His example: a startup that mapped every road, bend and tunnel in the country to route wind-turbine blades, because a wrong turn costs crores. Two hours of code, but nobody else has the data.
Two jewellery designers in Jaipur who had never written code — Now building a 3D Photoshop for jewellery design, prompt-driven. Neither has a tech background, let alone a STEM one.
India is “do it for me”, not “do it yourself” — Even at an automated DigiYatra gate, someone is still standing there helping. His vision follows from it: a shop counter you walk into, say what you want, and someone prompts it into being while you wait — “almost like McD”. Navin points out MCCIA has already built the help-desk version of exactly this.
The hacker-house economics — AI Grants funded 30 people living, cooking and building together in the Himalayan foothills for three months, because it was cheaper there. Inside Bangalore the same thing runs 6–10 lakhs of rent. In Pune he ran it out of a friend’s spare space on weekends instead — and points out that anyone can do this anywhere, by asking a local office for their empty room.
Epoch is that hacker house, compressed into weekends — The Himalayan version needs real capital and three months of everyone’s life. What scales instead is four weekends in a friend’s spare office, because “weekends are when it’s free”: engineers arrive and leave with a working proof of concept. Hundreds applied from across the country; he kept it to Pune and Mumbai for practical reasons. One of its founders, Sriram Kintada, is still a student at IISER Pune.
The age distribution is wider than you would guess — A nine-year-old building robotic droids, whose year of tooling Bosky funds. Seventeen-year-olds in Bangalore customising LLMs and raising money.
Set aside a budget for your own AI use — Bosky’s framing is that AI turbocharges whatever you already are: designer, lawyer, estate agent. Navin offers a number for it — 2–3% of income, after the rent is covered.
What he would rather have — Asked to choose between one company that becomes fundable and ten founders whose ambition rises with no outcome at all, he takes the ten. Navin ties it to Tyler Cowen’s line that raising the ambition of young people is among the most valuable things you can do.
Notable quotes
“Anthropic did not have Opus to build Opus. So why do you need Opus?”
“In fact, there is no gatekeeping. I don’t check anything.”
“You can go nine months into a cave and then come out saying that, yes, I’ve done it, I’ve made it, and it’s empty. But now you can come out in nine minutes and it will still be empty saying where is the customers.”
“One thing I do is that I always never give the full amount. So I gave maximum 50% because I’ll say, okay, now find other ways to do it. You should not get everything with a spoon.”
“India is a country of not do it yourself, it is do it for me.”
“My WhatsApp is full of thank yous all day long.”
Links & resources
AI Grants India — free model, API and infrastructure access for Indian builders. Partnering is a matter of
aigrants.in?ref=<your event>; Bosky says the default answer to anyone asking is yes.Better Capital — Vaibhav Domkundwar’s fund. He ran the February 2025 hackathon where AI Grants India began, and became its founding sponsor.
NxtWave — the edtech company behind CCBP 4.0, and the source of AI Grants India’s first large donation, two days before this conversation was recorded.
Zo House — the Bangalore hacker-house network AI Grants partners with, alongside a residency in Bangalore.
deAsra Foundation — Anand Deshpande’s Pune non-profit for nano-entrepreneurs, raised by Navin when asking whether AI reaches gig workers and the self-employed.
NVIDIA Inception — the partner behind free inference across a large model catalogue through a single API.
MCCIA — the Pune chamber running the SME help desk Navin describes, and the subject of our first episode.
Sanjay Phadke, FinTech Future: The Digital DNA of Finance — an Epoch participant and co-investor; Bosky cites him as someone who has written the book he hasn’t got around to.
Tyler Cowen — the source of Navin’s closing line about raising the ambition of young people.
AI Tinkerers Pune — Bosky’s meetup group; an upcoming edition is aimed at designers.
Connect with Bhasker “Bosky” Kode
AI Grants India — aigrants.in
X — @boskykode — the handle linked from aigrants.in. (He gives a different one on air; this is the one that works.)
LinkedIn — bhaskerkode
GitHub — bosky101
Blog — bosky says
