After graduation, he spent half a year working with his father’s architectural firm before heading to Oman hunting for work. He landed one soon enough — at Galfar Al Misnad. That year shaped him more than Ajay realised at the time.
“The work was rigorous and included extensive planning, poring over blueprints, field visits, flowline drawings for oil and gas fields, welding charts, supervision and more. All this, in the middle of nowhere. All around us, there was just sand,” he recalls.
However, even amid this presumed nothingness, something materialised: a deep interest in Ajay for everything manufacturing. That led him to Cranfield University in the UK, renowned for its industry-aligned programmes and cutting-edge research.
“Our group project involved developing a scratch-resistant ceramic coating for car interiors. It was my first encounter with ceramics. Not as art, but as function. At the time, we were only solving a durability issue,” Ajay recalls.
Later, for his thesis, he worked on laser welding of aluminium and stainless steel. “Two metals notoriously hard to fuse. It was gritty, unforgiving work. I loved it,” he adds.
It was also at Cranfield that Ajay discovered additive manufacturing and 3D printing. “Machines that built objects out of thin air. It felt like science fiction.”