From over here at The Ken's newsroom, we have a very exciting announcement: our first premium podcast – India's first premium business podcast – is now live! It's called Two by Two – and this podcast will be your personal investigative brain. Each week Two by Two will be where hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan will be joined by a few interesting and opinionated guests to discuss some of the biggest questions from the world of Indian business. But, why's it called Two by...

Hello, we're back again with part 2 of our final, final supercut where we’ve spliced together one interesting bit of conversation from the last 21 guests I interviewed on First Principles.  And like the last episode where we covered founders 1 to 20, you’ll hear super sharp slices of a few minutes each which are reflections on their approach to organization building, risk taking, decision making and life living. Here are the guests you’ll get listen to in this episode:   Krish Subramanian,...

I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t the First Principles podcast draw its curtains? Yes we did. But then we decided to do a final super-splice of every single episode we did. There were 41 founders. A bit too many for a single supercut episode, don’t you think? So, here’s the first 20. We went through all the episodes and picked a few minutes from each that we felt captured the essence of the specific founder and their approach to entrepreneurship, leadership, and well, life. You’ll listen...

First Principles is coming to an end. But it's not the end of the road for you as listeners. We still want to hear from you and know what you expect from the podcasts from The Ken. Let us know with your suggestions and critique. We'd love to know your thoughts and you can let us know here. Also, you can always write to us at [email protected] with your thoughts.

Becoming an entrepreneur is a leap of faith. Regardless of when or even if your business sees the light of day, starting up is still a tremendously hard thing for someone to take up, work on and say out loud to the world. The leap of faith still exists when you're a woman founder, but with a bunch of other variables you didn't ask for also thrown in. But I'll tell you what doesn't change. It still takes the same amount of passion, the joy of building, stress, frustration and the ability to...

In the first part of my conversation with Manav Garg, I introduced him as the founder of Eka Software. This week, I would like to reintroduce Manav as a venture capitalist and the co-founder of Together Fund, a VC firm. Well, you know how I feel about having venture capitalists on First Principles if you've listened to my conversation with Alok Mittal. I had said in that conversation that venture capitalists are facilitators or enablers, not builders or doers. Manav, too, like Alok Mittal...

"This notion of a startup should be centered around the founder is a mindset. It makes for great stories. It makes for great heroes. And that's the reason why that sustains But, you know, there are great organizations that have been built where founders did not believe in that. And the organizations sustain even after the founder leaves." That's what Alok Mittal, founder and MD of Indifi, an online lending platform, had to say about startups getting caught up in the founder-worshipping...

“As I said, I am from a middle-class family. I was earning $10,000/month, which is a large sum in those days. And sitting in Singapore, Bangkok, travelling around the world. So my the larger question in my mind is that how do I take the decision?” says Manav Garg. Manav Garg, founder and former CEO of Eka Software, a SaaS company that operates in the global commodities trading space. "Former CEO" because Manav started Eka in 2004 and just sold it earlier this year.  Since Manav was earning...

Kapil Chopra, the founder and CEO of Postcard Hotels told me the following statistics. Of the 10 million foreign tourists who visit India each year, roughly 10% - one million - are classified as luxury.  “So we've kind of made entire Rajasthan and Kerala as two big sectors for one million tourists,” he said. In comparison domestic trips made by Indians was around 2.3 billion a year, a few years ago.  Even if just 1% of those could be upgraded to luxury travel, that’s 23 million. Chopra wants...

Jaydeep Barman has settled into his role of being a CEO for quite some time now. He admits he was not always the nicest of people when they restarted or ‘actually started’ Faasos, which later became Rebel Foods, as a QSR chain in 2011. He would be unreasonable and brash with the people he worked with and in his own words “must have rubbed people the wrong way”. But with time he has gained perspective, as one does when they go through all those experiences. Now, he’s thankful for all those...

Alok Mittal has been on both ends of the startup ecosystem. He’s been a founder and a VC. These days he’s back in the founder’s seat but still enabling businesses but through his lending platform Indifi which lends money to Small and Medium Enterprises or SMEs. He has very strong thoughts about org building even though he admits Indifi is only 9 years old. He speaks from his observations and his strong beliefs. In Alok’s mind it’s the mid-management which holds together the organization and...

Rebel Foods was incorporated in 2015. Before that it was Faasos and Faasos has been around since 2004. But co-founder and CEO Jaydeep Barman says back in 2004 when he and his co-founder Kallol Banerjee started it, they didn’t look at it as a means of living. It existed to some extent, primarily, to fulfil their own craving for good Calcutta rolls as Pune, where both of them were living at the time, didn't have any nice joints for the same. A few years after starting it both of them left it...

When Chetan Maini – co-founder and chairman of SUN Mobility – stepped down as Mahindra Reva CEO in 2015, he wasn’t thinking what was the next venture to start. In fact even though he stepped down he was still involved in the space. His time was still spent in understanding the possibilities electric mobility could unlock for the world and how these possibilities were being explored around the world. He was still involved in setting up and innovating the Formula E division at Mahindra, he...

What does your company do? There are many ways to answer this question. Most founders have a really good answer, some have a meandering one. Well, let’s just say it’s always a compelling answer. This week we have five founders to answer that question on a broader range. They function in very competitive sectors and are successfully making their mark in their respective sectors by innovating and more appropriately reinventing the wheel. First up, we have newly inducted Shark, Radhika...

Our guest for this episode has a very specific weekly routine.  Pilates - once a week. Strength training - once a week. Aqua therapy - once a week Functional training, swimming, breathing exercises, meditating daily with just a little trouble Golfing three times a week followed up with posture exercises  And very recently, experimenting with intermittent fasting. Maybe you’re imagining a very specific type of person. A really fit, disciplined person – perhaps, a fitness influencer? Well, you...

Chetan Maini, the co-founder and Chairman of Sun Mobility has done a whole lot in his life. He’s been forever a tinkerer as you’re bound to find out if you read his father Dr.S.K.Maini’s book REVA: India’s Green Gift to the World. Chetan’s raced solar cars, built his own car company REVA and is now building a pay-as-you-go energy infrastructure for a greener future with Sun Mobility. You’ll see in this a proper evolution of owning the chain of control as well. Well, it has to be said this is...

Girish Mathrubootham – founder and CEO of Freshworks – feels strongly about having the authority to take one’s own decisions, from a young age. He made a very apt example in our conversation with him earlier this month at his office in Chennai: a kid never gets to make his own decisions, even if it is to just order food of their liking. This in turn translates into their adulthood as an inability to make decisions. Girish has been out there making most of his decisions for himself from a...

Sometime in the early 1970s a young Harsh Mariwala joined Bombay Oil Industries, a company set up by his grandfather in 1948, just a year after India’s independence. The company would trade in spices, oils and chemicals. Over the next two decades Harsh learnt the ropes of the family business. Till in 1991 - two decades after he had joined Bombay Oil - he left it to start his own company, Marico. He had already seen the power of quality and brand in a category that was still almost entirely...

If you're here to find out more about our brand new early careers podcast, check out The First Two Years and how you can join the TFTY community here! You can also listen to our trailer on Spotify and Apple.  Welcome to Episode 41 of First Principles. When asked, Girish Mathrubootham* – the CEO and Co-Founder of Freshworks, says that there’s one thing most of his direct reports would agree about him – that he leads from the heart.  Many Freshworks employees have a different way of describing...

There is a cliche often associated with hyper growth startups.  That running one is like learning how to fly a plane while you’re already up in the air. Or perhaps it's like learning to change an engine while you’re driving a car.  There is another version of this analogy: it's like learning how to build a plane and learning how to fly it and also mastering how to change an engine mid-air, even as you’re hurtling at hundreds of kilometers per hour through the air.  A great example of such...

Welcome back to First Principles. I’m your host, Rohin Dharmakumar.   Thank you for listening to us. We’re thankful that you choose to spend a few hours with us each week!   Today we have a “supercut” episode. Normally our conversations go deep with one specific guest, but every now and then we zoom out and go broad by stitching together a multi-guest conversation. And the invisible thread that connects the conversations with 5 founders we picked for today is company culture.   What’s the...

Welcome back to Episode 39 of First Principles! A few weeks ago, you heard the first part of our conversation with Aneesh Reddy, the CEO and Co-Founder of Capillary Tech, a software company offering products and services in the customer experience space. And you might remember that in that episode, Aneesh took us through the journey of Capillary in instalments – because as he explained, Aneesh dreams in instalments.  The second instalment was the years 2013 to 2018 – which Aneesh called...

Welcome to Episode 38 of First Principles! If you're here to sign up for the First Principles Newsletter, here you go! In this episode, you will hear Vaibhav Gupta, the CEO and co-founder of Udaan, an online trade platform whose mission is to "transform India". It hopes to achieve that lofty goal by bringing tens of thousands of shopkeepers and grocery store owners closer to their suppliers and offering them competitive pricing, guarantees on quality, and easy deliveries and returns. Vaibhav...

Welcome back to Episode 37 of First Principles. If you’re here to find our latest edition of the First Principles Newsletter, here you go! A few weeks ago, we had a wonderful conversation with Viren Shetty – the executive vice chairman of Narayana Health.  Narayana Health – formerly called Narayana Hrudalaya – is a hospital network that’s also listed on the stock exchanges.  Today’s episode is the second part of our conversation with Viren. In part 1, Viren talked about healthcare in India...