First Principles

Welcome to First Principles. This is the second part of my conversation with Vidit Aatrey, co-founder and CEO of Meesho, which we had released in full for Premium subscribers of The Ken last week and is also available to subscribers of The Ken Premium channel on Apple Podcasts.Vidit and I discussed a lot of things. From the way his upbringing grounded him, the way he approaches hiring at Meesho and how he approaches life now as a parent. It's a wonderful 40 minutes where I spent some time talking to Vdit about how he continues to look beyond the horizon to find answers to the more ambiguous questions Meesho faces now.And at the end of it, he has a wonderful book recommendation for everyone. I picked up a copy myself after our conversation.I hope you had the chance to listen to the first part of our conversation, where he covered Meesho's history of growth and pivots and how it has aligned with the changes and demands of its customers.Here's the link to part 1 of my conversation with Vidit Aatrey - Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | YoutubeNow, let's get on to part 2 of my conversation with Vidit Aatrey.-If you're a premium subscriber of The Ken. You can listen to the full conversation with Vidit Aatrey right now using this link.The full conversation was made available early to Premium subscribers of The Ken on our app and subscribers of The Ken Premium channel via a separate standalone subscription on Apple Podcasts.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions and guests you would want to see on First Principles.

I met Vidit Aatrey, Co-founder and CEO of Meesho, on 14th February, exactly two months ago. We met at Spacebot Studios in Indiranagar. Vidit is tall, lean and clean-shaven. He is a careful listener and a measured speaker. When you ask him a question, you get the sense he's spending time parsing all its meanings, and then playing out a few versions of responses in his head, perhaps doing a little bit of editing, before replying. Of course, all of this happens in a few seconds, so it's easy to miss unless you are, well, having a conversation with him for over two hours. That's enough time for both of us to pick and read cues from each other.Think about it. Can you spend two hours in a room having a truly open-ended, candid and widespread discussion with another person about their life, their business, their colleagues, their company and its culture, and even their family, without getting to really know them?I'd been wanting to have Vidit as a guest on First Principles for a while, even during our first two seasons. But as it turns out, things clicked only in 2025. I'm glad though, because I do feel Vidit's and Meesho's journey are a wonderful opening to Season 3 of First Principles.There's a lot of good stuff we talked about. Why Vidit is so eager for Meesho to build for a long-term view, why he values problems way more than solutions, the humility and willingness to be led to new places by customer insights, the much talked about zero commission model, and building products for users who aren't the top 5% of India.Let's get started with the conversation, shall we?Welcome to season three of First Principles.-If you're a premium subscriber of The Ken. You can listen to the full conversation with Vidit Aatrey right now using this link.Write to us fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions and guests you would want to see on First Principles. The Ken is hosting a subscriber event! Join Two by Two hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan and three distinguished guests as they discuss broken career ladders, shortening career spans, and collapsing organisational structures. Buy tickets here. 

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 Two?Here it is: each episode of the Two by Two podcast will feature an important story investigated and discussed and visualized as a 2x2. A simple matrix that's the purest form of conflict – that places the players and their motivations on both axes. Along with incredible guests, the hosts will discuss what is going on, why is it happening, who gains and who loses, and where is all of this leading to?Two by Two is a premium podcast – but for now, the first episode is free for all listeners. On this episode, the hosts speak to Professor R Srinivasan and Srikanth Rajagopalan on the brewing rivalry between Flipkart and PhonePe, once parent and child, but now more like cousins. Flipkart, which is now venturing into FinTech with Super.money and Phonepe, which has launched the grocery delivery app Pincode are both stepping into each others turf.What happens next?Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

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, co-founder and CEO of Chargebee; Varun Dua, founder of Acko; Yashish Dahiya, co-founder and Group CEO of Policybazaar; Archit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Clear; M N Srinivasu, co-founder and Director of Billdesk; Radhika Gupta, MD and CEO of Edelweiss Asset Management; Lalit Keshre, co-founder and CEO of Groww; Niraj Singh, founder and CEO of Spinny; Karthik Jayaraman, Managing Director of Waycool; Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of Oyo; Soumya Rajan, founder and CEO of Waterfield Advisors; Viren Shetty, Executive Vice Chairman of Narayana Health; Aneesh Reddy, Founder and MD of Capillary Technologies; Vaibhav Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Udaan; Girish Mathrubootham, Founder and Executive Chairman of Freshworks; Harsh Mariwala, Chairman of Marico; Chetan Maini, co-founder and chairman of SUN Mobility; Jaydeep Barman, co-founder and CEO of Rebel Foods; Alok Mittal, co-founder and MD of Indifi Technologies; Kapil Chopra, Founder of The Postcard Hotels; and Manav Garg, founder of Eka.This is not the end of the road for me as a podcast host as you'll soon find out. Actually, very soon. I'm Rohin Dharmakumar, your host. And here's part 2 of the final, final supercut.------Also, if you haven't already, do subscribe to the First Principles newsletter. You can sign up for free here!

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 to Kabeer Biswas, co-founder and CEO of Dunzo; Baskar Subramamian, co-founder and CEO of Amagi; Nithin Kamath, co-founder and CEO of Zerodha; Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO at InMobi; Ananth Narayanan, founder and CEO of Mensa Brands; Harshil Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Razorpay; Vineeta Singh, co-founder and CEO of Sugar Cosmetics; Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs; Amit Agarwal, co-founder and CEO of NoBroker; Tarun Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy; Deep Kalra, founder and chairman of MakeMyTrip; Ruchi Kalra, co-founder and CEO of Oxyzo; Kamal Sagar, co-founder and CEO of Total Environment; Srikanth Iyer, co-founder and CEO of Homelane; Shan Kadavil, founder and CEO of Fresh to Home; Kunal Shah, founder and CEO of CRED; Srikanth Velamakanni, co-founder and CEO of Fractal; Ronnie Screwvala, co-founder and chairperson of UpGrad; Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and CEO of Unacademy; and Smita Deorah, co-founder and co-CEO of LEAD.Even if you've listened to many of these episodes, I think you might enjoy this intense supercut.Meanwhile, we're working hard at our next podcast. Which I should be able to introduce to you very shortly. I'm excited!I'm Rohin Dharmakumar, your host. And here's part 1 of final, final supercut.-----------While you're still here you can sign up for the First Principles Newsletter here and continue to be part of the First Principles community.

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 fp@the-ken.com 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 manage fires that might go off anytime to keep the ship steady, and eventually succeed in the long run.Being a woman founder does present its own challenges and hurdles that are often unexpected or even patronising. Because if you've decided to jump into the world of terrible and exciting, then these are just additional hoops that you have to jump through.That's why role models matter. I must confess we - I - have been disappointed at not being able to get a lot more woman founders and their stories on First Principles. You can be sure we're trying to change that over time. But in today's supercut episode, we bring together five women founders from earlier episodes.This episode features Vineeta Singh of SUGAR Cosmetics, Smita Deorah of LEAD School, Ruchi Kalra of Oxyzo, Radhika Gupta of Edelweiss Asset Management and Soumya Rajan of Waterfield Advisors.Welcome to First Principles—The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.----------Apply for the Young Business Leadership Programme!What is it?It is an ambitious and exciting role where we take a handful of talented, ambitious and eager-to-learn graduates from India's top colleges and put them through a two-year program where they will work in different roles and functions at The Ken.And throughout the two years they will learn virtually all key aspects of building, innovating and scaling a modern "journalism as a product" organization, well, from first principles.If you want to understand the "why" of why we're doing this, you'll find the details to that here, but if you're just excited about the opportunity from the little I have told you and you're just thinking about "how" do I apply, here's the link for that.----------Also, have you listened to the latest episode of The First Two Years(or TFTY)—The Early Careers podcast from The Ken?In the latest episode of TFTY, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran goes on a quest to explore how to solicit feedback as requested by a listener of the podcast. Akshaya directed the listener's question to guests on the episode who shared surprising tips and pragmatic ways to ask for feedback. What exactly did they have to say?Listen to the episode here to find out.----------If you haven't already, subscribe to the First Principles newsletter. It's free. All you need to do is sign up, and you'll find a thoughtfully curated newsletter capturing unique insights on the mental models and first principles, along with a curated list of photos and books contributed by the enthusiastic First Principles community.You can sign up here!Also, if you enjoyed listening to this episode, do rate us on your favourite streaming platform, and if you have opinions on what we should be doing differently or just any feedback, good or bad, write to us at fp@the-ken.com. We'll be sure to read it.

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 earlier, has been at both ends, being a facilitator and also being in the thick of building an organisation. A few months ago, he fully transitioned into being a venture capitalist and has raised almost $150 million for Together Fund's Fund II(Fund Two), which is almost double the $85 million they raised for their first fund. Manav terms Together as a founder and 'operator-led' firm, and that distinguishes it from other VC funds.Manav explained it as, "So we are the people who can, you know, roll our sleeves with them and really help them where they can really think like founders. And our concept was repetition over returns. We want to really think for the founders with empathy and really help them build a global company."If Alok Mittal's story was about turning from a VC to a founder, Manav's is about turning from a founder to a VC. Well, he is sort of both as a co-founder of Together Fund. But the question is, can a founder be a better VC than, well, a VC?Welcome to First Principles—The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.----------Have you listened to The Ken's early careers podcast, The First Two Years, yet? If you haven't, we've got the perfect episode to start you off. In the latest episode, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran went about exploring how to do networking without making it feel forced and cringe. Check out the episode here!----------Also, if you're still here, help us improve First Principles with your suggestions, feedback, and guests you would wish to see featured in a future episode. Write to us fp@the-ken.com. And if you haven't already, become a part of the First Principles community by signing up for the First Principles newsletter here!

"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 trap.I hope you have heard my first episode with him. I often ask founders if they believe in the concept of a founder-led organization. Or how they're planning for a post-founder future for their organization. Because like Alok, I do believe that just like a parent's role is to eventually step back and let go of their child, so it is for founders.But that's not easy when we're living in the golden age of founders. Where co-founder tags are coveted much more than CEO titles. It's not easy for many founders to let go. But that was just one of the things that Alok and I discussed in our conversation. Alok, if you didn't know already, is involved in a lot of things. His day job might be MD of Indifi, but he is also the founding board member of Indian Angel Network and co-founder of Plaksha University.Plaksha is a project he has been working on for quite some time and the way it is structured was interesting and something a lot of centers of education should be aiming to build in India as Alok explained:"The notion of departments that exist in educational institutions is not the right architecture. Especially for a country like India, more and more of technology skills have to get expressed as entrepreneurship for it to be relevant to society. I don't think we have another answer for the jobs we need to create or the growth that we need to build.Now, you take all of that, and the question that we are asking is, what does that mean for the university system? And so, for example, at Plaksha, there are no departments. There are these integrated centers of research which are oriented towards a particular problem like climate. But there is no computer science department, there is no mechanical engineering department. There is no mechanical engineering major because we don't think that students will need to be experts at mechanical engineering in a silo to be able to build.So there is a major in autonomous systems, which means robotics, which means drones, which means all of that. But there's a major in biological systems, which means genetic engineering, which means personalized medicine, things of that nature. So that is the new architecture that we are putting in place for how technology education should be done."If you haven't already checked out the first part of my conversation with Alok Mittal, now would be the perfect time to give it a listen. You'll find in that conversation when and how Alok fell in love with the idea of being an entrepreneur.Welcome to First Principles—The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.-----------Introducing Patron Subscriptions!If you wish to know more about Patron Subscriptions you can find the link for that here. And if you want to take the conversation forward and know what you have to do to gift The Ken, you'll find the link for that here.------------Thank you for writing to us at fp@the-ken.com with your opinions, suggestions and feedback. Please continue to do so. It helps us in making First Principles better for you, the audience.Have you signed up and started using The Ken's new app? If you haven't already, here are the links to both Android and iOS.

“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 $10K a month back in the early 2000s, we talked about golden handcuffs. You know, when people earn so much that they become risk averse? A lot of people are attracted to the lure of startups but not necessarily the grind that comes with them. Including much, much lower pay. “So, my competition was TriplePoint, Openlink, SAP. Large companies, at that time. $100 million plus companies. So, I started calling them. Cold calling. And few of them didn't pick up my phone.One person luckily picked up my phone saying, ‘Please don't call me again and again. It's not nice. I'm never going to work for Indian company.' I said, ‘Fine. Since I have you on phone, can I meet you?'He said, ‘No.'He said, ‘No. What will you do by meeting me?' I said, ‘Let's have coffee. What I will do is, tell me your travel schedule.' He said, ‘I am flying to London tomorrow, so I am going to be very busy.' I said, ‘Okay, let me do one thing. I will travel to London next day and I will meet you at Heathrow. Just have a coffee. You anyway will take a shower.' Most of the people from New York travel to London that red-eye flight, take a shower in the arrival launch. I knew that. I said, ‘I will meet in the arrival launch. Half an hour coffee and then you are free to go.'He said, ‘Fine.'Luckily, he said, ‘Fine.'” It takes a LOT of courage to fly to London to meet someone who said he doesn't want to work for an Indian company. And a LOT of vision to convince that person to join you. That's what happened at the end of that 30-minute meeting that stretched to 2 hours.  Today, after 20 years as founder, Manav has jumped right back into the ring as the co-founder of venture capital firm TogetherFund, along with Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks and others. When I asked him about something most potential founders overlooked, his answer was easy: Co-founder selection. “See, in India also, still we have in that cultural mix, where you start up with your college friends because you spend time in dorms together, in college, you went through life's ups and downs together, right? So, therefore, you're very attuned to start up with your friends from college, most likely, that's the most likely case, or from your workplace. You work with somebody in Amazon, Flipkart, Freshworks, Eka, Zoho, so therefore you end up starting up.I personally think that there is also a way to manufacture your co-founders.” Manav advises founders to set aside at least 6 months to “manufacture” their co-founders by just meeting a LOT of people. My conversation with Manav uncovers a lot of insight on how young founders should think about building for the long haul. He did it for 20 years. There's a lot of very counterintuitive builder wisdom to unpack in today's conversation.Welcome to First Principles–The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.-------------------------Daybreak is now a daily podcast.Listen to the first special episode we released on 17th May: “Why aren't we scared of chemicals in our skincare anymore?”-------------------------If you love listening to First Principles, we're sure you will enjoy reading our Sunday newsletter, aptly titled First Principles as well. Sign up here, it's free.Also, write to us fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions and guests you would want to see on First Principles.(P.S. A lot of you have written to us over the last few weeks with thoughtful suggestions and excellent feedback. We'll be sure to take all of it into consideration when putting these episodes together for you.)-------------------------Also, have you checked out The Ken's new app? It's packed with a lot of new features. Read all about it here. If you haven't downloaded it already, here are the links to both iOS and Android.

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 to make that happen with Postcard Hotels, his luxury boutique hotel chain. Launched in 2018 with 3 hotels, it has 9 today, and 23 in the works. He wants them all to be in what he calls the “transformational” category. What's that you ask?The first level is commodity. A bed, an air conditioner and a bathroom.The second level represent hotels that offer differentiated “products”.The third level are the luxury hotels come, differentiated by exceptional service.The fourth level is experiential. It's what Airbnb does when it offers you the ability to stay in Paris at a place that overlooks the Eiffel Tower.The fifth level is for “transformative experiences”.“When you combine all of them. If you're able to give a good product, great world class service, great experiential experiences, soak in the destination. If you add all of this together, it becomes transformational,” says Chopra.He lists three luxury hotel brands in the fifth category – Aman Resorts, Six Senses and One & Only.“And I looked at them and said, what is common?  They were all founder-led. And the founders were amazing. But the founders all lost control of the brands they had built,” he says.Kapil Chopra doesn't want to join that group.Kapil also has strong opinions on why he believes the luxury hotel business has become sterile and unexciting over the years, and how Postcard is changing that image. Apart from Postcard, Kapil Chopra is also the founder of the table reservation service, discovery and payment platform, EazyDiner.Over the course of our conversation he also talks about:How luxury travel and travelers are evolving in IndiaWhy did he choose to leave the Oberoi Group at the height of his careerHow he's become calmer after starting Postcard HotelsHow he's doing fundraising, investments and expansion in way that doesn't endanger the parent companyWhy ESOPs and wealth creation needs to be more prevalent in the hospitality and travel industriesWelcome to First Principles–The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.____________________If you love listening to First Principles we're sure you will enjoy reading our Sunday newsletter aptly titled First Principles as well. Sign up here, it's free.Also write to us fp@the-ken.com with your feedback, suggestions and guests you would want to see on First Principles.And if you'd like to listen to the First Principles Summer Playlist you'll find it here!____________________Also have you checked out The Ken's new app. It's packed with a lot of new features. Read all about it here. If you haven't downloaded it already here are the links to both iOS and android.

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 who remained despite him not being the best boss.Today Jaydeep believes Rebel has found its way but he resists to rest in this fast changing world even though he stands by one belief: People's love for good quality food will always be there and till the day that doesn't change Rebel will be very much in business.In the first part of our conversation with Jaydeep he recounted the journey of Rebel Foods, a lot of anecdotes about the restaurant industry at large, how he hires people with founder's mentality and not LinkedIn mentality and a whole lot more…We strongly recommend listening to the first part of our conversation with Jaydeep to get the full picture or if you wish you could read the full transcript of that conversation here.In this second part of our conversation too, Jaydeep was full of insights about the internet restaurant empire he has built and how they arrived at its current version not with clear, set ideas but a lot of experimentation and realising what works and what doesn't on the way.Jaydeep also touched upon a lot of other things including:The role his co-founder, Kallol Banerjee plays at RebelHow they arrived at Rebel OS and the possibilities it holdsHow, at Rebel written reports are the norm and not the exceptionWelcome to First Principles–The weekly leadership podcast from The KenLet's get started._________________Also, The Ken launched a revamped new app. The experience of reading The Ken got a whole lot better. Find out all the new features we added in this update and how we've made the reading faster, smoother and accessible to everyone here, including a fully optimised app for iPad.Check out the new version of The Ken on iOS and android for yourself. Sign up and tell us your experience._________________Additionally, if you love listening to First Principles we're sure you will enjoy reading our Sunday newsletter aptly titled First Principles as well. It's the perfect read for a laid back Sunday morning. Every week you'll see us discussing mental models, insights from disruptive thinkers and founders, photos and book recommendations curated with help of our wonderful First Principles community and even fun playlists. Sign up here, it's free.In fact, listen to the Summer Playlist we shared in our latest edition. It's eclectic, vibe-y and a must listen.

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 not necessarily the leadership team.Alok also has the history of setting up three ventures, which includes the part he played in setting up Canaan Partners, a VC firm in India. Then of course there is JobsAhead which was his first startup and now he's busy lending to the sector which contributes to 30% of the country's GDP, and yet finds credit hard to come by.Alok hung up his VC shoes in 2015 to solve this problem and take on the problem of lending to SMEs, the ones who were being given a pass by traditional banks and NBFCs. But they're not leaning on solving for every SME out there. Indifi have found the sectors they want to lend to and are working towards making these businesses get access to credit.He also talked about:Failures and the learnings it bringsHow he assesses risks as a VC and a founderThe bible of raising moneyAdvice to Young entrepreneursListen to all of that and a whole lot more in this Part 1 episode of our conversation with Alok Mittal.Welcome to First Principles – The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.Also, if you love listening to First Principles, you are sure to love The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business publication. To discover the deeply-reported stories that we publish everyday head over to our website and subscribe to The Ken's premium subscription.Also, do write to us with your suggestions and opinions about First Principles at fp@the-ken.com. We love hearing from our listeners and subscribers.

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 behind to go and do their second MBAs from INSEAD and after completing it Jaydeep went on to work for McKinsey in London and Kallol headed to Bosch in Singapore.But the dream of having their own company brought them back to Pune in 2011 and this time they were serious about making Faasos huge. They wanted to make it a QSR chain in the image of McDonald's and Dominos of the world, but catering to the Indian taste buds. They raised some venture capital and got a few angel investors and decided to fire up their journey to growing their store numbers and serving great food.But this journey hit a roadblock when they grew too fast and revenue didn't match up growth on a per store basis. This is when they had the first of their ‘lightbulb moments or epiphanies' as Jaydeep calls them.Infrastructure or setting up a restaurant on the high street was a fixed cost that made it hard for Rebel Foods to scale beyond a point. So they decided to enforce a change in how they do business by taking away this fixed cost component and just investing in making food in a kitchen ideally in a location where rent is low.This decision was aided by customer insight as well. When they ran a survey nearly 74% customers said they had never been to a Faasos outlet or they had been to it once. So they piloted the cloud kitchen or ghost kitchen concept, which meant you just have a kitchen which fulfils orders and no storefront or dine-in area, in Mumbai and it worked and they haven't turned back from there.There were two more lightbulb moments which have made Rebel Foods what it is today. What were those?Find out that and a lot more in this episode full of a lot of 2x2 matrix examples, possibly one of the most fun brand origin stories, how Rebel Foods became the world's largest Internet restaurant and priceless insights into the world of serving food without a restaurant that you and I can dine-in.Welcome to First Principles – The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.If you want to know more about our Narrative Workshops – here is who are our trainers, what do we do and how we do it. This year, we have a few slots open for companies. Sign up here!Also, how are you finding First Principles podcasts? What do you like? What can we improve? What do you think? Write to us at fp@the-ken.com.

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 still helped Anand Mahindra every now and then on strategic matters in Mahindra's electric division, he was working with the government, he also helped the BMTC take a part of its fleet electric and the list goes on.One could say he stepped down to get a better view of the possibilities in electric mobility. He was not looking for opportunities actively during this period, he was merely synthesising what possibilities were feasible.He did travel across the world during this break but even during that time he was looking at the electric mobility solutions and innovations that were present in the places he visited.He realised the possibilities in battery swapping as an alternative to charging and filed patents long before he became part of what is SUN Mobility today.In the first part of our conversation with Chetan we discussed broadly how the sector has evolved, what SUN Mobility has set out to achieve, how their BaaS or Battery as a Service model is an alternative to charging your vehicle and a whole lot more.In this episode we discuss how Chetan figured out what was next for him, the mental models he applies at SUN Mobility, how he's built a team that speaks its mind and a lot more.Welcome to First Principles – The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.

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 Gupta of Edelweiss Asset Management telling us what her company does for its customers, and what she doesn't want her customers to not do through a great example.Next up, we have Lalit Keshre of Groww, who is very clear who the target consumer for his company is. Starting off as robo-advisory and then pivoting into the mutual fund sector and now on their way to become a complete financial services platform.We have another Shark from the Shark Tank panel featured in this episode. Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo Rooms has built Oyo in his own words into a leading global hotel brand. But that's not all it is as he went on to add further.Next up, we have Kartik Jayaraman, who founded Waycool, a food and agritech company  at the age of 40. He started off  with the simple explanation: We're a supply chain company. At our heart that's what we do. After that he got into the nitty gritty of what Waycool does.Lastly, we have Niraj Singh of Spinny, who is busy building in a space that has many competitors, old and new, and he explained how he's servicing the aspirational class of the country by delivering something the competitors couldn't.If you want to read more about our Narrative Workshops – here is who are our trainers, what we do and how we do it. This year, we have a few slots open for companies. Sign up here!Welcome to First Principles—the weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.Let's get started.

Our guest for this episode has a very specific weekly routine. Pilates - once a week.Strength training - once a week.Aqua therapy - once a weekFunctional training, swimming, breathing exercises, meditating daily with just a little troubleGolfing 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 ‘re kind of right. You could say the person I'm talking about is very much an influencer. And he's fit too.He's huge on LinkedIn, where he is part of the Top Voice program. On Twitter or X, he has close to a million followers. He's very popular online.So, really, if you think about it, he could turn into a fitness influencer if he wanted to.But, here's the thing. We're not talking about a young, health obsessed fitness influencer.This is the routine of a 72-year-old, health obsessed, and I must add restless founder and Chairman of Marico, Harsh Mariwala.Welcome to First Principles, the weekly leadership podcast from The Ken. I'm your host Rohin Dharmakumar and this is part 2 of my conversation with Harsh Mariwala.This is episode 45 of First Principles–The Ken's weekly leadership podcast. Let's get started. Let's begin. 

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 not fully intentional. Because in a world where REVAs are speeding down the road left and right you're not gonna see Chetan going out and building a BaaS, battery as a service business. But it was 2001, and India, and most of the world, was not ready for electric cars.Chetan, however, persevered even under the shadow of the Mahindra Group and made strides in their electric mobility aspirations before leaving in 2015.He took a break of two years, observed the EV market across the globe and when he saw the opportunity back home, came back with his expertise and took charge to create what we know today as Sun Mobility. The vision is bigger this time around and time is on his side as well. The only thing left to see out: Execution.And they are not pulling any punches on that front either.Additional reading: this edition of Green Margins published way back in late 2022 to understand how, here.Welcome to Season 2, episode 44 of First Principles - A weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.

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 young age, including which school he would go to, which college he'll enrol in and having a say in most of his major life decisions.The biggest learning he got out of this: understanding the consequences of your actions and reflecting on them to see the untapped opportunities that lay ahead. And once he got good at that, he became adept at learning so that he could do something about the untapped opportunities.Girish isn't just the CEO of a NASDAQ-listed SaaS company, he's also deeply involved in SaaSBoomi, a community that calls itself The World's Largest Pay-it-forward Community of SaaS Founders.As one of SaaSboomi's founding members, Girish played a big role in shaping its culture of openness and paying it forward. He did it by sharing in detail the methods and tactics that got a young Freshworks to $1M in annual revenue. Then, a few years later – as he explained –  he took Freshworks from $1M to $5M.How often do you see a company explain their growth playbook to a possible future competitor and enable them?It's rare.Girish also doesn't limit his wish to pay-it-back just within the SaaS universe. He's also out there  with a mission to build world class champions from the football academy he set up, FC Madras. He's infused 100 crores into his academy for the game he loves because he knows the talent is there and it needs to be nurtured properly and in the future we might have a shot at the world stage.Welcome to part 2 of our conversation with Girish. This episode too, like the first part, is filled with colorful quotes and examples ranging from Steve Jobs to Rajnikanth movies!This is episode 43 of First Principles–The Ken's weekly leadership podcast. Let's get started.

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 commoditized and unbranded. For instance, the huge 15 liter tin cans of Parachute coconut oil Bombay Oil sold to shopkeepers were resold in smaller quantities at much higher prices. Harsh rightly wondered, why should someone else capture the margin and premium for my product? The company that Harsh founded - Marico - had two powerful brands at its core - Parachute Coconut Oil and Saffola cooking oil. That is true even today, 33 years later. Nearly 1 in 3 Indians use Parachute oil, our research tells us. Of course, a lot else has changed since then. Marico, which went public just 5 years after being founded in 1991, today boasts a turnover of over 1.2 billion dollars. And Harsh is 72, but still learning, exploring, experimenting and unable to take it easy.Earlier this week, I had the chance to speak to Harsh about his entire (and might I add still evolving) professional journey!It's a long time, but Harsh talks about the day Marico was separated from Bombay Oil just like it was yesterday. He talked about how in 1991 they attracted talent by positioning themselves as the disruptive outsiders. Sample one of the headlines from Marico's ads: 200 employees walk out of Bombay Oil. Harsh had a lot of stories for me – from creating differentiation in consumer products even when the market is crowded, to how he fought back and won against the much larger Hindustan Unilever when it wanted to acquire Marico. And then he switched back to the present – and how he's focussing all his learnings, experience, attention into cultivating innovation in India. This is an episode packed with anecdotes and lessons – you'll hear Harsh talking about a ‘right to win' in the market, strategizing acquisitions, and making ‘a difference without expectations' to the shareholders. All in the context of Harsh's years at Marico, the Mariwala Health Initiative, Ascent foundation and Marico Innovation Foundation! Let's go!This is episode 42 of First Principles–a weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.

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 Girish. He's a product manager first, and then a CEO. Product and People are thus two words to describe Girish. One of them - Product - was something he got into accidentally. But both of them are areas where he's built organisational strengths and culture very intentionally. The news headlines when Freshworks went public on NASDAQ was that Girish had created 500 crorepatis within his organization. That is, employees whose Freshworks shares made them worth over 1 crore rupees.Freshworks was the first Indian SaaS company to become a unicorn. It was also the first Indian SaaS company to be listed on the US markets. Last year it clocked revenues of nearly 600 million dollars. All before its 15th birthday. Across this episode, Girish the product manager is front and centre. It was evident in the way that he rattled off sharp and fun analogies to explain how he views Freshworks and his role at the organization as a CEO. It was almost as if Freshworks the company itself were an organically evolving product, with its CEO also its lead product manager. And to think that Girish's entry into product management came over two decades ago when his then manager told him to build a product he had pitched – and essentially become a “product manager.” That day, he went back home and googled what a product manager is. He has very sharp and distinct views on leadership and organization building. As a leader, he's opposed to measuring performance by numbers or execution alone. His metric for “winning” – as in, winning as an organization – is shaped by energy and vibes. He isn't just hiring the best talent for a role. He's giving the right role to the best talent.In this episode, you'll understand this curious mix of people and product that keeps the lights on at Freshworks. Girish talks about why a company like Freshworks – which entered and continues to play in a crowded and competitive market – succeeds. Why and how he's made peace with growing at close to 20% annually, so long as he's also aiming for around the same percentage in profits. And what the best way is to chart a path to entrepreneurship in this day and age. And, also – why he loves Chennai so much! This is episode 41 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.*Girish Mathrubootham is an investor in The Ken.

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 a startup is Udaan, which in 2019 became India's fastest unicorn within just 3 years of starting up. What does it take to build and scale a company in that manner? A few weeks ago, you heard Vaibhav Gupta – Udaan's co-founder and CEO – answer this question in granular detail. Right down to how Udaan looked at the trade cycle of a small mobile accessories shopkeeper in Mysore, who got his supply from Bangalore every 15 days. Or the exact changes Udaan has made to their warehouses, so that they're more efficient. He even broke down Udaan's execution playbooks and what makes them reliable and repeatable. But…what happens when you zoom out a little?The more high-level decisions. Which bets to take, which to let go. Which patterns to follow. What the B2B retail space in India will look like, in 10 years. And what is Udaan doing to prepare for it?This is the episode where Vaibhav zooms out and reflects on some of these questions. He's still very sharp and detail-oriented, of course. In fact, you'll hear him say “retail is detail” with an unshakable conviction very soon, in the episode. But this time, you'll notice that the larger decisions that Vaibhav makes for his organizations stems from his own strong beliefs and learnings. He's an introvert, but he has learnt to discuss even his half-formed, unbaked ideas with his team. He's driven by solving big problems, and so is Udaan. He's become comfortable with being wrong, and that's a feeling that his employees are encouraged to embrace at every stage.We talk about all the mental models, habits and frameworks that drive Vaibhav – and the culture at Udaan. And, of course – how First Principles thinking is very crucial to all of these!This is episode 40 of First Principles with Vaibhav Gupta—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.

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 best way to empower your talent? What do founders expect from employees? And how do they build their company culture? This is where it gets interesting. In most cases, our guests have differing opinions on these subjects. But while putting this episode together, we kept encountering one word – or a substitute for it, in some cases.  And that was, patience.  Patience in the way that they give feedback to their employees. Patience in investing in your employees. Building this patience not just within themselves, but the entire organization.  There are some very interesting perspectives in this episode on how these founders approach and practice patience, among other principles of leadership and management.  Here's a rundown of our guests in this episode:  First up, we have Krish Subramanian of Chargebee, who has a simple and powerful dictum, “Move the chairs and get out of the way of good people.” At Chargebee, you wouldn't fit in if you limit yourself to a strict hierarchy – he sees employees more as his peer group. Next, we have Varun Dua of Acko Insurance, who spoke about growing in a company from an employee's point of view. One of the things he told me was that when you find something you love, you should be at it for 10-15 years. Because it is the payoff of years of perseverance that is fruitful – and  not the short term gains you make along the way.  Yashish Dahiya, the co-founder of PolicyBazaar, was quite candid in our chat. He spoke about why an employee who spent five years at PolicyBazaar is considered a new employee. He  also went on to explain why he distances himself from making hiring decisions. Next, you'll hear Archit Gupta of Clear. When talking about employees, Archit was very specific. He told us why investing into the ‘sincere',‘earnest' people in the organization is necessary, and why uplifting them is important. Lastly, MN Srinivasu or Vasu, as he's often called, spoke to me how he built BillDesk by essentially teaching the first set of employees to be well-versed in the line of business BillDesk was creating. This is a part of BillDesk's culture. There is a broad belief in patience, at Billdesk. Why does patience matter? What allows his employees to be patient? And how do you find meaning in practicing it? This is First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here. 

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 “Capillary's confusing years.” They were particularly difficult years for them. Having raised a massive amount of venture funding at an expensive valuation, Capillary started burning cash as they expanded ambitiously beyond India. The leadership had to justify their valuation, Aneesh said. During this time, Aneesh's co-founder Krishna Mehra, or KK, had moved to San Francisco in the US. Communication between the co-founders started breaking down even as the pressure on Capillary Tech started mounting.Eventually, both of Aneesh's co-founders left within months of each other. But before leaving, KK was upfront with Aneesh. He told Aneesh that he had become a bully. He wasn't workable anymore.Aneesh went to the Capillary board and told them he wanted to quit. In this second part, you'll hear the two things that Aneesh ended up doing to bounce back. The first was executive coaching. A difficult process, because Aneesh, in his own words, ‘was a hard nut to crack.' Eventually, the coaching process proved to be so transformative for Aneesh, that Capillary today offers coaching to not just its entire leadership team but also down to first-time managers. The second, very interestingly, was Vipassana. And again, as Aneesh explained, it was very difficult at first. But it changed him. He calls it a process of self-discovery and self-purification that every entrepreneur should experience.In this episode, Aneesh talks to me about how these two interventions transformed him and Capillary. He takes me through both processes – day by day, in the case of Vipassana — and how it made a difference to his temperament, leadership style, and his approach to managing.We also talk about Aneesh's fitness journey, finding a purpose in working, and the future of Capillary. This is episode 39 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.

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 and his co-founders—Amod Malaviya and Sujeet Kumar—were all senior Flipkart leaders before starting Udaan. And yet, he insists Udaan isn't merely a "Flipkart for businesses".Since 2016, when it first began operations, Udaan has raised over a billion dollars in venture capital. It was one of the fastest startups to achieve the coveted "unicorn tag".It has also gone through its ups and downs in terms of valuations and headcount.In this episode—Part 1 of our conversation with Vaibhav Gupta, we discuss:--> Why Udaan evolved from a marketplace to a first-party business--> Why the firm instituted a formal CEO position after five years of its existence--> The five pillars of Udaan's culture--> What daily conversations inside Udaan's leadership team look likeThis is episode 38 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.

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 – something he described as an “assembly line.” If you remember listening to it, you'll know that Viren has both intricate knowledge and undeniable intuition about the healthcare landscape in India. We discussed Viren's ambitions to fix healthcare in India and where Narayana Health is headed. That led us to why Viren holds this mission so close to his heart, in this second part of our conversation.What led him to healthcare? What drives him to wake up and do this, day after day? In our opening, you heard about Viren's innate pattern recognition superpower, which is very different from his father Dr. DeviShetty's.So, how did he build this intuition? And how does he use it to run a vast hospital network?Viren answers all of these questions with stories from his life, career and even from the hospitals where he grew up. This is episode 37 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.P.S. Please recommend your favourite books for the First Principles community here!

Welcome to Episode 36 of First Principles!If you're here to find our latest edition of the First Principles Newsletter, here you go!Our guest for this episode is Aneesh Reddy, the co-founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies, a Bangalore-headquartered software-as-a-service – or SaaS – company that is one of the global leaders in customer loyalty and engagement.Capillary powers the customer loyalty operations of hundreds of companies around the world. From companies like Domino's, Puma, Shell, Marks & Spencers, and the Tata Group, to 15 of the world's top Fortune 100 companies. Each time you transact at one of their stores or respond to a marketing message or upgrade your room, it's probably Capillary's tech at play behind the scenes. In its 16th year now, Capillary powers close to 7 billion annual transactions for its customer's customers.But – and there's always a but in great stories – Capillary and Aneesh didn't have an easy ride.They went through multiple economic downturns. They raised large venture rounds and expanded globally, only to shut down many of those operations after losing millions of dollars. Of the three co-founders, two left. One having burnt out and the other because Aneesh was too stressful to work with.Aneesh himself wanted to quit. But his board wouldn't have it.In this episode, Aneesh explains how CapillaryTech bounced back from this point, by slicing  their journey into three  “dream installments.”He also talks about:How CapillaryTech “bounced” into SaaS in a global recession The breakout SaaS model that gets them $1 million deals Building a people-first organization Learning and changing as a leaderThis is episode 36 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.P.S. Please recommend your favourite books for the First Principles community here!

A few weeks ago, we published an episode with Soumya Rajan of Waterfield Advisors. We discussed what it was like to bet your future on an idea that no one had tried before, in India.  In Soumya's case, that idea was a business model around wealth management.You might remember Soumya saying it really wasn't easy. Her peers had doubts. Her clients had doubts. Her family had doubts. She had doubts. But she dug her heels in. 12 years in, Waterfield Advisors is now India's largest multi-family office and wealth advisory, managing over 40,000 crores for its clients. We covered a lot of ground around Waterfield's early years. And then, we took a break. We had some coffee, looked around the studio offices, and came back in to record again. And slowly, the next hour of our conversation became about looking ahead. Soumya detailed her vision to me. Waterfield is planning to expand to Dubai this year. And perhaps even more international offices after that. In fact, Soumya said, she wants to build an organization like J.P. Morgan – out of India.JP Morgan traces its history nearly 150 years back. So naturally, I asked Soumya: how do make sure you build a company that's around for 10, 20…even 50 years? How do you build a truly defensible and lasting moat?Her answer was very interesting. Soumya said Waterfield will continue what it started with – never manufacturing their own products, and continuing to remain only an advisory.She explained, Waterfield would never go into distribution – which is where the money is. It will always be an advisory. Again, Soumya has a big bet – she believes that Waterfield needs to give up growth and scale in the short term, to succeed in the long term. And in this episode, she explains why this will work. We also talk about: --> Being unapologetic about entrepreneurship--> Learning to let go as a CEO--> How to use AI as a friend --> Building a ritualistic work ethic This is episode 35 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.P.S.: If you have any submissions for book recommendations, interesting reads, #SilentSunday pictures or songs for the First Principles newsletter, send them here. 

Welcome to the first 2024 episode of First Principles! Though we're only 15 months old, we're also technically into our third calendar year, after our first episode in August 2022. A happy new year to you. Here's to many more years of wonderful conversations, learning and growing.Our guest today is Viren Shetty, the executive vice chairman of Narayana Health—the publicly listed healthcare group that operates over two dozen hospitals across India. Refreshingly, Viren thinks about healthcare…as an assembly line. And there are many, many steps in this line. Many of these are very small...they seem unimportant. Even forgettable. Like scheduling an annual healthcare checkup. Or filling out a feedback form at your clinic. Or just waiting in line for your doctor's appointment. When I asked Viren how healthcare can be fixed in India, he pointed to this assembly line. Basically, what if you tweak every small step of this line a little bit? Small, unnoticeable changes at every step? He's confident that the result will be a smooth, well-oiled machine that takes care of your health end-to-end. This is what, Viren says, Narayana Health is trying to do. It reminded me of Apple. Take existing technologies and make improvements while putting the user at the centre of the experience. Narayana Health is a name you might have heard, especially if you're from Bangalore. It was founded in 2000 by Dr. Devi Shetty. It went public in 2016 and is valued at over US$1 billion.But what we know as Narayana Health today began as Narayana Hrudayalaya, a super speciality hospital with a laser-sharp focus on cardiac health. Twenty years on, however, it's changed a lot.In addition to its numerous hospitals across India, it's also venturing into health insurance policies, partnering with clinics and pharmacies, and building an ambitious bundled subscription plan for its customers. This episode is a first in more ways than one. It's not just our first episode of 2024. It's also the first episode with a guest from the healthcare sector. And it's the first episode which may sound a little different to you. In this episode, I ask Viren:Why are health checkups such a hassle?Is the answer to better healthcare in hardware or software?What are the health tech startups doing right?And then there is the unshakable mistrust that the Indian population holds against hospitals and doctors. Can this even be solved?Patiently and confidently, Viren answers every one of my questions. He talks about building sticky habits in customers, changing the messaging in healthcare, and becoming “worse” as an insurance company to be better as a healthcare one.In this episode, we truly get down to the first principles of healthcare in India.Check out the First Principles Newsletter, a weekly Sunday read on entrepreneurship, mental models, leadership and reflection here.Send in submissions for book recommendations, interesting reads, Silent Sunday pictures or songs for the First Principles newsletter here.This is Episode 34 of First Principles, Viren Shetty—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

A couple of weeks ago, you heard our episode with Ritesh Agarwal, the founder and Group CEO of OYO rooms. If you remember, he talked to me about the atmosphere at the organization after COVID hit.To put it simply, it was wartime inside OYO.Cash needed to be protected. Leadership had to be let go. The company completely changed.In the first hour of the conversation with Ritesh, who explained in detail what it took to come back from this near-death experience. We'd urge you to check out that episode.Anyway, we took a short break after the first hour. We stepped out, had a coffee, and chatted a bit. Which helped immensely, because once we stepped back inside the studio, the conversation turned…inwards. We got to reflecting. Retrospecting. How has Ritesh grown, and what has he learnt as a founder, as a CEO, as a leader…And something he said was really surprising.  Rohin asked him if he considered himself a wartime CEO or a peacetime one.With cool conviction, he said he's a peacetime CEO. With OYO being in war mode through all its years of difficulties, Ritesh could very well be considered a great wartime CEO.But when you'll listen to this episode, you'll know that Ritesh knows what kind of a CEO he is, because he is an extremely deliberate, reflective person. He's thought about every challenge and every opportunity that has come his way. And what he's learnt from it. Reflection is non-negotiable for a CEO, he says.In this episode – part 2 of our conversation with Ritesh Agarwal of OYO, he explains this. Why you must take time to reflect. When you should do it. And of course, the process at OYO to collectively reflect as an organisation. I think this is the perfect episode for us to wind down the year with, here at the First Principles podcast. Ritesh looks back on his decade as a young founder and CEO – how he's changed, and how his own mission has evolved. We talk about recognizing which opportunities to grab and which to pass up, and how to deal with regret when it comes. We now have chapters available for this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts! Click on any chapter you like to jump to the parts you want to listen to.This is episode 33 of First Principles with Ritesh Agarwal, Part 2—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.Send in submissions for books recommendations, interesting reads, Silent Sunday pictures or songs for the First Principles newsletter here.

“What is something you believe in, that no one else around you does?”If you've heard episode 30 with Ritesh Agarwal, the founder and CEO of OYO Rooms, then you'll recognize this as a question that he had to answer while applying for the Thiel Fellowship.It's a simple but powerful question that usually differentiates motivated, passionate and unreasonable founders from other equally capable professionals. Because what is a startup if not a mere belief in something that should exist?This question is also equally apt for our guests today. Because Soumya Rajan believed in something that no one else around her did. Soumya is the Founder and CEO of Waterfield Advisors – India's largest multi-family office and wealth advisory firm which manages over 40,000 crore – that's over $4 billion – for its clients.But in 2010, Soumya was working at Standard Chartered Bank, a bank she'd joined straight from college after back-to-back mathematics degrees. A bank where she'd worked at for 17 straight years – her first and only job. She'd been the head of Standard Chartered's Private Banking arm and reached the top. But having reached there, Soumya wondered why she wasn't interested in playing the same game.2010 was also the year Soumya turned 40. The age when many professionals hit their mid-life crisis. If you remember, Karthik Jayaraman, the co-founder and CEO of Waycool, decided to start up too after hitting 40. Soumya too decided to quit her job and start on her own by making a contrarian bet – that it was better to charge her wealthy clients directly for financial advice instead of making money via commissions paid by financial services companies whose products she would recommend. Soumya says that in 2010, this went completely against the tide in India's wealth management sector. No one else was doing it. Even her peers and ex-colleagues were dismissive of her belief. In this episode, Soumya, in her calm and reflective manner, tells me her story. There is a strong thread of vision that runs through our entire conversation – Soumya is driven by a sharp sense of curiosity and purpose in everything that Waterfield Advisors is doing. You'll notice it in the way she breaks down her midlife crisis, her role as CEO, her beliefs about products and incentives, and even her work for empowering women as investors. We also talk about:What the wealth management landscape of India looks likeWhy Waterfield is like the lawyer or the doctor of financial wellbeingHow to survive in the short-term when you're building to lastThe one question she asks people before hiring them.Check out the First Principles Newsletter, a weekly Sunday read on entrepreneurship, mental models, leadership and reflection here.Send in submissions for book recommendations, interesting reads, Silent Sunday pictures or songs for the First Principles newsletter here.This is Episode 32 of First Principles, with Soumya Rajan.—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

Welcome to to episode 31 of First Principles! If you've been listening to us for a while, you'll notice that this was supposed to be an off week for us as a fortnightly show. We used to release new episodes every other Thursday. And last Thursday was our episode with Ritesh Agarwal of OYO Rooms.  But starting this week, First Principles is now a weekly podcast. We're going to bring you a fresh conversation every Thursday.  But in a slightly different way. Well, the supply of truly original, accomplished and candid founders and business leaders in India is what we believe, a finite resource. So while we'd love to – at some point – have a roster of guests talking to us every single week, that isn't possible right now.  And so, we're now increasing the duration of our conversations with the leaders we meet to roughly two hours each.  Only to split it into two distinct conversations and episodes.  That's where this episode comes in. A couple of weeks ago you heard our episode with Karthik Jayaraman – the co-founder and CEO of WayCool Foods, an agri-tech start up that distributes and processes fresh produce, grains, staples and milk. It was a wonderfully candid and authentic conversation in which Karthik spoke about complementing, instead of disrupting; treading lightly while making decisions; and starting up at 40.In fact, we'd urge you to check out the episode – or, if you'd like to go through the full transcript. You can click here to do so. But what you didn't hear in that conversation is what we're releasing today as episode 31.  We talk about why Karthik took such a big risk at 40 by jumping from automobiles into a completely different sector, agri-tech. He also reflects on his career, what got him here, and what keeps him going.  We talked about who Karthik is – as a leader and a CEO. What are the habits that he's picked up? What has he been reading, and why? We've tied all of this together for today's episode – a Part 2, on Karthik's life, career and values.  Check out the First Principles Newsletter, a weekly Sunday read on entrepreneurship, mental models, leadership and reflection here.Send in submissions for books recommendations, interesting reads, Silent Sunday pictures or songs for the First Principles newsletter here.This is episode 31 of First Principles with Karthik Jayaraman, Part 2—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

Welcome to Episode 30 of First Principles!We recorded this episode at Spacebot Studio, a new, sleek space overlooking the metro in IndiranagarOur guest, Ritesh, was already at the studio.Ritesh was asking the owners of the studio a bunch of questions: how big is this space? How many bookings do you get in a day? Are there other studios around in this location? And it's not surprising, because our guest for this episode is Ritesh Agarwal – the Founder and Group CEO of OYO. This even came up in our conversation. The rest of us saw a wonderful studio, but Ritesh saw a space with the potential to be utilized and monetized. He sees the world differently – as founders often do. For example, Ritesh explains how he sees the hospitality industry – in fact, the entire of India – as a space with a supply problem. The solution, he explains, is not in increasing or decreasing supply. It's in utilizing it. Changing the supply quality altogether. And if you go back and look at how Ritesh OYO was conceptualized and built – at age 19, by the way – you'll realize that this is the foundation of his business model. Across the conversation, his lens of the world became sharper and sharper. Ritesh answers all of my questions with very specific models and frameworks that he uses – but he's not the guy who leaves it at that.He breaks them down. He offers examples from his life, the journey of OYO and even from books he's read. And it makes sense because the first thing Ritesh says that he loves great questions!Across this episode, we also talk about:Why Ritesh loves being called the Chief Clarity OfficerWhat is OYO's unbeatable strengthThe three ways in which young folks can learn from the school of lifeAnd why Ritesh wears his naivety on his chestWe now have chapters available for this episode on Spotify and Apple! Click on any chapter you like to jump to the parts you want to listen to. Check out Day Zero, The Ken's limited-run newsletters tracking this year's challenging placements season here. Day Zero is a premium newsletter for our subscribers, but if you're a college student or faculty with an official email ID, you can sign up to read for free!Send in submissions for books recommendations, interesting reads, Silent Sunday pictures or songs for the First Principles newsletter here.This is episode 30 of First Principles with Ritesh Agarwal—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

Welcome back to First Principles! If you've been listening to us for a while, you know that First Principles covers a lot of topics. Leadership, organization building, decision making, learning methods, careers, life principles, habits, people management, parenting..it goes on.But if there's a common thread that connects them all together, it's entrepreneurship. Thus, today we have a “supercut” episode about the lives of founders. You're probably familiar with our supercut episodes. Every now and then we go back to our earlier episodes and stitch together some of the most interesting conversations from them. And so, we've put together this special supercut episode that takes you through the lives of five accomplished, original and diverse founders. They are Kunal Shah, the founder and CEO of CRED, Srikanth Velamakanni, the co-founder and Group CEO of Fractal, Ronnie Screwvala, the co-founder and Chairperson of UpGrad, Gaurav Munjal, the co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, and Smita Deorah, the co-founder and CEO of LEAD School. We cover their childhood, their careers and the choices they made, all of which helped them become the people they are today.Of course, I'll urge you to go back and listen to our full episodes – but this if you're not caught up on our older episodes, this is the perfect place to start. Here's a quick glance at the conversations in this episode: I spoke with Kunal earlier this year, in a conversation full of wonderful analogies and sharp perceptions of the world. And how Kunal's childhood and teenage years, when he was thrust into work to support his family, led him to the core philosophy behind CRED.Next up is Srikanth Velamakanni, the co-founder and Group CEO of Fractal. And Srikanth's childhood, too, is an important part of his journey as a founder. Especially when you consider the fact that growing up, he decided never to go into business. Because his father would often tell him that there was no such thing as an honest businessman.And yet, in 200o, Srikanth pooled in 2 lakh rupees to build Fractal. That's right – they've been around for nearly 25 years.Srikanth tells me what changed. Next, we have Ronnie Screwvala, the chairperson and co-founder of UpGrad. Ronnie's on the opposite end of the spectrum from Srikanth – growing up, he told his parents he's never going to work for someone else. Ronnie calls it serendipity – or even karma or destiny, and explains how he went from earning 500 rupees on the weekends to running multiple successful and colourfully varied organisations. This brings me to Gaurav Munjal, who you will know as the co-founder and CEO of Unacademy. And his story starts in college – when he ran a very successful blog devoted to - wait for this -  the actress Priyanka Chopra. And then a facebook page that earned him thousands of dollars from ads.He was a content creator before it was even a profession — and he explains how this led to Unacademy. Lastly, we have Smita Deorah, the co-founder and CEO of LEAD school. Like Gaurav and Ronnie, she's built a massive institution in education, too.Smita built LEAD school as a way to completely rejig the education system and everything that it's built of: the curriculum, pedagogy, technology, even the parents' mindset. And like our other guests, she has a very interesting story driving her too – and it starts when her daughter was only six months old. Thanks for being part of the First Principles community — you can now submit questions for our upcoming guests, book recommendations & image submissions for the First Principles podcast and newsletter and much more, here.This is First Principles— The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast. The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here. 

Welcome to Episode 29 of First Principles.Our guest for this episode is Karthik Jayaraman, the co-founder and MD of WayCool Foods.Karthik's leadership style and philosophies differ from many of the earlier leaders and founders featured in the last 28 episodes of First Principles. Perhaps it's because he started WayCool, an agri-tech startup, after turning 40. Karthik jokes that some people buy a Ferrari as a response to their midlife crisis. Instead, he decided to start up.WayCool was last valued at over $700 million. It's headquartered in Chennai and focused on South India. It's a distributor and processor of fresh produce greens, staples and milk, and though it operates from farm to fork, it is a supply chain company at its heart, says Karthik.One that tries to predict the demand from retailers and consumers and then works backwards to source the supply. I know this might sound complex, but Karthik explains it really well. And when he does, you'll notice he has a very keen understanding of supply chains.That's because before starting an agri-tech company, Karthik had been in the automotive industry for nearly 20 years. He's also spent time as a consultant with McKinsey.Perhaps this offbeat combination makes him somewhat different from many founders, which, in turn, leads to a set of contrary but humbly held perspectives on business and startups.For instance, Karthik talks about how he's built WayCool, not to be disruptive but to complement the geographies it is in. It's a business that sways with the landscape and tries to tread lightly.Karthik is also a founder who doesn't hesitate to admit where he's made mistakes before or where there are still opportunities to learn.In this conversation, Karthik talks about:Two questions he asks to find out if an idea is truly novelHow do you build a brand when it comes to staple products where every commodity is similar?How does he observe, learn, document and implement knowledge?And what is the job of a CEO?This is Episode 29 of First Principles—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

Read the full transcript for free here.Niraj Singh, the co-founder and CEO of Spinny, loves cars.So much so that when asked what would be the few things he would take with him to a deserted island, he hesitated a bit and then said: “I would take my car!”He tells us it's the only real personal space someone has. Niraj talks about how buying a car is one of the three or four milestones a person has in their life. And yet, buying a used car is still often a messy affair because trust or guarantees are hard to come by. It's a large problem in our society, and Niraj believes solving a problem like this is the only way to build a product that lasts a lifetime.So, it wasn't surprising that Niraj and his co-founders set up Spinny, a used car marketplace. It was last valued at $1.8 billion.The used car space, though, is extremely overcrowded. And overfunded. More and more Indians are comfortable buying used or pre-owned cars today. The demand is there. But on the supply side, there are so many sellers and platforms already.So we asked Niraj why he would go into a market rife with overcompetition and overfunding?And that's when he broke down the used cars marketplace for us. A marketplace that, he says, behaves differently from any other. Where the key to solving for supply actually goes back to demand. And he tells us why this is.Further, in this episode, Niraj talks about:The courage and tenacity it took to get through eight years of rejectionWhy there's no longer a difference between a used car buyer and a new car buyerIdentifying the pain points of the industry you're inWhat kind of people succeed at Spinny How to build trust within your companyAnd, of course, cars!This is Episode 28 of First Principles—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

The full transcript of this episode is available here.You've probably heard of Groww. It is a financial services platform, last valued at $3 billion. This year, the Groww team travelled to a bunch of tier-2 and tier-3 cities in South India to talk to users of its products. In fact, so far, they've been to 100 such cities.In this conversation with Rohin, Lalit—the co-founder and CEO of Groww—describes what typically happens during these visits.Take a city like Indore, for example. Hundreds of Groww users travel really long distances just to talk to the Groww team. They want to know things like how to use the app for something as simple as investing in an SIP that has actually changed their lives.Lalit tells Rohin how the same people have told so many of their friends and family members about Groww. They're excited, grateful and most importantly, emotional, says Lalit.And then he says there's just one word that can describe what's happening between Groww and its users…and it is love.Love for customers, love for the product, and love for good financial services…You'll see how this is a recurring theme in this conversation. Customers are at the centre of Groww. Customer obsession, Lalit says, with no uncertainty, is the thing that will make an employee succeed at Groww.Lalit is a man who is sure of many things—like he's good at hiring or how to build an effective direct-to-consumer product. He knows the first principles for solving complex problems like the back of his hand.And what he's unsure of, he's not too worried about. He tells Rohin how he was raised in a way that makes him a bit different from other founders.Everything will pass, he says. Every problem will be solved. And he explains how this keeps him going, keeps Groww going.In his stoic, cool manner, he goes on to talk about:Why financial services is a basic necessityHow to create delight with your productUnderstanding the difference between what your customer wants and what they will useWhy "discipline is overrated"A simple process that Lalit uses to hire the right people_____________Chapters: 03:01 - What we talk about when we talk about financial services07:19 - Democratising financial services09:41 - Supply and demand of financial services10:51  - How Groww grew 16:33 - How to find future customers today?20:09 - The one metric Groww watches22:21 - What customers say is not what customers do30:37 - What makes people love a financial services brand?35:16 - Lalit's career ladder40:08 - The seeds for Groww46:31 - “Not old & wise enough to give advice, but if there was one thing…”53:14 - Cracking delayed monetisation55:28 - The only thing that guides Groww1:02:31 - “Discipline is overrated”1:05:38 - A simple process to hire the right people1:08:23 - What does Lalit read?1:14:36 - A weekday in Lalit's life1:16:25 - What kind of people succeed at Groww?_____________Also, tune in to the latest episode of Daybreak—The Ken's podcast which breaks down one significant business story thrice a week—to learn about the talent exodus at Niti Aayog on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts!The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

Welcome to First Principles, The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast! I am Rohin Dharmakumar, your host.First, if you're a new listener of this podcast, I think you've clicked on the right episode. And if you're a long-time listener – thank you, by the way – then you might know that here at First Principles, we have a few favourite questions. And we try and ask these questions to most of our guests. The most interesting part of this is that every guest has a vastly different answer to the same question – their age, experience, outlook on life…even their co-founder or their family plays a significant role in how they answer our questions. Take motivation, for example. What drives founders/CEOs, even when things aren't looking so good?It could simply be untameable perseverance – like in the case of Deep Kalra, the founder of MakeMyTrip. For Ruchi Kalra of OxyCo, it was the people around her. Srikanth Iyer of Homelane, in fact, quotes from a book that changed the game for him.We highly recommend going back and listening to our full episodes, but this is a great place to start, too. We went back to some of our older episodes to make a supercut of some very specific answers from our guests to questions on motivation, perseverance, finding the right opportunity in a difficult market and fighting stress. Good stress, as one of our guests calls it.Here are our guests:We start with Deep Kalra, the founder and chairman of MakeMyTrip – a company that began when India wasn't even ready for internet businesses. Deep talks about surviving as a travel business through the pandemic, learning to stay in the game and building to last. Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip on being “22 years young”, presenting from Excel sheets instead of Powerpoint slides, the importance of open disagreements, and the good stress of buildingNext, we have Ruchi Kalra – who has built two profitable unicorns in seven years: OfBusiness and Oxyzo. She takes us through an important maxim that drives both her businesses: finding the right opportunity in the right sector, even if it's crowded.Ruchi Kalra of Oxyzo on creating two unicorns in 7 years, spotting gigantic market opportunities, putting profits and cash flow first, and letting go of personal ambitionsKamal Sagar, the founder of Total Environment, has had one thing driving him for 27 years: good quality. Good quality that even thousands of real estate companies in the West are just not able to deliver on. The most interesting part is how he does it: Kamal builds homes the way software is built. Kamal Sagar of Total Environment on picking principles over convenience, reimagining real estate, design, authenticity and learning to say noWhen I asked how Srikanth Iyer, the founder of Homelane, fought through the first few years of absolute chaos at his startup, Srikanth said he focuses on understanding what you're bad at. He explains how he learnt and applied this First Principle in his career.Srikanth Iyer of Home Lane on embracing what you're bad at in order to do better at what you're good at, and being a wartime generalShan Kadavil of FreshToHome cracked a really tough business in a super competitive market. And then, he evolved as a CEO and a leader. He talks about scaling a 40-employee organisation to a 4000-employee organisation, encouraging his team to “be their own CEO,” obsessing over the right metrics, and much more. Shan Kadavil of FreshToHome on selling fish, building moats, encouraging bottom-up “shots on goal”, and being honest with boardsThis is First Principles— The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

Our guest for this episode, Radhika Gupta, describes Edelweiss AMC—or any mutual fund company, for that matter—as a company that solves financial problems for customers. Simple. Going into anything else, she says, is way too complicated.Edelweiss operates in a crowded market with nearly 50 players. And it's surrounded by giants, rivals much larger than itself.But that also gives it the space to take risks and bets that larger companies might not.That's how Edelweiss pulled Bharat Bonds into their armour, which shot up their assets massively. It went from number 30 in the mutual fund rankings to number 13 in just a few years.As a CEO, Radhika is a big fan of keeping things simple and effective.She has a straightforward way of dealing with workplace politics. A one-step way to shut down mansplaining. A very simple approach to trying to understand her consumers. And even an easy but brilliant way of organising her favourite poetry, excerpts and stories!In this episode, we talk about:What is the problem that Edelweiss is trying to solve?How does Radihka define success?How Radhika uses an inner scorecard to evaluate herselfHow does she deal with criticism and separate constructive criticism from targeted bias?Why Radhika doesn't believe in work-life balanceWhy Radhika has a third category of priorities after personal and professionalRadhika's advice for young, professional womenThis is Episode 26 of First Principles, with Radhika Gupta — The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

BillDesk does not have a CEO.Instead, it just has three co-founders: MN Srinivasu, Ajay Kaushal and Karthik Ganapathy. And they don't have separate designations.In fact, BillDesk has no formal hierarchies or designations. People are hired as members of a team. That's it.More than two decades after they started the company, the three co-founders continue to work from a single desk in the same room.For a 23-year-old organisation that handles over $150 billion in payments, BillDesk is surprisingly lean at just over 800 employees. And that's not the only thing contrarian about it. It has been profitable for over a decade and a half now. When I asked Vasu—that's how others usually address Srinivasu—how old he was, his answer was, “BillDesk is 23, I am 55.”For this episode, we threw in many new questions based on the subscriber feedback I'd been receiving.What often keeps founders going is the urge to prove something. What is it for Vasu?How has his view of a leadership team evolved?How does he prefer to be “managed upward” by his reporteesHow has what excites or challenges him changedManaging people isn't what founders have in when they start out. And yet, it is the most important thing that determines their success. How has Vasu's managing style or philosophy evolved since he started Billdesk in 2000?Over the entire conversation, we also talk about:Why BillDesk doesn't handle person-to-person payments, for instance, via UPI.How the three co-founders hired and coached their first 100 employeesWhy BillDesk does not incentivise chasing glory metricsWhy the three co-founders continue to work from a single table even todaySnigdha breaks down the story of Disney's decline, on our business podcast Daybreak. Listen here.This is Episode 25 of First Principles, with MN Srinivasu — The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

The business currently known as Clear used to be known as Cleartax before. It started out in 2011 as a minimal, sleek and blazingly fast website to help Indians file taxes. Today, it does much more than just people's taxes, even though its overwhelming market leadership means competitors are just "rounding errors," according to Archit Gupta, the company's co-founder and CEO.Operating largely below the funding and valuation radars of 2020-2022, Clear has been quietly effecting a business model pivot under Archit's leadership. Today, it is overwhelmingly a business-to-business focused company, not a business-to-consumer one. As India digitises and formalises its tax systems together, Clear has ridden both waves to help businesses and consumers stay compliant. But this transition hasn't been quick or easy, as Archit candidly opens up about in our conversation. We talk about building a profitable and lasting company and why he turned from a "business-focused" to a "product-focused" CEO a year ago. We also go into how much of a cultural shift it took for Clear to start charging its customers to file taxes – and then, another significant shift: deciding to expand from India to Saudi Arabia. Archit also tells us how he spots excellent talent and much more in this episode.This is Episode 24 of First Principles, with Archit Gupta — The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

In 2023, the business of online comparison platforms seems old-fashioned.Sure, people may land upon them via search engines, but only some would rarely transact through them. Especially if the products being compared are as life-altering as insurance, right?Wrong. PolicyBazaar—not just India's but the world's largest insurance comparison and transaction platform—proves that.Yashish Dahiya, the co-founder and Group CEO of Policybazaar, takes us through this story in this episode of First Principles.Policybazaar started in 2008 and is a publicly listed company today. It's the largest in its space by far. Many of the things it does, or how it does, don't fit into the easy patterns we've been used to.For instance, employees making phone calls to prospective customers is at the core of their business. In an era where we're told phone calls and call centres are a relic of the past.So, why do they do it?Yashish attributes this and many other decisions to PolicyBazaar to being fundamentally First Principles-driven. Yashish is incredibly energetic and driven. He is a serious sportsman and triathlete. He's also as straight-talking and candid as they come.In this episode, we talk to Yashish about why he calls PolicyBazaar an education platform and not a comparison one, the "right to win", how he spots and grooms talent and the importance of physical endurance and excellence. Chapters:3:49 - Running 22 kms, drying swimming trunks in the car and other practical decisions7:54 - How and when Yashish learnt about life and health insurance15:54 - What is PolicyBazaar18:13 - The problems of the insurance industry23:55 - The short-term perils of educating the customer too much28:25 - How does PolicyBazaar detect insurance fraud37:23 - Is there an ideal claims ratio for a product 38:42 - Why PolicyBazaar is grateful to the call-centre model in this day and age47:50 - You are first a soul, then your body51:55 - Yashish the father vs. Yashish the co-founder1:00:26 - Why confusion is as important as curiosity1:03:15 - How to identify and groom talent1:05:54 - Building and evolving a company's culture1:14:13 - How to mentor people1:22:21 - Yahish's go-to First Principles This is Episode 23 of First Principles, with Yashish Dahiya — The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.If you're a regular listener, please share your thoughts about First Principles and help us shape it into something more useful and interesting for you? Take our listener survey here.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

Most founders on First Principles—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast—have also been CEOs. And one of the questions we often ask them is: when to make way for someone else as a CEO?If leadership is a ladder, we often make the mistake of thinking that the CEO title sits at the apex. Instead, leadership is a journey. And the best founders know that to create organisations that outlast them, the CEO title is but one milestone in their journey. The road doesn't end there.Varun Dua, our guest for this episode, co-founded Acko—a digital-first insurer most recently valued at over $1.4 billion. He was also Acko's CEO before hiring a seasoned insurance industry leader to take over that role.That's not the only thing different about Varun. He freely admits that as a graduate, he was super lazy and had neither a plan for his life nor any interest in being an entrepreneur. His dream at one point was to get hired by eBay or Cleartrip. Thankfully for him, neither of the companies hired him.So, he ended up starting one company, which morphed into another firm, which morphed into Acko.Along the way, he went from super lazy to super driven.In today's episode, Varun reflects on the choices he made in his career and life and talks about how he's preparing for the ones that still lie ahead. This is Episode 22 of First Principles with Varun Dua.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

If you started listening to First Principles—The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast—in 2023, then today's special episode might be something you'll love. We went back to guests from episodes 6 to 10 from 2022 and created a supercut episode highlighting some of the most interesting bits from conversations with these accomplished leaders.We'd urge you to listen to the full episodes, but this is a great place to start if you've been meaning to check out our older episodes but haven't gotten around to it.We begin with Harshil Mathur, the co-founder and CEO of Razorpay—a fintech giant offering loans, payroll services, and even bank accounts.Harshil talks about his journey into entrepreneurship, how Razorpay develops products, the importance of deliberately driving company culture, and much more. Episode 6: Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur talks about deliberate culture, building to a need, and the principles of product developmentNext, we have Vineeta Singh, the co-founder and CEO of SUGAR Cosmetics—one of India's most popular and fastest-growing cosmetics brands.Vineeta talks about overcoming stereotypes as a female founder, the importance of passion when selecting your workplace, and why hustle, hunger, humour, and humility are key pillars of SUGAR's culture. Episode 7: Vineeta Singh of SUGAR Cosmetics talks about building products, educating consumers, and focusing on the long termAnd then, we have Amrish Rau, the CEO of Pine Labs—the payments solution provider whose point-of-sale terminals are visible in most Indian shops and stores.In 2016, Citrus Pay, an online payments provider Amrish co-founded, was acquired by rival PayU for $130 million in cash. It was one of the most significant acquisitions back then. But Amrish says it is also one of his biggest regrets. As a first-time founder, he decided to sell his company too quickly. Amrish tells us why.Episode 8: Amrish Rau of Pine Labs talks about the differences between being a founder and CEONext, we have Amit Agarwal, the co-founder and CEO of NoBroker—the 8-year-old Bengaluru-headquartered real estate platform that wants to disrupt the very concept of brokerage fees.Amit speaks about entering management consulting as a young MBA because it paid the most, starting a business that almost no investor wanted to fund, convincing notoriously value-minded Indians to pay a subscription fee before finding a rental apartment, and running a frugal organisation with a cockroach mentality.Episode 9: Amit Agarwal of NoBroker talks about his single-minded mission to disrupt brokerage, building a cockroach company, and why his office address is a secretAnd finally, we have Tarun Mehta, the co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy—India's best-known electric scooter maker. Tarun speaks about his journey to convince investors of his vision, doing hard things that defied common sense, building an organisation over decades, and why it takes at least three years to make a true impact at work.Episode 10: Tarun Mehta of Ather Energy talks about doing hard things, going down multi-year rabbit holes, building companies over 30-40 years, and being chief storytellerThe Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts, and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

We don't have a new First Principles episode this week, but we do have something special for you.If you've enjoyed this podcast, you've already built a curiosity for mental models that force you to look at the world differently. To break down complex problems from the ground up. To analyse and synthesise.This, precisely, is also what the First Principles newsletter is about.Each Sunday, this newsletter will bring fresh insights into how accomplished founders, leaders, and changemakers apply First Principles thinking to see the world differently and remake it in their vision.If you're a free or paying subscriber of The Ken, you'll find this newsletter in your inbox already.But if not, please click here, sign up for free on our website, and you'll receive the newsletter in your inbox for free: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

The stories of entrepreneurial success around us are often slick, bulleted, and cleaned up to remove all references to false starts, serendipity or accidents. And at the centre of such stories are founders. These visionary leaders dream up startups worth billions of dollars out of nothing, like Krish Subramanian, the co-founder and CEO of Chargebee.Chargebee started by helping businesses manage their paying subscribers and now operates in the broader revenue management market. This Indian company was last valued at over $3.5 billion.Krish's own path to success, though, was anything but formulaic.He graduated in 2001, as the dot-com boom was cratering and when the 9/11 attacks on America spooked the world. Krish couldn't find a job. Six months later, when he finally did, his first salary was Rs 3500. It would be another ten years before he finally got together with his co-founders and started Chargebee.And even then, they spent the first five years going around in circles before finally hitting their groove. In today's episode, he reflects and explains the meandering path he took to success and the lessons he learned along the way. Krish talks about learning to let go of the need for world-changing ideas, hiring for strengths, why someone great for a zero-to-one project may be terrible for a one-to-10 project, why early-stage founders must set constraints and say 'no' instead of 'challenge accepted!', and treating business as a game.He also shares what he believes is the most critical role for a CEO: Trusting others, getting out of the way and letting go or, in Krish's own words, continuously firing yourself.This is Episode 21 of First Principles— The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

Smita Deorah's daughter was six months old when her mom started reading to her.And as she kept at it, one day, her daughter lapped it up, becoming an independent reader even before learning to speak.At this point, most parents would have thought their child was special. Instead, Smita concluded that her daughter was just the same as most other kids. What was special was that she was privileged enough to be exposed to the right stimuli and resources at a young age by her mother.This was one of the key motivators that drove Smita to start LEAD, an ambitious company trying to solve for better school education in India. Smita is the co-founder and co-CEO of LEAD School.Of India's nearly 280 million school-going children, just around 5 to 8 million might be getting a quality education. She says the rest are either in government-run or affordable private schools that simply aren't equipped to engage their curious and boundless minds. Instead, they're subjected to mindless rote learning, often by underpaid teachers and ill-equipped administrations. To change that, you have to relook at everything, including their curriculum, pedagogy, technology, teaching aids, government policies, parent mindsets and child psychology.In this episode, hosted by Rohin Dharmakumar, Smita explains how she lives on this mission, why she moved back to India, whether schools should work for profit, why India's students lag in learning by two years, and much more.You can read the full transcript of the conversation here: https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/smita-deorah-lead/This is Episode 20 of First Principles, The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

If this is your first episode of First Principles, it's a great episode to begin with.Gaurav Munjal is the co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, one of India's most aggressive and highest-valued ed-tech startups, last valued at close to $3.5 billion. But this story started a long time back. When Gaurav was just in class IX, he got into the content game. In a few years, he had started getting monthly payments from Google for the ads he ran on his content.In college, he had a blog devoted to the actress Priyanka Chopra. That fetched him hundreds of thousands of rupees each month. On a Facebook page that he ran—this one devoted to fashion—Chinese brands paid him hundreds of dollars each month to run their ads. So when he finally started Unacademy in 2015, it was, in many ways, a logical evolution of his life thus far. Nearly eight years, and $835 million in venture capital later, Unacademy is a company that reflects much of Gaurav's personality.It has no time for niceties. It would rather disrupt than defend itself. It is supremely confident in the face of even existential crises. And it attaches zero value to classical or theoretical notions of education. I mean, who else would say that education is really a tournament that can change lives and that teachers are coaches and that the best coaches are like mercenaries, and that they already earn more than second-rung movie stars?This is Episode 19 of First Principles, with Gaurav Munjal — The Ken's fortnightly leadership podcast.You can read the full transcript of the conversation here: https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/gaurav-munjal-unacademy/The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep

"You need to be restless, because you don't have a choice".Those are words you expect to hear from a 30-something tech founder building a ChatGPT-powered neo startup.But Ronnie Screwvala, whose voice you just heard, is 67. And trust me when I say this, I haven't seen many 30-something founders who are as restless, ambitious and driven as he is.Ronnie is the chairperson and co-founder of upGrad, an online higher education company last valued at over $2.2 billion. He insists, emphatically, that upGrad is neither a startup nor an edtech."Edtech", he says, was "a parlance invented by people who wanted to go out raise money, and VCs who liked the word Tech as it was the flavour for the last five years to invest in."Instead, he says, he tells the 5000+ employees who work at upGrad to have faith that they're going to build something really valuable over the next 5-10 years. And that you cannot have report cards on companies measured over six months or a year.But that's not all Screwvala does.He co-founded Swades Foundation, a philanthropic organisation that works across 2000 villages in Maharashtra.He runs RSVP Movies, a film production company. And much more.Welcome back to First Principles, the fortnightly leadership podcast from The Ken. This is episode 18, and I am Rohin Dharmakumar, your host.Stay with me for a wonderful conversation with Ronnie Screwvala about ambition, organisation building, online education and long-term thinking.You can read the full transcript of the conversation here: https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/ronnie-screwvala-upgrad/The Ken's newsroom also publishes Cost to Company, a weekly podcast about careers and workplaces. One of our episodes, inspired by a message from a Cost to Company listener, explores the future of talent in Bombay. Listen to it here: https://the-ken.com/podcasts/cost-to-company/bombay-is-running-out-of-talent/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcast2&utm_campaign=ctc_ep&utm_id=ctc.ep25If you, too, have a story to tell about how your work and workplace are adapting to the world around us, please write to us. Click on this link to fill out our survey: https://theken.typeform.com/CTC-may2023?utm_source=ken&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ctc_survey&utm_id=ctc.05.23

Worth over $1.5 billion today, Fractal has raised close to $700 million in venture capital over its lifetime. But the path it took to get here is anything but boring. Growing up in a middle-class Indian family, Srikanth Velamakanni, Fractal's co-founder and group CEO, remembers his father telling him there was no such thing as an “honest businessman”. The phrase was an oxymoron.“So when I grew up, I told myself that while I'd go and get a world-class education, I would always work for a high-quality company. I would never start a business. It was very clear to me,” he says as we sit down for the latest episode of First Principles.And yet, in 2000, Srikanth and five of his friends quit their jobs, scraped and pooled in Rs 2 lakh each (~US$2,400), and started Fractal.It takes a lot to build companies for the long term—only 2% of all companies get to celebrate their tenth anniversary. The school of hard knocks is unforgiving to young companies and first-time founders. The odds are measured in terms of survival first and not success.Fractal and Srikanth were part of the 2% that survived the first ten years.Listen to this episode of First Principles to understand how the soon-to-be 25-year-old company plans to beat the odds and still be around 50 years from now.You can read the full transcript of the conversation here: https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/srikanth-velamakanni-fractal/ 

Welcome to episode 16. If you like our deep interviews with some of India's best known founders across a range of domains, please rate us on your favourite podcast platform. All it takes is just a few seconds.Kunal Shah, the co-founder and CEO of CRED is unapologetic about building products for the top segment of India's massive consumer pyramid. One would imagine that having raised over $600 million in venture funding puts the pressure on a founder to show a potential market size that's massive and untapped.And yet, Shah did quite the opposite. He is single minded in his focus on catering to the top 30-odd million consumers in the world's most populous country. Why? Because they are the ones with enough disposable income to drive the majority of most discretionary spends, he says. CRED currently has over 11 million users, which fit the definition of “California users” put forth by my colleague Praveen Gopal Krishnan way back in 2021.And over the last two years, this has become painfully apparent to most Indian startups and founders.How did CRED and Kunal Shah arrive at this reality ahead of others? I asked him that.Shah has a habit of saying “Good question” before launching into fairly sprawling and vivid answers. Answers that involve analogies, generalizations and psychology.Having been thrust into working to support his family while he was still a teenager, Shah ended up being coached through the school of hard knocks and an accidental exposure to philosophy (it was the only course available in the morning, before he left for work).The result was a curious mix of abilities, knowledge, ambitions and perspective. Chip on the shoulder mixed with the urge to pay it forward. The ability to put himself in another person's shoes while also being brutally blunt with feedback. Left brain execution and right brain exploration.This has allowed Shah to create a fairly shape-shifting business model with CRED (worth over $6 billion after its last fund raise). When I asked him to define CRED, he described it in terms of its users, not features. He sees CRED as a community, to which features and monetization methods can be tacked on and off over time.In another wide-ranging and reflective founder conversation, we go behind Shah's thoughts about building businesses, hiring “high-slope” professionals, why one of the biggest crises staring India in the face is the disappearance of working women and why many meetings inside CRED as called “shareholder meetings”.And if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.This is episode 16 of First Principles.