A Techie Takes on the Diamond Trade

ILA Fine Jewelry sells handcrafted jewelry. Unbridaled AI is an online business-to-business platform for sourcing and selling diamonds and precious gemstones. Vikas Sodhani ’20, the founder of both companies, says, “Together, these two activities embody the best of what I learned at MIT: the fusion of art, design, and technology.”

Sodhani’s path to the jewelry business was anything but linear. His parents, both immigrants to the United States from the state of Rajasthan in India, were diamond traders. But he had little interest in the family business. At MIT, he focused on engineering and tech design activities and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Course 6. Afterward, he went to work at tech startups, even founding a couple with friends from his fraternity, Theta Delta Chi, that focused on public transportation trackers and file sharing protocols. Then, while between jobs in 2004, Sodhani set out on a three-month solo backpacking trip through India.

“I fell in love with India,” he recalls. “It helped me understand my origins, where I came from. And you can’t spend time in India without noticing how integrated jewelry is to the culture there.”

The night before he was to board a plane back to the United States, Sodhani learned his father had found him an apprenticeship at a diamond-cutting factory in Mumbai. He still wasn’t interested in precious stones, but he wanted to stay in India, so he started at the factory the following morning. Three months later, he enrolled in a jewelry design course. “The whole experience blew my mind,” says Sodhani. “I was an engineer, with an engineer’s mindset and training. And here were these stones, cut by skilled artisans, each one unique. Here were these jewelry pieces, each one a complex work of art, all forged by hand. I couldn’t believe someone could do that by hand with metal and stones.”

Instead of looking for another tech job, Sodhani flew back to his home in Houston, set up a jewelry workshop, and founded ILA. “It took a while for me to learn how to design and make the pieces,” he explains. “There wasn’t a YouTube then. And even if there had been, these pieces are made by hand, by people who’ve spent many years learning their craft. You can only learn by putting in the time.”

In 2006 Sohani completed his first line and took it to a designer show in Los Angeles. The reception was enthusiastic. Soon his jewelry was being sold in high-end stores, including Catbird, Moda Operandi, and Saks Fifth Avenue. These same retailers still carry ILA merchandise today.

Sodhani conceived his latest business venture, Unbridaled AI, in 2018. “Traditionally, it was exceedingly difficult to source diamonds,” he explains. “Each one is cut by hand. No two diamonds are alike. You can’t just phone a company in Mumbai and order a stone of a certain size or quality because you don’t know what you’ll get. There were existing search platforms, but they were clumsy and generated lists of tens of thousands of stones. I started thinking about an electronic system that could guarantee both transparency and efficiency.”

First introduced in 2023, Unbridaled AI leverages data from diamond laboratories to train its machine learning models and deliver a curated shortlist of the finest stones available worldwide.

Embedded with e-commerce tools, the AI platform enables customers to select and purchase stones based on a variety of criteria, including size, cut, color, and price. Unbridaled AI makes its revenues on order fulfillment. “If our customers aren’t selling, we aren’t making money,” Sodhani explains, noting that the platform has been widely adopted in the industry. Unbridaled AI now employs 34 people in three offices worldwide.

Between designing custom jewelry and engineering a game-changing software platform, Sodhani feels he’s come full circle on a journey that started decades ago. “On that backpacking trip to India, I rediscovered the beauty of my Rajasthani heritage in jewelry,” he says.

"Through this platform, I reconnected with the creativity and purpose of design and technology—something I cultivated while studying computer science at MIT but had set aside. Now, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be."

Are you celebrating a milestone reunion like Vikas Sodhani ’20 is? Learn more about MIT Tech Reunions taking place May 30 to June 1 on MIT's campus. 

Photo illustration by Gretchen Neff Lambert; image courtesy of Vikas Sodhani