Buns & Business with Vinyl Equity: Dough & Dividends
Between the conventional choices of Pune was an option. Bengaluru was an option. Mangaluru was the answer.Two years later: 25 engineers, sub-5% attrition, production-grade platforms in the hands of US companies and a city that exceeded every expectations.
THE ORIGIN
Home Was Always the Answer.
Vinyl Equity builds the capital markets infrastructure layer that public US companies use to manage their securities. A modern, cloud-native system designed to replace legacy, paper-driven processes with real-time digital infrastructure. Vinyl Equity had already built a small team in Pune to create and test out the initial product. When the time came to scale India operations, the obvious paths were to expand in Pune or move into Bengaluru. Poornaprajna Udupi, based in the United States, explored an often unexplored third option: Mangaluru.
“We still speak Tulu at home. Pretty much every family occasion, we end up in Udupi. That's the connectivity I have, the native tissue.”
Choosing a metro would have meant visibility on paper. Mangaluru gave him something that compounds over time: engineers who choose to be there, and choose to stay. It also gave him a different kind of visibility, earned on the ground, built through real outcomes.
Poornaprajna Udupi
- Co-Founder, Vinyl Equity
Poornaprajna completed his engineering at NIT Surat and went on to do his Master's in Computer Science at UC San Diego. He has been based in the United States since 2000, building across systems, streaming, and consumer products at Sun Microsystems, Netflix, and several startups. He co-founded Vinyl Equity in 2023 a core capital markets infrastructure provider for US-registered companies
“Mangaluru has all the amenities, all the things you look for, and even the grace Bangalore is known for. But no chaos. That's when Mangaluru entered my thought process.”
POORNAPRAJNA UDUPI, CO-FOUNDER, VINYL EQUITY
THE PITCH
Mangaluru.The Case That Made Itself.
When it came time to scale, he didn't go with instinct. He went with what his own network was telling him: Silicon Valley peers returning to India, senior engineers gravitating toward smaller cities, and a pattern that pointed, repeatedly, to Mangaluru.
THE TALENT WAS ALREADY MOVING
Peers from his Silicon Valley network were moving back to India, and Mangaluru kept coming up. He saw what the city genuinely offered: proximity to family, quality of life, a city with room to breathe, and most of all, skilled professionals returning by choice. A company that was set up in Mangaluru could tap that directly.
THE CITY KEEPS
PEOPLE
Metro cities carry a hidden cost: strong hires who leave within a year or two. In Mangaluru, that pattern breaks. Engineers are not burning out in traffic or getting pulled away every quarter. They are focused, present, and invested. That stability shows up in the output.
THE INFRASTRUCTURE IS THERE
Power, internet, office space, talent density. Every concern companies raised about Mangaluru a decade ago had already been answered. Industry leaders who knew the city confirmed it, and that gave Poornaprajna the confidence to move forward.
THE EXECUTION
The How. The When.
Vinyl Equity's India setup was built to prove value at each stage before expanding.
Start small with a known team in Pune, validate the Mangaluru strategy, demonstrate delivery, then grow.
Vinyl Equity started with six engineers in Pune, with one goal: to prove whether the product would work before expanding further.
When the product started showing results, Poornaprajna began hiring in Mangaluru. The plan was clear: grow the Mangaluru team to 10 in the first phase, with a sharp focus on software development for the entire product.
The team is at 25 and still expanding. Every engineer is building different modules of the Vinyl Platform, with genuine ownership across every layer. And ownership at Vinyl Equity is not just a culture value: every team member holds actual equity in the company. They are not just working for the company. They are owning it and building it together.
“They are all made owners in the company. Not just in terms of what they're building, but they have equity in the company. They're actually building it and are owners in it.”
POORNAPRAJNA UDUPI, CO-FOUNDER, VINYL EQUITY
THE ECOSYSTEM
The People Who Made It Real.
THE DECISION
This didn't happen in isolation. A network of people, each closing a different gap, made Mangaluru possible.
Each person brought something distinct: personal conviction, operational know-how, and ground-level intelligence. Together, they turned a considered idea into a running operation.
“What I needed was triangulation from three anchors.”
PERSONAL CONFIDENCE
Nagaraj Acharya
Director of Engineering, Vinyl Equity
Nagaraj had left the UK to return to Mangaluru, not because he had to but because he wanted to. That lived choice gave Poornaprajna Udupi something no report could: the conviction that it was credible. Nagaraj now leads all India engineering operations across Mangaluru and Pune for Vinyl Equity
OPERATIONAL FEASIBILITY
Prakash Balebail
Founder, Estuate
Prakash, a Mangaluru native leading Estuate, Inc., didn't just offer guidance; he offered a roadmap to success. He and his team mentored Poornaprajna through the nuances of U.S.-India corporate structuring, payroll, and compliance. By streamlining the setup of operations in Mangaluru, Estuate removed the friction and jump-started Vinyl's growth in India
GROUND-LEVEL EXECUTION
Rohith Bhat
Industry Leader, Mangaluru
Rohith gave Poornaprajna the ground-level read he needed: talent was returning, attrition in Mangaluru was running well below Bangalore, and infrastructure concerns around power and internet were no longer valid. The city had quietly changed, and Rohith helped Poornaprajna see it.
“What I underestimated is how much help there is if you ask for it in Mangalore.”
POORNAPRAJNA UDUPI, CO-FOUNDER, VINYL EQUITY
THE RESULTS
One City. Zero Compromise
Two years in, the team is at 25 and growing. Attrition is well below 5%. Production-grade, cloud-native platforms, built from scratch and owned end to end by engineers who chose to be in Mangaluru, now in the hands of US companies.
"Once they are in Mangaluru, they fall in love with the place and they don't want to leave."
"We have not lowered our standards or settled for anything less."
At Vinyl Equity, engineers are not maintaining someone else’s system. They are building a production-grade capital markets platform from the ground up, powered by tools like Claude, CodeRabbit, and a fully AI-assisted workflow. Ownership is end to end, spanning product strategy and AI engineering through to production delivery, with clear accountability at every stage. Every team member holds real equity in the company, aligning outcomes with ownership. This is not an extension of the business. It is where the business is being built.
“I'll be back. I have decided to come back from the US and work from Mangaluru. That's how committed I am to what we're building here.”
POORNAPRAJNA UDUPI, CO-FOUNDER, VINYL EQUITY