I see where markets form
before they're named.
I build what makes them real.
I work where emerging technology becomes a market: identifying what needs to exist, building the commercial architecture around it, and creating the conditions for adoption.
Fifteen years working across financial infrastructure, regulated data, digital assets, sustainability and emerging technology. I've founded companies, built new markets and commercial capabilities, and worked on the difficult transition from technical possibility to real-world adoption.
I'm currently building Sell in Europe, market-access infrastructure for Indian exporters selling into regulated European markets.
I'm Vishal Kapadia. I'm based in Rome with my family. I studied experimental psychology and neuroscience at Oxford, then marketing at ESCP. Really one training: how to see what's happening underneath behaviour, then build commercially on it.
My family have traded between India and Britain since 1946 — mill owners in Ahmedabad from the 1920s, cloth into Lancashire, then Manchester. I learned how markets actually work inside that business, with mills, media and retail, where the trading was unforgiving and no framework survived unless it worked on the floor. Sell in Europe is the same corridor, with the compliance layer.
Across my career I've built commercial paths for products that institutions needed but couldn't yet buy: open ESG data, on-chain carbon, crypto philanthropy infrastructure, flexible workspace in Germany.
I don't just build the go-to-market. I build the systems beneath it: the data architecture, the on-chain marketplace, the compliance engine. Earlier, I cut £14.6M for BNP Paribas UK as a strategy consultant at CVA, and founded 50Zero (acquired by ForTomorrow in 2022).
I write about how to see clearly when markets are still forming. I build the infrastructure that makes them real.
Currently building Sell in Europe while working alongside a small number of founders whose products are technically credible but whose markets are still emerging.
Compliance is market access
Sell in Europe · Co-FounderEU regulation is making compliance a prerequisite for market access, but most exporters have no practical way to meet it. I'm building the layer that translates exposure into action across REACH, CBAM, EUDR, and Digital Product Passports.
Sell in Europe is that infrastructure, compliance operationalised for Indian textile exporters.
More on what I'm buildingBuilt, not theorised
AI has substantially changed what I can build myself. I now move directly from market research and domain modelling into working software, data infrastructure and commercial prototypes, using the artefact itself to learn what the market actually needs. For Sell in Europe that meant a live compliance engine translating 32 EU regulations and 137 HS-code mappings into queryable logic.
I'm co-author of published LLM research (ESCP, 2024; SSRN).
The pattern, repeated
Every market I entered had the same structural gap: a credible product existed, but institutions had no framework for adopting it. The buyer was misidentified. The category didn't exist. Or the channel wasn't viable. I built that framework. I'm building it again now.
The data wasn't accessible
WikiRate · Founder & Executive DirectorDiagnosis. Corporate ESG data sat behind $10k/year terminals, out of reach of the researchers and civil-society users who needed it. Built. The open platform, the data architecture and schema, and the institutional partnerships around it, funded by the European Commission. Result. Turned unstructured corporate disclosure into open, comparable data adopted by the UN and European Commission.
The channel wasn't viable
Knotel · Employee #1, GermanyDiagnosis. Knotel's global broker model didn't work in Germany, where brokers were skeptical of flexible workspace as a category. Built. A different incentive structure, market credibility through events, and a working channel where none existed, as employee #1 in the country. Result. A functioning demand channel in a market that had rejected the category.
The category didn't exist
KlimaDAO · Head of Partnerships & GrowthDiagnosis. On-chain carbon had no institutional language and no framework for buyers to act on. Built. The 'digital carbon' narrative, the institutional briefing, and the partnership architecture across developers, protocols and corporate buyers that preceded Carbonmark. Result. Institutional buyers entering a category that had not existed; I closed $2.3M in deals, including a $400K landmark with Polygon.
The buyer was misidentified
Endaoment · Founding Head of GrowthDiagnosis. The scalable buyer wasn't the crypto donor. It was the wealth adviser serving crypto-native clients. Built. The adviser proposition, distribution architecture and first sales capability, including relationships with Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken and BNY Pershing. Result. Established wealth advisers and distribution partners as a scalable institutional channel.
Seeing clearly in forming markets
Essays on perception, institutional adoption, and building before the category is settled.
Clearing the Signal
On withdrawal, flourishing, and the difference between light that is generated and light that is borrowed
The Second Practice
On finishing what you start thinking. Why the gap between perception and output is where most depth gets lost.
The Formation Problem
On how childhood shapes the capacity for depth, and why some elite systems suppress it.
On Not Striking the Arm
On what to do when your will meets a system that wants to suppress it.
Deploying the Practice
On operating among other actors: the householder's problem, and its philosophy.
Let's talk.
I'm interested in difficult problems in markets that are still taking shape. I work selectively with founders, investors and institutions where the underlying capability is real but the market around it isn't yet settled. That can mean shaping the proposition or category, finding the actual buyer, building distribution, or helping create the capability itself.