Most Indians build wealth in a single industry, leaving their investments exposed when that industry has a bad year. Hedge funds have long used a similar solution: maintain the core conviction while hedging the risks that could undermine it. Optima is applying that approach to individual investors.

The firm’s technology integrates systematic portfolio optimization, trade execution and client services into a single AI-native system, enabling Optima to respond in real time and improve while clients sleep. An upgraded version of the AI-native platform will roll out next month, extending the firm’s promise of “hedge-fund intelligence made personal.”

Param Patel, 26, founded Optima after failing to find a portfolio manager willing to design a portfolio around his family’s concentrated real-estate exposure. “I grew up around a family business in real estate development and watched cyclical businesses and investments move with the same tide,” he said. “When I tried to find someone who would craft a portfolio around our critical risk, I kept getting sold off menus.”

Patel studied computer science and applied mathematics at the University of Southern California, was a Kleiner Perkins engineering fellow, and worked across early-stage Silicon Valley AI companies and New York fintech. After returning to India, he spent eighteen months building and stress-testing quantitative systems on his own family’s capital before assembling the Optima team.

Optima is fully bootstrapped and headquartered in Mumbai. Its team combines expertise in quantitative research, product design and global hedge-fund trading.

The firm’s approach is built around the principle of designing portfolios around the risks clients already carry. Optima also offers a full refund of management fees to clients who leave during their first six months.

“Optimists don't play it safe. Optima makes it safer to keep playing,” Param said.

With its AI-native platform and risk-focused portfolio approach, Optima is positioning its launch around a model that seeks to preserve clients’ core investment convictions while engineering portfolios around the risks that matter most to them.