Podcast appearances and mentions of hari krishna

There's a war for succession going on. Who gets to become the new television?There are two challengers. The first challenger is Youtube.According to Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO, TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the quote, primary device for YouTube viewing in the US.It is, as Mohan writes in his annual letter from the CEO, an indication that YouTube is the new television.It's interactive and includes things like shorts, podcasts, and live streams alongside sports, sitcoms, and talk shows that people already love.It is getting there organically by adding things like memberships, monetisation tools, partner programs, and super chats, and it's letting creators play with them to create content that takes eyeballs away from linear television.On the other hand, there are streaming companies like Netflix and Jiohotstar, who also want to become the successor for new television, and they do it by owning and producing exclusive content and IP such as live sports, Disney, Marvel, HBO, and a whole lot more.All of this came to a head a couple of days back after Jiohotstar live-streamed its Mahashivratri event. It had a lot of the same elements as Youtube live events.Viewers could switch between temple feeds, listen to mythological narratives or engage in real-time chanting and live Q&A sessions, transforming passive viewing into active participation.Jio Hotstar is redefining live streaming by making shared cultural moments more immersive.To discuss this, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar invited two wonderful guests.Our first guest is Swati Mohan, the ex-head of marketing at Netflix India. She's also an independent advisor to many consumer tech companies. She's led large business verticals and has had leadership roles in media companies such as GroupM, Nat Geo, and many others across India and APAC.And our second guest is Vanita Kohli-Khandekar. She is an India-based media specialist and a contributing editor for Business Standard, where she has written about media and the business of media for over two decades.She also writes for Singapore-based Content Asia. The Media Room, her podcast on all things media and entertainment, is hosted on The Core. She has also authored the authoritative book on India's media landscape titled The Indian Media Business.In this episode, we discuss which of these two contenders will become new television.What will YouTube do, and how will it get there? What will streaming companies do, and how will they get there?Welcome to episode 32 of Two by Two.– – –Additional reading:Jiohotstar is not contentThe 'linearisation' of streaming: How OTTs are becoming more like TVAdditional listening:Netflix and its last growth market– – –What you listened to is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

You've surely heard of the term of the term enshittification? In case you haven't, it was coined by blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow. He defined it as the pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time.This decline or decay has started to show in Indian Consumer tech products as well, resulting in an experience for customers that is much worse than what was promised. From seemingly unharmful dark patterns to unnecessary cross-selling, the spectrum lies wide sour digital experiences for a customer today.And why they're doing this is quite simple.These products first got your trust and managed to delight you by delivering on their promise. Then, they made that promise available for a price. Fair enough, if it's good, then surely the promise has a price you should be willing to pay. Now, we seem to have arrived at a point where they're asking more to deliver that same promise. They want to extract more money from a customer's wallet. What forces them to do so becomes the next question.This enshittening and many more ways in which many of the platforms we use have aged badly was the core of the discussion in this week's episode of Two by Two. Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are Aditya Suresh, head of India equity research at Macquarie, and Abhishek Madan, ex-VP of Product at Paytm*Aditya brought the market's perspective to the discussion with his sharp insights, how the experience could be different based on whether a company is public or private, and what gets talked about in both contexts. Abhishek, in his third time on the podcast, added the flavour by explaining why and how the platform decay came about.Welcome to episode 36 of Two by Two.-Additional reading:Enshittification is coming for absolutely everything - https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5Phonepe spent millions to rival Policybazaar. Its users couldn't care less - https://the-ken.com/story/phonepe-spent-millions-to-rival-policybazaar-its-users-couldnt-care-less/Swiggy needs to reclaim its past glory - https://the-ken.com/newsletters/two-by-two/swiggy-needs-to-reclaim-its-past-glory/How will Ola and Uber avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts'? - https://the-ken.com/newsletters/two-by-two/how-will-ola-and-uber-avoid-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/First, Cult.fit's group classes got everyone's attention. Now “Cult injuries” do - https://the-ken.com/newsletters/two-by-two/how-will-ola-and-uber-avoid-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/Additional listening:Should you invest the first two years of your career in strategy consulting? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/should-you-invest-the-first-two-years-of-your-career-doing-strategy-consulting/How will Ola and Uber avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts'? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/how-will-ola-and-uber-avoid-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/Swiggy needs to reclaim its past glory - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/swiggy-needs-to-reclaim-its-past-glory/-This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more examples of enshittification, do tell us about them. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Everyone's lives would be better if we were rid of spam calls and messages, but we don't live in that reality. So most people rely on caller-ID apps or services to save themselves from the ordeal. In September last year, Bharti Airtel launched a spam fighting network free of cost to all users who have a VoLTE-enabled smartphone.Airtel says its AI-powered systems come across a call or message that seems sketchy based on call patterns, frequency, duration and other parameters to flag them as ‘suspected scam'.But like any anti-spam service, it has been showing a few cracks—all of which have consequences for both businesses and customers.Legitimate calls from businesses are flagged as suspected spam by its system, while calls from similar businesses are not. The other troubling problem is that it's a one-way system where the customer can't do anything about it. They cannot opt out of the service either.If your network operator says it's a suspected spam call when there's a number flashing on your screen, are you going to pick it up?And then there are businesses like Truecaller, which built their business using the crowdsourcing model and built a two-sided business where they made money from both individuals and businesses trying to reach these individuals. Truecaller helped legitimate businesses which were being marked as spam be validated as verified businesses for a fee.Something in all of this feels broken. What should ideally be free and reliable to save all customers from being scammed is not fully reliable or free.What's at stake? Where are the solutions?In episode 31 of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan try to find the answers with our guests for the week—Parag Kar, former vice president of government affairs at Qualcomm India and Southeast Asia; Chaitanya Chokkareddy, co-founder and CTO of Ozonetel, a cloud-based communication platform providing call-centre solutions for businesses; and The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan.– – –Additional reading -Truecaller beat Trai to the punch with spam-call fixAirtel finds the gap between Truecaller and Trai– – –Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo– – –What you listened to is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

“The future of consultants is intricately linked to the future of consulting”That's what one of the guests had to say about the future of consultants and the promise of consulting careers.Being a consultant at any of the big three consulting firms—McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group(BCG)—meant one thing: The opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects with big, innovative companies. It allowed the people who worked at these companies to have career opportunities, which would allow them to be prepared for even more challenging and rewarding roles in the world of startups.The accelerated learning, prestige, community and great pay packages that these companies offered ensured the best talent lined up to work for them.The first two years of a career in consulting are gruelling, demanding and difficult and often involve “low-value work”, like making presentations, data analysis and sending requests for proposals to really annoying clients.However, people still rush and fight to do it with the expectation that the payoffs compound later. It gives them a broader view of how companies work and operate.It acts as a training ground for building startups and laterally jumping into senior executive roles at fast-growing companies or even going higher up the consulting ladder.Today, that trade-off equation looks a bit distorted for students because it's never been easier to start a company.It's also been very easy to find post-MBA roles in companies that are more strategic in nature, and ESOPs look much more real and valuable because companies are going public.So the question becomes: Will students continue to chase consulting firms as a lucrative and promising career option? And does a career in consulting hold the same promises as it used to?Joining hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar for the episode are Rahul Chaudhary, co-founder of Treebo, ex-McKinsey & Company and Pragya Batra, co-founder of Quirksmith, ex-Bain & Company.Welcome to episode 35 of Two by Two.-Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo-Additional listening:If B-schools were invented today, would students run placements? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/if-b-schools-were-invented-today-would-students-run-placements/AI comes to annihilate India's SaaS companies - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/ai-comes-to-annihilate-indias-saas-companies/-This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

The consumer need for 10-minute deliveries wasn't demanded, but it was created.Multiple startups went into an arms race to deliver products faster and faster to users who never really asked for them.This expanded into category after category, starting from groceries to FMCG products, then to apparel, electronics, PS5s, iPhones, and later food. The 10-minute monster demands to be fed and is eating category after category, forcing consumers to change long-established patterns so they can get stuff delivered to their homes at a turnaround time they never imagined possible.The next big frontier for all of these start-ups is now alcohol and liquor.Finally, we have a category where most consumers want organized, regulated, and legitimate home deliveries. They're probably even willing to pay for it.For quick commerce start-ups, too, home delivery of alcohol is a huge opportunity.High margins, high stickiness, great repeat, massive market, negligible customer acquisition costs, hundreds of millions of consumers want it.Startups with hundreds of millions in capital are desperate to offer it.So, what is stopping 10-minute alcohol delivery?In the latest episode of Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Prasanna Natarajan, founder of Sipping Spirits and Hipbar, India's first home-delivery liquor startup, which was later acquired by Cred, and Debashish Shyam, co-founder and director of Ardent Alcobev. He's had nearly 20 years of experience in alcohol marketing and sales at organisations as diverse as United Spirits and IBTC in Myanmar.----What you listened to is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.----Listen to One Billion in 10 Minutes on The Ken app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.----Disclaimer:Alcohol consumption is injurious to health. No participants in this episode promote alcohol consumption and strongly discourage underage, binge, and careless drinking. All panelists in this show express their own personal views, which do not necessarily reflect the views of the producers or promoters. Please drink responsibly.

Two founders lay down their journey so far of going global.First, there was the services wave of exports, led by Infosys and Wipro. Then, companies like Zomato, Oyo, and Ola tried to expand their operations globally. The third wave was headlined by SaaS companies like Freshworks and Zoho. What will the fourth wave of tech exports be?Our guests for this week, Mohit Kumar, founder and CEO of Ultrahuman and Lal Chand Bisu, co-founder of Kuku FM, have an answer to what it could be, and they are leading by example with their own companies at the front of this wave.Mohit shared about 95% of Ultrahuman's customers are from outside India. And their numbers speak for themselves. As for Kuku FM, till early 2024, almost 99% of their business was focused on the Indian diaspora. But they made a switch in 2024, on the back of generative AI, to cross Indian borders. And now, as it stands, the split between India and global is at 90 and 10, respectively, says Lal Chand Bisu.Both these companies are being led by second-time founders. One thing that kept coming up during the discussion was the multiple parallels across both of their companies, like their latecomer's advantage, leading the charge as ‘bear kids' in this economy, and building their business for the freedom and thrill of building a business on their choices.Over the course of the discussion, both Mohit Kumar and Lal Chand Bisu explained how their businesses have evolved over time from when they started to now and how they have scaled and reinvented themselves in this journey.Tune in and listen to episode 34 of Two by Two, hosted by Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar, as they discuss the hopes, challenges, and excitement surrounding the fourth wave of tech exports from India.-Sign up for The Ken's first subscriber event - https://theken.typeform.com/to/NUPj8HdZ-Additional reading:Kuku FM chooses not to be the hero in its own storyPocket FM had 10 million listeners in India. Yet it hit pay dirt elsewhere-This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Have you made a trip abroad to attend a live event in 2023 or 2024?Did you have the option of attending the same (or equivalent) event in India?Why did you choose not to attend the same event in India?These were the three main questions we posed to listeners of Two by Two in a recent survey to understand the biggest problems with hosting events—big or small—in India.Then we took all the people who said yes and looked at the events that they said they went outside India to attend even though options for it existed inside India. It had a lot of concerts comprising a long list of musicians. Dua Lipa in Singapore, Ed Sheeran in Malaysia and a sea of Coldplay because it's Coldplay season, Coldplay's concert in Singapore, Coldplay in Dubai, Coldplay in Barcelona, Coldplay in Thailand, Coldplay in Bangkok, Ben Böhmer who had performed in India in late December last year but people chose to attend his shows outside India instead. Then we had Indian performers whom people refused to attend in India and went abroad, Diljit in Bombay. There was a list of cricket matches in that list as well. Stand-up acts from Vir Das, which people chose to attend in the U.S. instead of attending in India. The most interesting entry we saw was half marathons. People are choosing to attend half marathons outside India instead of attending them in India.In this week's episode, we get to the reasons why this is the ultimate form of Indians paying for convenience over availability.Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Shreyas Srinivasan, former Chief Product Officer at Paytm* and founder of Paytm Insider, which has now been acquired by Zomato and rebranded as District, and Sudhir Syal, former CEO of Bookmyshow Indonesia and Bookmyshow Middle East, to understand where India falls short in hosting events at scale.Welcome to episode 29 of Two by Two.*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.–Additional reading:The Nutgraf: Going out of India is easier than going out in India–Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo–What you listened to is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Free-range eggs and chicken have been gaining popularity for a while. The practices involved in producing and raising them are considered more humane. The market for humane meat has been growing slowly but steadily. Reports suggest that a majority of the country eats eggs, chicken, or meat. Shouldn't we care about how the animals that reach our plates are raised and killed? It's not a question with easy answers.Today, consumers are becoming more aware of the conditions in which the eggs and meat they consume are produced. They are making a conscious choice to seek out spaces that treat these animals well before they become a means of our sustenance.Should meat and fish eaters be willing to pay a premium to ensure the animals that we consume – or whose products we consume – are treated as ethically and humanely as possible? How big is this market? How fast is it growing? How should we think about it? Or should we take the lazy route and laugh it off as an oxymoron?Episode 33 of Two by Two, hosted by Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, aimed to find an answer and explain how it makes sense.And they were joined by four wonderful guests for the discussion.Our first guest is Dineshkumar Shanmugam, the co-founder and CEO of Earthy Origins, a Tamil Nadu-based farm-to-table startup that grows, raises, and sells organic food products, ethically raised chickens, and free-range eggs.Our second guest is Sandeep Reddy, the CEO of India Animal Fund, a nonprofit that brings together a diverse mix of leaders from the corporate and animal welfare sectors to take a strategic look at ending all forms of animal harm. They believe that doing the most good means minimising the suffering of the most vulnerable, that is, animals. Our third guest is K Vijay, the Bengaluru-based founder of another meat startup, Meatright.Our final guest is Shan Kadavil, co-founder and CEO of Freshtohome, one of the leading online sellers of meat and fish in India. We've interviewed Shan for First Principles, The Ken's leadership podcast. His clarity of thought around setting up and scaling an online meat business in India was amazing. You should listen to it if you haven't.-Additional reading:Famine, affluence and morality - https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil308/Singer2.pdfFood, a question of ethics – 5 principles of ethical eating - https://kindredmedia.org/2007/09/food-a-question-of-ethics-5-principles-of-ethical-eating/Animals and choices - https://the-ken.com/newsletter/first-principles/animals-and-choices/How many Indians eat meat? - https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-how-many-indians-eat-meat/article65299234.eceAdditional listening:Shan Kadavil of Freshtohome on selling fish, building moats, encouraging bottom-up “shots on goal”, and being honest with boards - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/shan-kadavil-fresh-to-home/Peter Singer - The ethics of what we eat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHzwqf_JkrA-Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo-This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

On January 20th, the online publication The Head and Tale broke the news that two of India's largest payment aggregators and gateways, Razorpay and Cashfree, were severing ties with India's largest payment orchestrator or router, Juspay.Payment gateways are the simplest. They simply facilitate a payment transaction between a merchant's website and a bank. But because these days, we have so many ways to pay. Cards, UPI, net banking, wallets, etc. Many payment gateways also aggregate these methods and offer customers and merchants a choice.Hence, they're payment aggregators.Now most leading gateways are also aggregators. This includes Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU, Paytm*, etc.The most important layer right now, and the topic of today's discussion, is orchestration or routing.Like a conductor in an orchestra, orchestrators sit above payment gateways and payment aggregators and determine who gets to play.What that means is when a customer is trying to do a transaction on a merchant's site, the orchestrator or router assigns it to a particular payment gateway or aggregator depending on various things like where success rates are high, who's offering competitive rates, etc.That's what happens with large organizations like Flipkart, BigBasket, Swiggy, etc.For instance, you must have seen when you're trying to make a transaction on any of those sites after you enter your card details; you must have seen the Juspay modal, or briefly, website appear when you're trying to enter your OTP, or it's fetching that.That's what Juspay does.It sits above payment aggregators and gateways, and it kind of plays this conductor role, assigning transactions to where they are most likely to succeed or where they are most competitively priced for the merchant that Juspay is operating with.That's the topic of today's discussion because Razorpay and Cashfree decided to stop working with Juspay.Now that's very interesting, and it's essentially the trigger to what we'd like to think of as sort of like a much larger war which is going to break out with one set of payment aggregators on one side and the other side another set of payment aggregators, and of course, Juspay.Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar for the discussion are Vimal Kumar, founder of Juspay; Anand Balaji, co-founder of Xflow and former India head for Stripe; and Abhishek Madan, who used to be vice president of Product at Paytm*.Welcome to episode 28 of Two by Two.*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.–Additional reading:Razorpay and Cashfree woke up and chose violenceAdditional listening:Why Stripe could not become the Stripe of India–Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo–This is a free 30-minute version streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

There's a war for succession going on. Who gets to become the new television?There are two challengers. The first challenger is Youtube.According to Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO, TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the quote, primary device for YouTube viewing in the US.It is, as Mohan writes in his annual letter from the CEO, an indication that YouTube is the new television.It's interactive and includes things like shorts, podcasts, and live streams alongside sports, sitcoms, and talk shows that people already love.It is getting there organically by adding things like memberships, monetisation tools, partner programs, and super chats, and it's letting creators play with them to create content that takes eyeballs away from linear television.On the other hand, there are streaming companies like Netflix and Jiohotstar, who also want to become the successor for new television, and they do it by owning and producing exclusive content and IP such as live sports, Disney, Marvel, HBO, and a whole lot more.All of this came to a head a couple of days back after Jiohotstar live-streamed its Mahashivratri event. It had a lot of the same elements as Youtube live events.Viewers could switch between temple feeds, listen to mythological narratives or engage in real-time chanting and live Q&A sessions, transforming passive viewing into active participation.Jio Hotstar is redefining live streaming by making shared cultural moments more immersive.To discuss this, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar invited two wonderful guests.Our first guest is Swati Mohan, the ex-head of marketing at Netflix India. She's also an independent advisor to many consumer tech companies. She's led large business verticals and has had leadership roles in media companies such as GroupM, Nat Geo, and many others across India and APAC.And our second guest is Vanita Kohli-Khandekar. She is an India-based media specialist and a contributing editor for Business Standard, where she has written about media and the business of media for over two decades.She also writes for Singapore-based Content Asia. The Media Room, her podcast on all things media and entertainment, is hosted on The Core. She has also authored the authoritative book on India's media landscape titled The Indian Media Business.In this episode, we discuss which of these two contenders will become new television.What will YouTube do, and how will it get there? What will streaming companies do, and how will they get there?Welcome to episode 32 of Two by Two.– – –Additional reading:Jiohotstar is not contentThe 'linearisation' of streaming: How OTTs are becoming more like TVAdditional listening:Netflix and its last growth market– – –Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo– – –This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

“This is the first time we are discussing what I'd describe as a 'wicked problem'” says host Rohin Dharmakumar at the beginning of this episode.What's a “wicked problem”?It's not a bad thing, it's not an evil thing.A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that's difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. They lack clarity in both their aims and solutions and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.This definition comes from the space of systems thinking.And the “wicked problem” at center of today's discussion is India's air pollution. More specifically, North India's air pollution problem and as we zoom down further on it, Delhi's air pollution problem.India ranks second globally as the most polluted country.Our particulate pollution increased by 67.7% from 1998 to 2021.Because of the PM2.5 pollution particles, which are the smallest actually, which we track, an average Indian's life is cut short by 5.3 years.And if you live in the north of India, the reduction is close to 12 years.Now these aren't statistics that most of you people would not have heard about.Depending on where you are in India, you think it's either a problem that you have to live with or a problem someone else has to live with.In this episode of Two by Two, we want to really discuss how to think about this problem, how to solve this problem, how to even begin to define this problem.Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan for the discussion are guests Alok Mittal, co-founder of Indifi; Roshan Shankar, founder and CEO of Saroja Earth; and Mohit Beotra, co-founder of Air Pollution Action Group (A-PAG)Welcome to episode 27 of Two by Two.—Help us find great women guests for Two by Two by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo—What you just listened to is the first 30 minutes of an hour-and-a-half-long discussion. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Everyone's lives would be better if we were rid of spam calls and messages, but we don't live in that reality. So most people rely on caller-ID apps or services to save themselves from the ordeal. In September last year, Bharti Airtel launched a spam fighting network free of cost to all users who have a VoLTE-enabled smartphone.Airtel says its AI-powered systems come across a call or message that seems sketchy based on call patterns, frequency, duration and other parameters to flag them as ‘suspected scam'.But like any anti-spam service, it has been showing a few cracks—all of which have consequences for both businesses and customers.Legitimate calls from businesses are flagged as suspected spam by its system, while calls from similar businesses are not. The other troubling problem is that it's a one-way system where the customer can't do anything about it. They cannot opt out of the service either.If your network operator says it's a suspected spam call when there's a number flashing on your screen, are you going to pick it up?And then there are businesses like Truecaller, which built their business using the crowdsourcing model and built a two-sided business where they made money from both individuals and businesses trying to reach these individuals. Truecaller helped legitimate businesses which were being marked as spam be validated as verified businesses for a fee.Something in all of this feels broken. What should ideally be free and reliable to save all customers from being scammed is not fully reliable or free.What's at stake? Where are the solutions?In episode 31 of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan try to find the answers with our guests for the week—Parag Kar, former vice president of government affairs at Qualcomm India and Southeast Asia; Chaitanya Chokkareddy, co-founder and CTO of Ozonetel, a cloud-based communication platform providing call-centre solutions for businesses; and The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan.– – –Additional reading -Truecaller beat Trai to the punch with spam-call fixAirtel finds the gap between Truecaller and Trai– – –Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo– – –This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Both Zomato and Swiggy have been aggressively focusing on the 10-minute grocery delivery space for a while now. Quick commerce. But what sent both of them into a spiral was when Zepto, the joker in the quick commerce pack, started delivering snacks in 10-minutes through Zepto Cafe, a separate app. Suddenly, quick commerce wasn't enough. Quick food was up for play too.Swiggy launched Snacc soon after, and Blinkit followed suit with Bistro. Both were also separate apps.But this move to disrupt themselves to avoid getting disrupted has drawn a lot of flak from the restaurant partners listed on their platforms. Because a marketplace can only be neutral when it does not participate in it.And it is not like Zomato and Swiggy haven't tried a hand at this before. Both platforms previously ran their cloud kitchen verticals, Zomato Infrastructure Services and Swiggy Access, respectively, which they had to close down or sell.They then turned their attention to delivering food and building up efficiencies to deliver it faster. But when Zepto Cafe came in the picture in December with their pitch as a separate app, both Zomato and Swiggy jumped back and opened that chapter again. Only this time, they added that they would deliver it in 10 minutes and said they were not trying to build a private label to compete with the restaurants listed on their platforms. They made it clear both Bistro and SNACC are separate apps which don't use any of the data collected by Zomato and Swiggy to date.But what do the restaurants listed on the platform have to say about this?Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan got into what all of this means for restaurants in one of the most uninhibited, probing and also the longest episodes of Two by Two we've recorded to date.To capture the restaurateurs' perspective, we have three guests who have experience working with both of the companies.Joining the hosts for the discussion are Gaurav Saria, founder of Infinitea, India's first exclusive chain of tearooms and stores; Thomas Fenn, co-founder of Mahabelly and joint secretary at NRAI; and Ramchander Raman, former President of Cafe Coffee Day and co-founder and COO of Nucleus Kitchens.Welcome to episode 26 of Two by Two. Tune in to listen to an exciting discussion.–Additional reading:The Zomato-Swiggy cartel: Bistro and Snacc further threaten the restaurant businessZomato, Swiggy gave up on selling their own food. Then came along Zepto Cafe“There's an app for that”–Swiggy, Zepto, and Blinkit–What you just listened to is the first 30 minutes of a 2-hour-long conversation. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

The consumer need for 10-minute deliveries wasn't demanded, but it was created.Multiple startups went into an arms race to deliver products faster and faster to users who never really asked for them.This expanded into category after category, starting from groceries to FMCG products, then to apparel, electronics, PS5s, iPhones, and later food. The 10-minute monster demands to be fed and is eating category after category, forcing consumers to change long-established patterns so they can get stuff delivered to their homes at a turnaround time they never imagined possible.The next big frontier for all of these start-ups is now alcohol and liquor.Finally, we have a category where most consumers want organized, regulated, and legitimate home deliveries. They're probably even willing to pay for it.For quick commerce start-ups, too, home delivery of alcohol is a huge opportunity.High margins, high stickiness, great repeat, massive market, negligible customer acquisition costs, hundreds of millions of consumers want it.Startups with hundreds of millions in capital are desperate to offer it.So, what is stopping 10-minute alcohol delivery?In the latest episode of Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Prasanna Natarajan, founder of Sipping Spirits and Hipbar, India's first home-delivery liquor startup, which was later acquired by Cred, and Debashish Shyam, co-founder and director of Ardent Alcobev. He's had nearly 20 years of experience in alcohol marketing and sales at organisations as diverse as United Spirits and IBTC in Myanmar.----To help us find interesting guests, you can fill out this simple survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo----This is a free 10-minute trailer streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.----Listen to One Billion in 10 Minutes on The Ken app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.----Disclaimer:Alcohol consumption is injurious to health. No participants in this episode promote alcohol consumption and strongly discourage underage, binge, and careless drinking. All panelists in this show express their own personal views, which do not necessarily reflect the views of the producers or promoters. Please drink responsibly.

Business schools are among the most coveted higher educational institutions. Students go through some of the most competitive exams and pay significant fees because they hope that at the end of their degree, they will get a great job.Yet, the onerous process of finding, soliciting and bringing dozens of companies to campuses each year falls mostly on final-year students, who are part of elected/selected placement committees.For as long as we can remember, these committees have always been accused of bias, arrogance and powerplay by other students.Yet, the fact also remains that those on the placement committees sacrifice a significant part of their education and grades in order to run a great job-matching process for their entire batch.Should they, though?In the US, for instance, most leading B-schools have their professional teams that run the entire campus hiring process instead of students. Finding quality jobs for hundreds of students each year is a full-time job.In India, too, many colleges are gradually coming around to the same POV.IIM Kozhikode has transitioned the process from students to faculty. This model aims to instil transparency and professionalism in what vice-chancellor V Ramgopal Rao calls “a crucial rite of passage marking the end of academic life.”BITS Pilani has adopted a system where HR professionals employed by the institute handle placements.IIT Bombay set up a committee under a senior computer science faculty professor Uday Khedkar, with one of its aims being “setting up a clean and transparent placement process system”. Sources at IIT-B said the panel was set up after students brought to light instances of the biases some faced and how this had hampered their careers.Our guest for the episode is Professor Varun Nagaraj, Dean and Professor of Information Management & Analytics at S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai. He holds a Ph.D. in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems from Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. He also holds an MBA from Boston University, an MS in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay. His career spanning over three decades in digital products reflects his passion for product management, development, and innovation.Over the course of the discussion, the professor and hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss how placements have evolved since their MBA days, their misgivings about the current system, and what institutes have to get better at.Perhaps the larger question is, how should we think about matching employers and graduates? Is a compressed “placements” process the best way?Welcome to episode 25 of Two by Two.—Additional reading:Bias, lack of transparency trips job hunts in premier schoolsWhy are IIT placements failing to deliver jobs? Former IIT Director explainsShiv Shivakumar's LinkedIn post —This is an edited 30-minute version of the discussion hosted by Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar with the guest. To listen to the full episode, consider getting a Premium subscription to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will get you access to all our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and the rest of the podcasts we produce.But if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts at a great monthly price.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Have you made a trip abroad to attend a live event in 2023 or 2024?Did you have the option of attending the same (or equivalent) event in India?Why did you choose not to attend the same event in India?These were the three main questions we posed to listeners of Two by Two in a recent survey to understand the biggest problems with hosting events—big or small—in India.Then we took all the people who said yes and looked at the events that they said they went outside India to attend even though options for it existed inside India. It had a lot of concerts comprising a long list of musicians. Dua Lipa in Singapore, Ed Sheeran in Malaysia and a sea of Coldplay because it's Coldplay season, Coldplay's concert in Singapore, Coldplay in Dubai, Coldplay in Barcelona, Coldplay in Thailand, Coldplay in Bangkok, Ben Böhmer who had performed in India in late December last year but people chose to attend his shows outside India instead. Then we had Indian performers whom people refused to attend in India and went abroad, Diljit in Bombay. There was a list of cricket matches in that list as well. Stand-up acts from Vir Das, which people chose to attend in the U.S. instead of attending in India. The most interesting entry we saw was half marathons. People are choosing to attend half marathons outside India instead of attending them in India.In this week's episode, we get to the reasons why this is the ultimate form of Indians paying for convenience over availability.Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Shreyas Srinivasan, former Chief Product Officer at Paytm* and founder of Paytm Insider, which has now been acquired by Zomato and rebranded as District, and Sudhir Syal, former CEO of Bookmyshow Indonesia and Bookmyshow Middle East, to understand where India falls short in hosting events at scale.Welcome to episode 29 of Two by Two.*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.–Additional reading:The Nutgraf: Going out of India is easier than going out in India–This is a free ‘10-minute trailer'  streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

In 2023, two-wheelers and three-wheelers in India experienced growth of around 37% and 66%. Electric four-wheelers also promised to go down the same path because in that same year, there was a significant increase in sales of electric four-wheelers, 113%.Now, of course, this is from a lower base, but the signs were clear.The conventional wisdom or the narrative has been petrol and diesel cars are going to become a relic of the past. And if you're an automaker and if you're not investing billions of dollars in developing battery technology or newer models with all of this stuff, you are seen as out of touch with reality.Essentially, electric cars were inevitable.In 2024, something changed. Demand and sales for electric cars have fallen all over the world. For the first time in almost 12 years, Tesla's sales dropped by 1.1%. And India is also no exception.If you look at 2024 numbers, in fact, until October 2024, sales of electric four-wheeler cars in India were actually declining. They had gone down if you compare year-on-year numbers all of these months. By the end of the year, it sort of increased a little bit which was helped by a sale of one specific model called MG Windsor and some price cuts.But in this episode, we're going to pose two questions: Number one, why did electric cars become less attractive? And two, what will make electric cars inevitable again and by when?Our first guest is Dr Amitabh Saran, founder and CEO of Altigreen Propulsion Labs. Saran used to work at companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Philips, NASA, and Hewlett Packard before turning to entrepreneurship.Our second guest is Awadhesh Jha, executive director of Glida India, formerly known as Fortum Charge and Drive India, which is a leading charging solution provider in India. In fact, if you live in Delhi, you will see Glida charging points all over Delhi.Jha has a long history in power. He used to be a deputy director at the Central Water Commission. Also, he was the vice president of Hindustan Powerprojects Limited, where he administered hydropower development in one of the remotest parts of the country, the Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh.Welcome to episode 24 of Two by Two.–This is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation.If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with people who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

On January 20th, the online publication The Head and Tale broke the news that two of India's largest payment aggregators and gateways, Razorpay and Cashfree, were severing ties with India's largest payment orchestrator or router, Juspay.Payment gateways are the simplest. They simply facilitate a payment transaction between a merchant's website and a bank. But because these days, we have so many ways to pay. Cards, UPI, net banking, wallets, etc. Many payment gateways also aggregate these methods and offer customers and merchants a choice.Hence, they're payment aggregators.Now most leading gateways are also aggregators. This includes Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU, Paytm*, etc.The most important layer right now, and the topic of today's discussion, is orchestration or routing.Like a conductor in an orchestra, orchestrators sit above payment gateways and payment aggregators and determine who gets to play.What that means is when a customer is trying to do a transaction on a merchant's site, the orchestrator or router assigns it to a particular payment gateway or aggregator depending on various things like where success rates are high, who's offering competitive rates, etc.That's what happens with large organizations like Flipkart, BigBasket, Swiggy, etc.For instance, you must have seen when you're trying to make a transaction on any of those sites after you enter your card details; you must have seen the Juspay modal, or briefly, website appear when you're trying to enter your OTP, or it's fetching that.That's what Juspay does.It sits above payment aggregators and gateways, and it kind of plays this conductor role, assigning transactions to where they are most likely to succeed or where they are most competitively priced for the merchant that Juspay is operating with.That's the topic of today's discussion because Razorpay and Cashfree decided to stop working with Juspay.Now that's very interesting, and it's essentially the trigger to what we'd like to think of as sort of like a much larger war which is going to break out with one set of payment aggregators on one side and the other side another set of payment aggregators, and of course, Juspay.Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar for the discussion are Vimal Kumar, founder of Juspay; Anand Balaji, co-founder of Xflow and former India head for Stripe; and Abhishek Madan, who used to be vice president of Product at Paytm*.Welcome to episode 28 of Two by Two.*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.–Additional reading:Razorpay and Cashfree woke up and chose violenceAdditional listening:Why Stripe could not become the Stripe of India–This is a free ‘10-minute trailer'  streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early onYet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunities because they were slow to react to changing consumer behaviour.And this losing advantage in some of their verticals makes you think, what are the other businesses where Amazon has a right to win. Is it AWS, streaming or something else? Or will they push forward to make up for the lost opportunities by pouring more money and change their fate.What does the future hold for Amazon India? And how will the company, famed for its execution, turn things around in India? Of course, there have been other regulatory pressures as well, which have halted them from realising their full potential in India and forced them to think outside the business model in which they usually function.In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan bring back one of our first guests, Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services and a former ‘Amazonian', to discuss whether Amazon has lost the e-commerce race in India. Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a breadth of subjects at the Indian School of Business, including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies, is our second guest.And they try to uncover over the hour-and-a-half-long discussion where the next big opportunity lies for Amazon India.Welcome to episode 23 of Two by Two.This is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation. There's a lot more that we got into in the discussion, including Amazon, the enterprise company, and how Prime and streaming might be moats it might want to rely on.If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.Further reading:Amazon is not yet in quick commerce. But it's already different from the packAmazon got rid of its largest seller only to replace it with other ‘preferred sellers'Amazon's Leadership Principles (recommended by Srikanth)—This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you thought of the episode and rate the show on your favourite podcast streaming platform.

“This is the first time we are discussing what I'd describe as a 'wicked problem'” says host Rohin Dharmakumar at the beginning of this episode.What's a “wicked problem”?It's not a bad thing, it's not an evil thing.A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that's difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. They lack clarity in both their aims and solutions and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.This definition comes from the space of systems thinking.And the “wicked problem” at center of today's discussion is India's air pollution. More specifically, North India's air pollution problem and as we zoom down further on it, Delhi's air pollution problem.India ranks second globally as the most polluted country.Our particulate pollution increased by 67.7% from 1998 to 2021.Because of the PM2.5 pollution particles, which are the smallest actually, which we track, an average Indian's life is cut short by 5.3 years.And if you live in the north of India, the reduction is close to 12 years.Now these aren't statistics that most of you people would not have heard about.Depending on where you are in India, you think it's either a problem that you have to live with or a problem someone else has to live with.In this episode of Two by Two, we want to really discuss how to think about this problem, how to solve this problem, how to even begin to define this problem.Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan for the discussion are guests Alok Mittal, co-founder of Indifi; Roshan Shankar, founder and CEO of Saroja Earth; and Mohit Beotra, co-founder of Air Pollution Action Group (A-PAG)Welcome to episode 27 of Two by Two.—What you just listened to is a short part of a 90-minute-long conversation. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Both Zomato and Swiggy have been aggressively focusing on the 10-minute grocery delivery space for a while now. Quick commerce. But what sent both of them into a spiral was when Zepto, the joker in the quick commerce pack, started delivering snacks in 10-minutes through Zepto Cafe, a separate app. Suddenly, quick commerce wasn't enough. Quick food was up for play too.Swiggy launched Snacc soon after, and Blinkit followed suit with Bistro. Both were also separate apps.But this move to disrupt themselves to avoid getting disrupted has drawn a lot of flak from the restaurant partners listed on their platforms. Because a marketplace can only be neutral when it does not participate in it.And it is not like Zomato and Swiggy haven't tried a hand at this before. Both platforms previously ran their cloud kitchen verticals, Zomato Infrastructure Services and Swiggy Access, respectively, which they had to close down or sell.They then turned their attention to delivering food and building up efficiencies to deliver it faster. But when Zepto Cafe came in the picture in December with their pitch as a separate app, both Zomato and Swiggy jumped back and opened that chapter again. Only this time, they added that they would deliver it in 10 minutes and said they were not trying to build a private label to compete with the restaurants listed on their platforms. They made it clear both Bistro and SNACC are separate apps which don't use any of the data collected by Zomato and Swiggy to date.But what do the restaurants listed on the platform have to say about this?Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan got into what all of this means for restaurants in one of the most uninhibited, probing and also the longest episodes of Two by Two we've recorded to date.To capture the restaurateurs' perspective, we have three guests who have experience working with both of the companies.Joining the hosts for the discussion are Gaurav Saria, founder of Infinitea, India's first exclusive chain of tearooms and stores; Thomas Fenn, co-founder of Mahabelly and joint secretary at NRAI; and Ramchander Raman, former President of Cafe Coffee Day and co-founder and COO of Nucleus Kitchens.Welcome to episode 26 of Two by Two. Tune in to listen to an exciting discussion.–Additional reading:The Zomato-Swiggy cartel: Bistro and Snacc further threaten the restaurant businessZomato, Swiggy gave up on selling their own food. Then came along Zepto Cafe“There's an app for that”–Swiggy, Zepto, and Blinkit–What you just listened to is a short part of a 2-hour long conversation. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

It's time for us to retire the term “Direct-to-Consumer” or D2C. The phrase is, anyway, a bit long in the tooth, having been used since the days of the dot-com boom.D2C used to mean selling directly to end customers, rather than selling through retailers or other middlemen. In theory, selling directly to consumers would allow a company to offer both lower prices and maintain higher margins (since it didn't have to pay commissions to middlemen), having better products sustained through a faster innovation cycle and the ability to sell products through evolving brand stories instead of merely price.In reality though, few brands are even remotely D2C. For instance, 82% of Boat's sales come via Amazon and Flipkart, with only 2% selling directly to consumers. The dependence on kiranas, distributors and modern retail has merely been replaced with a dependence on Amazon, Flipkart or Quick Commerce companies.Large and “traditional” FMCG companies, which were once acquirers of D2C startups, have sobered up. Their acquisitions haven't really scaled up well, even as they've figured out how to compete with D2Cs. As a result, the acquisition premium for D2C startups has plummeted from the peak during the post-pandemic days. In some cases even a 50% discount from the peak isn't leading to deals.In terms of categories, electronics has scale, but profits have plummeted. In skincare, there is also a downward spiral of competition and price pressure. A good example is Mamaearth, which is now paying the price on the stock markets.In terms of competition, the likes of Meesho, Fire-Boltt, Boult, Noise etc., are pushing prices dramatically lower. What is a differentiating factor? It's hard to say right now. The entire category looks like a turnstile with a 2-3 year cycle.What is the way out? What should modern brands do to build lasting and sustainable brands? How should they cultivate consumer loyalty and connections? What should they even be called?Welcome to episode 22 of Two by Two.In this episode, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by Deepak Shahdadpuri, managing director and founder of DSG Consumer Partners–India and Southeast Asia's first consumer-focused venture capital fund. We also had Ajai Thandi, co-founder of Sleepy Owl Coffee, and Seetharaman G, deputy editor at The Ken and resident expert on all things retail, joining the discussion.The full episode, which we released on 19 December 2024, is exclusively available on The Ken app with a Premium subscription and on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.There is also a free Two by Two newsletter. You can sign up for it here.——Additional reading:Boat, Noise unleashed cheap smartwatches on India. Rivals hurt them with dirt-cheap onesMamaearth sold investors on its FMCG dreams. Consumers had other plansBrands once desperate for quick commerce now have a tiger by the tail——This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you thought of the episode.

Business schools are among the most coveted higher educational institutions. Students go through some of the most competitive exams and pay significant fees because they hope that at the end of their degree, they will get a great job.Yet, the onerous process of finding, soliciting and bringing dozens of companies to campuses each year falls mostly on final-year students, who are part of elected/selected placement committees.For as long as we can remember, these committees have always been accused of bias, arrogance and powerplay by other students.Yet, the fact also remains that those on the placement committees sacrifice a significant part of their education and grades in order to run a great job-matching process for their entire batch.Should they, though?In the US, for instance, most leading B-schools have their professional teams that run the entire campus hiring process instead of students. Finding quality jobs for hundreds of students each year is a full-time job.In India, too, many colleges are gradually coming around to the same POV.IIM Kozhikode has transitioned the process from students to faculty. This model aims to instil transparency and professionalism in what vice-chancellor V Ramgopal Rao calls “a crucial rite of passage marking the end of academic life.”BITS Pilani has adopted a system where HR professionals employed by the institute handle placements.IIT Bombay set up a committee under a senior computer science faculty professor Uday Khedkar, with one of its aims being “setting up a clean and transparent placement process system”. Sources at IIT-B said the panel was set up after students brought to light instances of the biases some faced and how this had hampered their careers.Our guest for the episode is Professor Varun Nagaraj, Dean and Professor of Information Management & Analytics at S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai. He holds a Ph.D. in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems from Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. He also holds an MBA from Boston University, an MS in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay. His career spanning over three decades in digital products reflects his passion for product management, development, and innovation.Over the course of the discussion, the professor and hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss how placements have evolved since their MBA days, their misgivings about the current system, and what institutes have to get better at.Perhaps the larger question is, how should we think about matching employers and graduates? Is a compressed “placements” process the best way?Welcome to episode 25 of Two by Two.—Additional reading:Bias, lack of transparency trips job hunts in premier schoolsWhy are IIT placements failing to deliver jobs? Former IIT Director explainsShiv Shivakumar's LinkedIn post —This is a shorter '10-minute trailer' cut from the hour-long discussion hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar had with the guests. If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will get you access to all our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and the rest of the podcasts we produce.But if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts at a great monthly price.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Artificial intelligence will affect all facets of modern-day business in some way or another. But it will most definitely go a few layers deeper with the type of companies whose job is to be a record of business' today – SaaS companies.SaaS as a business model is investment-heavy in the beginning. It's risky to build, it takes time to build, and it takes skill to build. But if successful, it is a cash cow. Think of the biggest SaaS companies – Salesforce, Microsoft and Adobe. They spent years building and iterating on software products. And today, all of these products they poured money into make them billions of dollars.But there's a perfect storm that has been turning the tides, and the incumbents have seen the signs and have jumped at it to secure their advantage and not lose out to upstarts.The one thing about SaaS products is that they have to be constantly sold to their customers. But with AI, the entire loop becomes a solution that makes the customer's life easier. SaaS products integrated with AI will be bought because they'll solve the use case of its customers specifically. Companies which usually resort to different pricing strategies for small additional features will have to reconsider and be aligned to deliver outcomes for their customer, not a feature list which is based on purchasing licences to gain access.And in all of this, what happens to the Indian SaaS companies as the AI wave ushers in?In episode 21 of Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar sat down with guests Sumanth Raghavendra, CEO and co-founder of Presentations.AI and one of the co-founders of The Ken, and Sidu Ponnappa, CEO and co-founder of Realfast and former managing director of Gojek India.This is a '30-minute version' of the full conversation we had published on 12 December 2024. Full episodes are available to Premium subscribers on The Ken app and Apple Podcasts with a separate monthly subscription.A Premium subscription to The Ken will get you access to our long-form stories, premium newsletters, podcasts, and visual stories in addition to Two by Two.If you'd just like access to Two by Two, you can do that too by getting a Premium subscription to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts.Tune in to the latest Two by Two podcast to listen to an engrossing discussion on how AI will shake up SaaS models across the world and what's in store for India's SaaS companies.——Additional reading:The AI apocalypse is coming: Are SaaS companies ready?BarbAIrians at the Gate: The Financial Opportunity of AIThe End of the SaaS Era: Rethinking software's role in business——This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Mixing and mastering for this episode was done by Rajiv CN.Write to us with what you thought of the episode at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

In 2023, two-wheelers and three-wheelers in India experienced growth of around 37% and 66%. Electric four-wheelers also promised to go down the same path because in that same year, there was a significant increase in sales of electric four-wheelers, 113%.Now, of course, this is from a lower base, but the signs were clear.The conventional wisdom or the narrative has been petrol and diesel cars are going to become a relic of the past. And if you're an automaker and if you're not investing billions of dollars in developing battery technology or newer models with all of this stuff, you are seen as out of touch with reality.Essentially, electric cars were inevitable.In 2024, something changed. Demand and sales for electric cars have fallen all over the world. For the first time in almost 12 years, Tesla's sales dropped by 1.1%. And India is also no exception.If you look at 2024 numbers, in fact, until October 2024, sales of electric four-wheeler cars in India were actually declining. They had gone down if you compare year-on-year numbers all of these months. By the end of the year, it sort of increased a little bit which was helped by a sale of one specific model called MG Windsor and some price cuts.But in this episode, we're going to pose two questions: Number one, why did electric cars become less attractive? And two, what will make electric cars inevitable again and by when?Our first guest is Dr Amitabh Saran, founder and CEO of Altigreen Propulsion Labs. Saran used to work at companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Philips, NASA, and Hewlett Packard before turning to entrepreneurship.Our second guest is Awadhesh Jha, executive director of Glida India, formerly known as Fortum Charge and Drive India, which is a leading charging solution provider in India. In fact, if you live in Delhi, you will see Glida charging points all over Delhi.Jha has a long history in power. He used to be a deputy director at the Central Water Commission. Also, he was the vice president of Hindustan Powerprojects Limited, where he administered hydropower development in one of the remotest parts of the country, the Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh.Welcome to episode 24 of Two by Two.–Take the survey here:Two by Two: Events in India vs abroad - https://theken.typeform.com/to/pchJxlaj–This is a shorter '10-minute trailer' cut from the hour-long discussion hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar had with the guests. If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will get you access to all our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and the rest of the podcasts we produce.But if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts at a great monthly price.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with people who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com

Fintech lending was supposed to be the bridge that would enable entrepreneurs, small businesses and even individuals across the country to get access to much-needed credit to build businesses. For millions of small and medium businesses, and even individuals seeking a personal loan, who'd otherwise not qualify for them (usually unsecured ones) from banks, these new-age financial institutions were the great hope and sources of credit.Then in October this year, the RBI, like it usually seems to do these days, suddenly swept in and took action. It halted the loan disbursement activities of four NBFCs: Asirvad Micro Finance Limited, Arohan Financial Services Limited, DMI Finance Private Limited, and Navi Finserv Limited.  In fact, between the time we recorded this episode to when we released it, the RBI had lifted restrictions from one of these companies - Navi Finserv. But why did the RBI do this?Here are some hints as to why. Here are two quotes from the RBI about why they did this:“Deviations were also observed in respect of Income Recognition & Asset Classification norms, resulting in evergreening of loans, conduct of gold loan portfolio, mandated disclosure requirements on interest rates and fees, outsourcing of core financial services, etc.”And here's the most interesting one: “...unfair and usurious practices continued to be seen during the course of onsite examinations as well as from the data collected and analysed offsite”That's what the RBI said.But what did it not say?Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan for the discussion are guests Ateesh Tankha and Mithun Sundar. Ateesh Tankha is the founder of Alsowise Content Solutions and a keen observer and critic of the financial services space, and Mithun Sundar is the chief Partner Officer at Microsoft India and a former CEO of Lendingkart.Throughout our conversation, both Mithun and Ateesh took the time to explain how digital lending works, why private banks are hesitant to enter the ring and play the game themselves, what's up with the sky-high interest rates charged on these loans, and, of course, why credit is so important for our country's growth and where we're falling short.Welcome to episode 20 of Two by Two.Additional reading:RBI had better explain why Navi and DMI Finance are locked out of the loan marketFor fintechs, RBI is the boy who cries wolf---------This is a shorter '30-minute' episode. If you want to listen and get access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can also sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!This episode was produced by Hari Krishna. Mixing and mastering for this episode is done by Rajiv CN. Write to us about what you thought of the episode at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early onYet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunities because they were slow to react to changing consumer behaviour.And this losing advantage in some of their verticals makes you think, what are the other businesses where Amazon has a right to win. Is it AWS, streaming or something else? Or will they push forward to make up for the lost opportunities by pouring more money and change their fate.What does the future hold for Amazon India? And how will the company, famed for its execution, turn things around in India? Of course, there have been other regulatory pressures as well, which have halted them from realising their full potential in India and forced them to think outside the business model in which they usually function.In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan bring back one of our first guests, Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services and a former ‘Amazonian', to discuss whether Amazon has lost the e-commerce race in India. Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a breadth of subjects at the Indian School of Business, including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies, is our second guest.And they try to uncover over the hour-and-a-half-long discussion where the next big opportunity lies for Amazon India.Welcome to episode 23 of Two by Two.This is just 10 minutes from the conversation. But there's a lot more that we got into in the discussion, including Amazon, the enterprise company, and how Prime and streaming might be moats it might want to rely on.If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.Further reading:Amazon is not yet in quick commerce. But it's already different from the packAmazon got rid of its largest seller only to replace it with other ‘preferred sellers'Amazon's Leadership Principles (recommended by Srikanth)—This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you thought of the episode and rate the show on your favourite podcast streaming platform.

Today's episode of Two by Two is about how the marketing function has been eating itself from the inside.Historically, in companies, marketing has always been about the long term, while a function like sales was about the near term. Marketing owned the customer—what they wanted, their dreams, their fears, and their vanities. It was supposed to tell stories of customers back to the organisation and, in return, tell stories of the company back to customers.Today, in company after company, the marketing function has been getting sliced away, cut into parts and becoming something else altogether.Marketing is eating itself from the inside. To discuss what changed, we had two wonderful guests: one who has been teaching marketing for decades and one who has been practising it for decades. Our first guest is Professor YLR Moorthi, who teaches marketing, brand management, and marketing strategy at IIM Bangalore. These days, Professor Moorthi's work is focused on the impact of branding in different domains like IT and B2B marketing.Our second guest is Deepali Naair, who is currently the group CMO of CK Birla Group. She's had a long career in marketing across varied functions as CMO for India and South Asia at IBM, and prior to that, she was CMO at IIFL and Mahindra Holidays.In this episode, the hosts ask two simple questions: Why is marketing dying, and how can we bring it back?Welcome to Two by Two.We published the full, subscriber-version of this on 28th November. It ran an hour and ten minutes. Today, we're carrying a tightly edited 30-minute version of the same episode. We've tried to ensure that you get all the key parts of the full conversation in a tighter format.If you'd like to listen to the full version, including all the meandering side conversations, banter and background, I'd urge you to become a subscriber. You can subscribe to just Two by Two on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price, or subscribe to The Ken's Premium plan to get Two by Two bundled with the rest of the original feature stories, newsletters, infographics and podcasts we are known for.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your thoughts and suggestions.

This episode was first released on November 21, 2024, for The Ken's Premium subscribers. We've unlocked it for our Basic and Free subscribers for a limited time. Listen to it on your favourite podcast streaming platforms now.Dmart, the retail group in India, is absolutely number one on vision, execution, and consistency. Dmart opened its first supermarket in Mumbai's Powai suburb in 2002. Like Walmart in the US, it adopted a deep discounting strategy, offering its customers low prices every day. Today, it has 381 stores. In spite of offering its customers the deepest discounts, Dmart's net profit numbers beat the best among its global peers.Yet analysts and investors have been becoming increasingly bearish of Dmart's future strategy. They argue that what got it from 2002 to 2024 might not necessarily take it to, say, 2034.One big reason is quick commerce. Armies of underpaid contract delivery workers rushing from dark stores managed by notionally independent owners on behalf of younger companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, Big Basket, and even Flipkart are challenging the conventional wisdom on retail.Forcing Dmart to pause and blink.What should it do? Stick to what it knows and does best? Or learn new digital and delivery tricks in its middle age? With only an estimated 5% of the $500 billion urban market for food and groceries currently penetrated by organised and modern retail, the way Dmart goes has profound implications for India.To discuss this, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan invited Govind Shrikhande, former managing director of Shoppers Stop overseeing all its formats, including Shoppers Stop, Hypercity, Crossword, Homestop, Beauty Formats – MAC, Estee Lauder, Air Port & Duty Free Retail etc. Govind has spent over 40 years in the retail sector, having been part of the launches of Denim and Arrow, the relaunch of Vivaldi and the turnaround of Shoppers Stop. He is currently an Independent Director on the Board of a few Companies and a mentor to a few start-ups.Our other guest is Seetharaman G. Seetha is deputy editor at The Ken and also leads The Ken's coverage of retail. He's written quite a few stories on Dmart over the years as well.Welcome to episode number 18 of Two by Two!------Two by Two episodes referenced in this episode:Is Zepto a gold medallist or a bronze medallist?Swiggy needs to reclaim its past gloryStories and newsletters referenced in this episode:Dmart and the supersizing imperativeZudio wanted Dmart's apparel shoppers. Now Dmart is hurtingDmart changes its mind on store size. AgainDmart is not used to being in a funk for so longWhat if the quick-commerce warehouse was a supermarket?Dmart and investors rekindle their loveDmart's e-commerce bet has gone from counterintuitive to obsolete------This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your thoughts and suggestions.

It's time for us to retire the term “Direct-to-Consumer” or D2C. The phrase is, anyway, a bit long in the tooth, having been used since the days of the dot-com boom.D2C used to mean selling directly to end customers, rather than selling through retailers or other middlemen. In theory, selling directly to consumers would allow a company to offer both lower prices and maintain higher margins (since it didn't have to pay commissions to middlemen), having better products sustained through a faster innovation cycle and the ability to sell products through evolving brand stories instead of merely price.In reality though, few brands are even remotely D2C. For instance, 82% of Boat's sales come via Amazon and Flipkart, with only 2% selling directly to consumers. The dependence on kiranas, distributors and modern retail has merely been replaced with a dependence on Amazon, Flipkart or Quick Commerce companies.Large and “traditional” FMCG companies, which were once acquirers of D2C startups, have sobered up. Their acquisitions haven't really scaled up well, even as they've figured out how to compete with D2Cs. As a result, the acquisition premium for D2C startups has plummeted from the peak during the post-pandemic days. In some cases even a 50% discount from the peak isn't leading to deals.In terms of categories, electronics has scale, but profits have plummeted. In skincare, there is also a downward spiral of competition and price pressure. A good example is Mamaearth, which is now paying the price on the stock markets.In terms of competition, the likes of Meesho, Fire-Boltt, Boult, Noise etc., are pushing prices dramatically lower. What is a differentiating factor? It's hard to say right now. The entire category looks like a turnstile with a 2-3 year cycle.What is the way out? What should modern brands do to build lasting and sustainable brands? How should they cultivate consumer loyalty and connections? What should they even be called?Welcome to episode 22 of Two by Two.In this episode, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by Deepak Shahdadpuri, managing director and founder of DSG Consumer Partners–India and Southeast Asia's first consumer-focused venture capital fund. We also had Ajai Thandi, co-founder of Sleepy Owl Coffee and Seetharaman G, deputy editor at The Ken and resident expert on all things retail joining in for the discussion.This is a short excerpt from a more than hour-long episode.The full episode is exclusively available on The Ken app with a Premium subscription and on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.There is also a free Two by Two newsletter. You can sign up for it here.------Additional reading:Boat, Noise unleashed cheap smartwatches on India. Rivals hurt them with dirt-cheap onesMamaearth sold investors on its FMCG dreams. Consumers had other plans------If you've been a regular listener of Two by Two, consider following the show wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating too. You can also write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.We'll be back next Thursday with a new episode. See you then.

This episode was first released on November 14, 2024, for The Ken's Premium subscribers. We've unlocked it for our Basic and Free subscribers for a limited time. Listen to it on your favourite podcast streaming platforms now.For the last 24 months, the default way in which startups were exposed to venture capital and its effects has been, in many ways, paused. There's a slowdown. Venture capital funding for the first nine months of this year is down 7% over a similar period last year per Tracxn.There have been news stories about layoffs, company shutdowns, and downrounds at various companies from a time when unicorns were being born every three months or so.Capital is abundant. A lot of dry it remains uninvested everywhere, but it's just not getting invested at the same rate.Building a company and scaling a company is getting cheaper because of AI and LLMs, which can generate code, which can generate images or just about anything that you want.And the biggest change—there's a focus on being profitable.If you've been a regular listener of Two by Two, you'd know that VCs have always managed to sneak into most, if not all, discussions on the podcast. Maybe not in the way they'd like to be represented in general, but they have been part of the conversation in some way, shape, or form.So when hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sat down for this week's episode, they got two founders-turned-VCs to join in and say their piece on the role VCs play in the world of startups. And what they need to be doing right. Manav Garg is the founder of Eka Software and co-founder of the operator-led Together Fund (Manav has previously appeared as a guest on the First Principles podcast as well), while Rajiv Srivatsa is the co-founder of Urban Ladder, and now a founding partner at Antler India.Welcome to episode 17 of Two by Two.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your thoughts and suggestions.

Artificial intelligence will affect all facets of modern-day business in some way or another. But it will most definitely go a few layers deeper with the type of companies whose job is to be a record of business' today – SaaS companies.SaaS as a business model is investment-heavy in the beginning. It's risky to build, it takes time to build, and it takes skill to build. But if successful, it is a cash cow. Think of the biggest SaaS companies – Salesforce, Microsoft and Adobe. They spent years building and iterating on software products. And today, all of these products they poured money into make them billions of dollars.But there's a perfect storm that has been turning the tides, and the incumbents have seen the signs and have jumped at it to secure their advantage and not lose out to upstarts.The one thing about SaaS products is that they have to be constantly sold to their customers. But with AI, the entire loop becomes a solution that makes the customer's life easier. SaaS products integrated with AI will be bought because they'll solve the use case of its customers specifically. Companies which usually resort to different pricing strategies for small additional features will have to reconsider and be aligned to deliver outcomes for their customer, not a feature list which is based on purchasing licences to gain access.And in all of this, what happens to the Indian SaaS companies as the AI wave ushers in?In episode 21 of Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar sat down with guests Sumanth Raghavendra, CEO and co-founder of Presentations.AI and one of the co-founders of The Ken, and Sidu Ponnappa, CEO and co-founder of Realfast and former managing director of Gojek India.This is a short ‘highlights only' version of the hour-and-a-half-long discussion.A Premium subscription to The Ken will give you access to our long-form stories, premium newsletters, podcasts, and visual stories in addition to Two by Two.If you'd just like access to Two by Two, you can do that too by getting a Premium subscription to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!Tune in to the latest Two by Two podcast to listen to an engrossing discussion on how AI will shake up SaaS models across the world and what's in store for India's SaaS companies.Additional reading:The AI apocalypse is coming: Are SaaS companies ready?BarbAIrians at the Gate: The Financial Opportunity of AIThe End of the SaaS Era: Rethinking software's role in business------Listen to the Two by Two 'unlocked' episode – What does Ola Electric's future hold?Link to the 'unlocked' episode:Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | Youtube------This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Mixing and mastering for this episode was done by Rajiv CN.Write to us with what you thought of the episode at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

This episode was first released on November 7, 2024, for The Ken's premium subscribers. We've unlocked it for our Basic and Free subscribers for a limited time. Listen to it on your favourite podcast streaming platforms before it goes behind a paywall.Ola Electric's woes just don't seem to be stopping.From angry customers to its mercurial CEO getting into online spats as pressure mounts, many of its problems stretch seemingly beyond its control today for it to make a quick turnaround and change the narrative. And this is hurting its valuation significantly, both in the private and public markets. Just this week, Ola Electric's price fell below its listing priceOla Electric can and should take credit for making EV two-wheelers common on Indian roads. It achieved this through rampant marketing, getting the word out for its product, and eventually delivering its products to eager customers as well. These did yield results in the short term as well. At its peak, Ola Electric's vertically integrated ecosystem was a big pull, which, along with its marketing efforts, allowed it to gain nearly 53% market share in the EV two-wheeler segment.But the strategy of moving fast and breaking things to press an early mover advantage that startups usually apply has now started to backfire, as angry customers take to social media to express their frustration with the longer wait times to get their vehicles serviced and working again.These kinds of troubles tend to happen with startups. But when the situation is such that you can't just fix things as you would do in an app, and you are under the scrutiny of the public markets. The need to deliver becomes absolutely detrimental.In this week's episode, host Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan try to understand Ola's recent history, how it fared after listing on the Indian bourses, the troubles it has faced, and what the future holds.Joining them for the episode are Jinesh Gandhi, Research Director at Ambit*, with over 20 years of experience tracking multiple sectors, and Narayan Sundararaman, an accomplished leader with over 28 years of experience in marketing strategy. Narayan has worked at Cadbury, Star TV, and was the ex-CMO at Bajaj Auto.Reference Stories:How Ola Electric blew its leadOla Electric wants to take on Hero's Splendor. But e-bikes are not e-scootersThe real reason behind Ola Electric slashing its IPO valuation in a booming stock marketOther Two by Two episodes:Ather Energy was a pioneer. Can it also be a leader?*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the analyst and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Ambit Capital Private Ltd. The analyst does not hold any financial interest in the securities discussed in the podcast, nor do their relatives. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. It is essential to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.This episode was produced by Hari Krishna. Mixing and mastering for this episode is done by Rajiv CN. Write to us about what you thought of the episode at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Fintech lending was supposed to be the bridge that would enable entrepreneurs, small businesses and even individuals across the country to get access to much-needed credit to build businesses. For millions of small and medium businesses, and even individuals seeking a personal loan, who'd otherwise not qualify for them (usually unsecured ones) from banks, these new-age financial institutions were the great hope and sources of credit.Then in October this year, the RBI, like it usually seems to do these days, suddenly swept in and took action. It halted the loan disbursement activities of four NBFCs: Asirvad Micro Finance Limited, Arohan Financial Services Limited, DMI Finance Private Limited, and Navi Finserv Limited.  In fact, between the time we recorded this episode to when we released it, the RBI had lifted restrictions from one of these companies - Navi Finserv. But why did the RBI do this?Here are some hints as to why. Here are two quotes from the RBI about why they did this:“Deviations were also observed in respect of Income Recognition & Asset Classification norms, resulting in evergreening of loans, conduct of gold loan portfolio, mandated disclosure requirements on interest rates and fees, outsourcing of core financial services, etc.”And here's the most interesting one: “...unfair and usurious practices continued to be seen during the course of onsite examinations as well as from the data collected and analysed offsite”That's what the RBI said.But what did it not say?Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan for the discussion are guests Ateesh Tankha and Mithun Sundar. Ateesh Tankha is the founder of Alsowise Content Solutions and a keen observer and critic of the financial services space, and Mithun Sundar is the chief Partner Officer at Microsoft India and a former CEO of Lendingkart.Throughout our conversation, both Mithun and Ateesh took the time to explain how digital lending works, why private banks are hesitant to enter the ring and play the game themselves, what's up with the sky-high interest rates charged on these loans, and, of course, why credit is so important for our country's growth and where we're falling short.Welcome to episode 20 of Two by Two.Additional reading:RBI had better explain why Navi and DMI Finance are locked out of the loan marketFor fintechs, RBI is the boy who cries wolf---------This is a shorter 'highlights only' episode. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!This episode was produced by Hari Krishna. Mixing and mastering for this episode is done by Rajiv CN. Write to us about what you thought of the episode at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

We've unlocked this episode for our Basic and Free subscribers for a limited time. Listen to it on your favourite streaming platform for a limited time.The government has played a pivotal role in establishing and promoting Digital Public Goods(DPG) and Digital Public Infrastructure(DPI) in the past decade and a half, and there have been few which have been integral in our daily lives in more ways than one.The reason why these solutions exist is plain and simple: There emerged companies which disrupted the landscape of finance, commerce, mobility and a whole lot of other aspects of our lives, but as they gained prominence they also started to play by their own rules.The regulator was not able to act fast enough in most cases to keep things in check. So the government intervened and helped establish and promote solutions which would keep things in check and protect the interests of all the parties involved.Some solutions literally changed the way our day to day lives are, and created businesses which are built on top of these solutions. Think UPI, ONDC or Bharat Connect(formerly known as Bharat Bill Payment System).In addition to creating and shaping these systems or frameworks or protocols, these government-backed players or GBPs, as we referred to them in this episode, also became a competitor on what they had helped build, which begs the question: what kind of system does this shape up to be?In episode 15 of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Anupam Manur, Professor of Economics at The Takshashila Institution, to break down the interventionist solutions championed by the government. From UPI and ONDC to the Unified Lending InterfaceEpisodes referenced:Google Pay: Big. Successful. VulnerableStories referenced:You need to download Digiyatra again. But it's less about a tech upgrade and more about a scamRBI is competing with its regulated entities — and killing competitionThis episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com, and tell us what you thought of the episode.

Today's episode of Two by Two is about how the marketing function has been eating itself from the inside.Historically, in companies, marketing has always been about the long term, while a function like sales was about the near term. Marketing owned the customer—what they wanted, their dreams, their fears, and their vanities. It was supposed to tell stories of customers back to the organisation and, in return, tell stories of the company back to customers.Today, in company after company, the marketing function has been getting sliced away, cut into parts and becoming something else altogether.Marketing is eating itself from the inside. To discuss what changed, we had two wonderful guests: one who has been teaching marketing for decades and one who has been practising it for decades. Our first guest is Professor YLR Moorthi, who teaches marketing, brand management, and marketing strategy at IIM Bangalore. These days, Professor Moorthi's work is focused on the impact of branding in different domains like IT and B2B marketing.Our second guest is Deepali Naair, who is currently the group CMO of CK Birla Group. She's had a long career in marketing across varied functions as CMO for India and South Asia at IBM, and prior to that, she was CMO at IIFL and Mahindra Holidays.In this episode, the hosts ask two simple questions: Why is marketing dying, and how can we bring it back?Welcome to Two by Two.What you just listened to is a short part from a more than hour-long conversation. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your thoughts and suggestions.

Dmart, the retail group in India, is absolutely number one on vision, execution, and consistency. Dmart opened its first supermarket in Mumbai's Powai suburb in 2002. Like Walmart in the US, it adopted a deep discounting strategy, offering its customers low prices every day. Today, it has 381 stores. In spite of offering its customers the deepest discounts, Dmart's net profit numbers beat the best among its global peers.Yet analysts and investors have been becoming increasingly bearish of Dmart's future strategy. They argue that what got it from 2002 to 2024 might not necessarily take it to, say, 2034.One big reason is quick commerce. Armies of underpaid contract delivery workers rushing from dark stores managed by notionally independent owners on behalf of younger companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, Big Basket, and even Flipkart are challenging the conventional wisdom on retail.Forcing Dmart to pause and blink.What should it do? Stick to what it knows and does best? Or learn new digital and delivery tricks in its middle age? With only an estimated 5% of the $500 billion urban market for food and groceries currently penetrated by organised and modern retail, the way Dmart goes has profound implications for India.To discuss this, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan invited Govind Shrikhande, former managing director of Shoppers Stop overseeing all its formats, including Shoppers Stop, Hypercity, Crossword, Homestop, Beauty Formats - MAC, Estee Lauder, Air Port & Duty Free Retail etc. Govind has spent over 40 years in the retail sector, having been part of the launches of Denim and Arrow, the relaunch of Vivaldi and the turnaround of Shoppers Stop. He is currently an Independent Director on the Board of a few Companies and a mentor to a few start-ups.Our other guest is Seetharaman G. Seetha is deputy editor at The Ken and also leads The Ken's coverage of retail. He's written quite a few stories on Dmart over the years as well.Welcome to episode number 18 of Two by Two!Two by Two episodes referenced in this episode:Is Zepto a gold medallist or a bronze medallist?Swiggy needs to reclaim its past gloryStories and newsletters referenced in this episode:Dmart and the supersizing imperativeZudio wanted Dmart's apparel shoppers. Now Dmart is hurtingDmart changes its mind on store size. AgainDmart is not used to being in a funk for so longWhat if the quick-commerce warehouse was a supermarket?Dmart and investors rekindle their loveDmart's e-commerce bet has gone from counterintuitive to obsoleteThis is a shorter 'highlights only' episode. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your thoughts and suggestions.

We've unlocked this episode for our Basic and Free subscribers for a limited time. Listen to it on your favourite streaming platform for a limited time.Ola and Uber are in a “late-stage duopoly”.After spending billions and billions of dollars, they have finally secured pole positions in ride-sharing in India.Both of these companies together control 70% of the market and they have created network effects that make it much harder for anyone to enter and compete with them.However, this particular situation is facing some new challenges and just like how Uber and Ola conquered city after city using a disruptive model and technology, the same thing threatens to happen to them.Ola and Uber are facing structural disruptions from multiple fronts in India.In today's episode, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar try to answer how the disruptors are getting disrupted by upstarts who are coming in with both business model innovation and newer fleets which offer a significantly better experience, which was the original promise of Ola and Uber as well.So what is the next stage of disruption in ride-hailing look like in India? Is it EV fleets? Is it democratized tech-enabler platforms like ONDC which enables platforms like Nammayatri? Are we looking at the return of local taxi operators? And most importantly, what should Ola and Uber do to defend their position as new incentive models are introduced for both drivers and passengers?Welcome to episode 14 of Two by Two.Joining the hosts for the discussion are Nilesh Sangoi, CIO of Fincare Small Finance Bank, previously CEO of Meru Cabs; Pradeep Puranam, Head of Revenue and Operations at Yulu, ex-Udaan and -Uber; and returning guest Professor Srinivasan R, who teaches Strategy at IIM Bangalore.Episode referenced:Will Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe becomes Flipkart?Stories referenced:Rapido rips up the Uber-Ola playbook for cabsThis episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com, and tell us what you thought of the episode.

For the last 24 months, the default way in which startups were exposed to venture capital and its effects has been, in many ways, paused. There's a slowdown. Venture capital funding for the first nine months of this year is down 7% over a similar period last year per Tracxn.There have been news stories about layoffs, company shutdowns, and downrounds at various companies from a time when unicorns were being born every three months or so.Capital is abundant. A lot of dry it remains uninvested everywhere, but it's just not getting invested at the same rate.Building a company and scaling a company is getting cheaper because of AI and LLMs, which can generate code, which can generate images or just about anything anything that you want.And the biggest change—there's a focus on being profitable.If you've been a regular listener of Two by Two, you'd know that VCs have always managed to sneak into most, if not all, discussions on the podcast. Maybe not in the way they'd like to be represented in general, but they have been part of the conversation in some way, shape, or form.So when hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sat down for this week's episode, they got two founders-turned-VCs to join in and say their piece on the role VCs play in the world of startups. And what they need to be doing right. Manav Garg is the founder of Eka Software and co-founder of the operator-led Together Fund (Manav has previously appeared as a guest on the First Principles podcast as well), while Rajiv Srivatsa is the co-founder of Urban Ladder, and now a founding partner at Antler India.Welcome to episode 17 of Two by Two.This is a shorter 'highlights only' episode of an hour-and-a-half-long podcast. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your thoughts and suggestions.

We have unlocked the full and unedited version of episode 13, which we released on October 10th for Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken's mobile app and Apple Podcasts. Now, you can stream the full episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts for free for a limited time.If you are a Product Manager, especially in India, you're probably going through a crisis of faith and existence.As a career, Product Management in India has gone through multiple eras—in the early days, PMs struggled to explain to people what they actually did. Think about all the people you'd imagine who work at a software company. Marketing. Engineering. Sales. Analytics. Design.You can explain what they do to your grandmother. But the one exception to the rule is Product Management. It's the only function where the people who do it struggle to explain to their parents what they do.Then suddenly there was a gold rush when everyone wanted to become a Product Manager. And now, there's an existential crisis — partly driven by the reduced funding and attrition, the rise of AI, and the changing nature of products themselves, more and more leaders are asking the question : Do we even need Product Managers?In today's episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan interview two accomplished product leaders in India. First, there's Chandrashekhar Vattikuti (CPO and SVP at InMobi, ex-Yahoo, Microsoft) and Shreyas Srinivasan, Chief Product Officer at Paytm*, and also founder of Paytm Insider. During the discussion, they trace the origin, the evolution and the crisis that Product Management as a career faces in India. They try to figure out why and how Product Management became a science and stopped being an art.And they try to answer what makes for a great Product Manager, and how to find them.And they also ask the question that CEOs and Founders are asking themselves — do we even need Product Managers at all?Welcome to Episode 13 of Two by Two.Further reading:Product Managers used to be creators. Now they are mostly bureaucratsWho killed the art of Product Management in India?Who made the Frauduct Manager?Episode referenced:Google Pay: Big. Successful. VulnerableThis episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show.*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.

Ola Electric's woes just don't seem to be stopping.From angry customers to its mercurial CEO getting into online spats as pressure mounts, many of its problems stretch seemingly beyond its control today for it to make a quick turnaround and change the narrative. And this is hurting its valuation significantly, both in the private and public markets. Just this week, Ola Electric's price fell below its listing priceOla Electric can and should take credit for making EV two-wheelers common on Indian roads. It achieved this through rampant marketing, getting the word out about its product, and eventually delivering its products to eager customers as well. These did yield results in the short term as well. At its peak, Ola Electric's vertically integrated ecosystem was a big pull, which, along with its marketing efforts, allowed it to gain nearly 53% market share in the EV two-wheeler segment.But the strategy of moving fast and breaking things that startups usually apply to press an early mover advantage has now started to backfire, as angry customers take to social media to express their frustration with the longer wait times to get their vehicles serviced and working again.These kinds of troubles tend to happen with startups. But when the situation is such that you can't just fix things as you would do in an app, and you are under the scrutiny of the public markets. The need to deliver becomes absolutely detrimental.In this week's episode, host Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan try to understand Ola's recent history, how it fared after listing on the Indian bourses, the troubles it has faced, and what the future holds.Joining them for the episode are Jinesh Gandhi, Research Director at Ambit*, with over 20 years of experience tracking multiple sectors, and Narayan Sundararaman, an accomplished leader with over 28 years of experience in marketing strategy. Narayan has worked at Cadbury, Star TV, and was the ex-CMO at Bajaj Auto.Reference Stories:How Ola Electric blew its leadOla Electric wants to take on Hero's Splendor. But e-bikes are not e-scootersThe real reason behind Ola Electric slashing its IPO valuation in a booming stock marketEpisode unlocked for free and basic subscribers: Ather Energy was a pioneer. Can it also be a leader?This is a shorter 'highlights only' episode of an hour-and-a-half-long podcast. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the analyst and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Ambit Capital Private Ltd. The analyst does not hold any financial interest in the securities discussed in the podcast, nor do their relatives. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. It is essential to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.This episode was produced by Hari Krishna. Mixing and mastering for this episode is done by Rajiv CN. Write to us about what you thought of the episode at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

We have unlocked the full and unedited version of episode 12, which we released on October 3rd for Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken's mobile app and Apple Podcasts. Now, you can stream the full episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, Youtube or wherever you listen to your podcasts for free for a limited time.Ather Energy is the third-largest seller of electric two-wheelers in India. Founded in 2013, Ather Energy is known to have kicked off the electric two-wheeler wave in India. They came in with a great product which offered the best of software and hardware on a two-wheeler. And over a decade of its existence, Ather has delivered on its promise of a great product which will create a “magical experiences” for its customers.Ather spent years building their own electric two-wheelers from the ground up. They built their own batteries, their own chassis, their own electronics and powertrain, and even their own software. But in the process, they lost the opportunity to become the market leader, a spot that was filled by Ola Electric, a much later entrant.On September 9th this year Ather filed its draft red herring prospectus as it plans to go ahead and list on the Indian bourses. And as hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sat down to discuss and understand what the market looks like for electric two-wheelers and how Ather will fare in a market, it kickstarted and popularized. They also got two great guests to discuss this.First is the co-founder and CEO of IPO-bound Ather Energy Tarun Mehta himself and the second guest we had was Professor Rishikesha Krishnan, Director of IIM Bangalore, and a professor of Strategy.It's not often that we have the co-founder and CEO of a company heading for its IPO discussing its strategy with the director of one of India's most prestigious management institutes, who both studies and teaches strategy.And over the course of 90 minutes, they discussed the strategy and vision Ather Energy is going ahead with into the future and how they intend to keep innovating on their product leadership while also stepping up and getting on the front foot to improve their market leadership.Welcome to Episode 12 of Two by Two.Two by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday a storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here.This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com and let us know what you thought of the episode.

We have unlocked the full and unedited subscriber version of episode six which we released on September 26 for Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken's app and on Apple Podcasts. Now you can stream the full episode on Spotify, Amazon Music , Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for free for a few weeks.Netflix is trying hard to crack the Indian market. Ever since the US streaming giant entered the country it has been hard at work to make an impact. And over the years they've learnt a thing or two about how the Indian streaming space functions.Netflix is also not shy about expressing how it sees India as its last growth market. Most of the other geographies it has saturated its reach to a large extent, but India has always been a pain point for it to get a leg up on. So much so, that the then CEO, Reed Hastings expressed his frustration about why they weren't able to crack India during an earnings call in 2022.But from then to now, Netflix has managed an interesting turnaround by climbing down the pricing ladder on its subscriptions in India, even as it raises its prices in North America, and throwing in a somewhat limited regional and diversified slate of shows into the mix.But Netflix is clear on one thing, it sees India as its last growth market and expects to add 100 million paying subscribers in the country. But for that to happen it has to put in a lot more work and now it faces the added pressure of competing with the merged entity of Jio Cinema and Disney+ Hotstar which would create a mammoth of a content library stacked with regional content, endless range of movies and prestige television,  and the massive distributional heft Jio brings to the table.All of this begs the question, given the situation, how seriously is Netflix looking at India as its last growth market?To discuss this, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Kunj Sanghvi who is the Content and Creative Head at Kuku FM, and Nishad Kenkre, who presently is an Operating Partner at Verlinvest. Nishad has previously worked at Swiggy and was also Director and Head of Strategy at Disney.Welcome to episode 11 of Two by Two.Two by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday a short storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here.(Listen to the free highlights only episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts)Further reading:Netflix house will let you experience your favorite shows, movies in real lifeNetflix climbs down India's ladderFurther listening:Why couldn't Stripe become the Stripe of India?This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, and tell us what you think of the show.

What happens when the government plays the role of regulator, policymaker, and operator?The government has played a pivotal role in establishing and promoting Digital Public Goods(DPG) and Digital Public Infrastructure(DPI) in the past decade and a half, and there have been few which have been integral in our daily lives in more ways than one.The reason why these solutions exist is plain and simple: There emerged companies which disrupted the landscape of finance, commerce, mobility and a whole lot of other aspects of our lives, but as they gained prominence they also started to play by their own rules.The regulator was not able to act fast enough in most cases to keep things in check. So the government intervened and helped establish and promote solutions which would keep things in check and protect the interests of all the parties involved.Some solutions literally changed the way our day to day lives are, and created businesses which are built on top of these solutions. Think UPI, ONDC or Bharat Connect(formerly known as Bharat Bill Payment System).In addition to creating and shaping these systems or frameworks or protocols these Government-Backed Players or GBPs, as we referred to them in this episode also became a competitor on what they had helped build, which begs the question what kind of system does this shape up to be?In episode 15 of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Anupam Manur, Professor of Economics at The Takshashila Institution, to break down the interventionist solutions championed by the government. From UPI and ONDC to the Unified Lending InterfaceTwo by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday short storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here.This is a short 'highlights only' episode of a 90 minute long discussion. The full episode is available to Premium subscribers of The Ken and on Apple Podcasts via a standalone subscription.Episodes referenced:Google Pay: Big. Successful. VulnerableStories referenced:You need to download Digiyatra again. But it's less about a tech upgrade and more about a scamRBI is competing with its regulated entities — and killing competitionThis episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com, and tell us what you thought of the episode.

We have unlocked the full and unedited subscriber version of episode six which we released on 19th September for Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken's app and on Apple Podcasts. Now you can stream the full episode on Spotify, Amazon Music , Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts for free for a few weeks.The fastest growing segment of insurance in India is individual health insurance. It's growing steadily at a, well, healthy pace of 20% annually. But scratch just a little beneath the surface and things don't appear so rosy. Of the 20% annual growth in revenue, nearly 15% comes from medical inflation. Meaning, existing customers paying higher premiums each year because the costs of treatments are going up.The growth in the number of customers each year is just around 5-6%. Health insurance in India is broken from top to bottom. 70-75% of Indians have no health insurance. Of those who do, the largest chunk have free or low cost insurance provided by the government, followed by usually employer provided group insurance. Less than 10% Indians have their own health insurance. Scratch that. It's more accurate to call it hospitalization insurance, not health insurance. Because the industry has developed in a way that incentivizes catastrophic illnesses and hospitalization and treatment, not health. Why, you wonder? Because much of the industry wrongly incentivizes, for legacy reasons, all the wrong things. Like, large groups that make lots of claims. High commissions to distributors. Expensive procedures. Expensive premiums. Instead of incentivising the right things. Like, getting the young and healthy covered early on. Insuring blue collar workers. Building products customers actually want. And most importantly, staying healthy.So when hosts Praveen Gopal Krishna and Rohin Dharmakumar sat down to discuss this complex topic, they decided to invite two guests who had the experience and candour to tell them what needs to change. Our first guest is Viren Shetty, the Executive Vice Chairman of one of India's largest hospital groups, the listed Narayana Health. was our first guest. Viren has also been spearheading Narayana Health's foray into providing its own health insurance, built to address many of the gaps I spoke about earlier.Our second guest is Shivaprasad Krishnan. Shivaprasad currently runs an investment banking firm, Kricon Capital, but was a part of the founding team at ICICI Lombard, one of India's first private health insurers. He also has over 3 decades of experience in finance and management.This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Sound engineering and mixing is by Rajiv C N.You can listen to full episodes either with a Premium subscription to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two Premium on Apple Podcasts.If you enjoyed listening to this episode of Two by Two or have some thoughts that you'd like to share with us you can always write to us twobytwo@the-ken.com. We'll be back next week with a new episode for you.

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Ola and Uber are in a “late stage duopoly”.After spending billions and billions of dollars, they have finally secured pole positions in ride sharing in India.Both of these companies together control 70% of the market and they have created network effects that make it much harder for anyone to enter and compete with them.However, this particular situation is facing some new challenges and just like how Uber and Ola conquered city after city using a disruptive model and technology, the same thing threatens to happen to them.Ola and Uber are facing structural disruptions from multiple fronts in India.And in today's episode hosts, Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar try to answer how the disruptors are getting disrupted by upstarts who are coming in with both business model innovation and newer fleets which offer a significantly better experience, which was the original promise of Ola and Uber as well.So what is the next stage of disruption in ride-hailing look like in India? Is it EV fleets? Is it democratized tech-enabler platforms like ONDC which enables platforms like Nammayatri? Are we looking at the return of local taxi operators? And most importantly, what should Ola and Uber do to defend their position as new incentive models are introduced for both drivers and passengers?Welcome to episode 14 of Two by Two.Joining the hosts for the discussion are Nilesh Sangoi, CIO of Fincare Small Finance Bank, previously CEO of Meru Cabs; Pradeep Puranam, Head of Revenue and Operations at Yulu, ex-Udaan and -Uber; and returning guest Professor Srinivasan R, who teaches Strategy at IIM Bangalore.Two by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday a short storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here.(Listen to the free highlights only episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts)Episodes referenced:Will Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe becomes Flipkart?Stories referenced:Rapido rips up the Uber-Ola playbook for cabsThis episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com, and tell us what you thought of the episode.

[This episode which we released on September 12 for Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken's app and on Apple Podcasts is now available to listen for free for a limited time. Stream the full episode on Spotify, Amazon Music , Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.]It seems like ‘invite only' is a rite of passage for Stripe. If Stripe entered India with an invite-only step, then it seems reasonable to assume that it's leaving India on the basis that it's doing invite-only again. Over seven years, Stripe, the world's mightiest fintech, currently valued at $70 billion (and at $95 billion at its peak), could not make a dent in India. It had a great product, a massive untapped opportunity in India, and didn't have much competition. And yet, it failed. Why? There's an internet quip that was quite popular until recently. The Amazon of China is Alibaba, the Uber of China is Didi, and the Google of China is Baidu, the Apple of China is Xiaomi. In India, the thinking was : Amazon of India is Amazon, the Uber of India is Uber, the Google of India is Google, and the Apple of India is Apple. In today's episode of  Two by Two, we discussed why Stripe couldn't become the Stripe of India.And to discuss this, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan Rohin Dharmakumar were joined by two guests.Arundhati Ramanathan, Deputy Editor at The Ken. Arundhati is India's preeminent Fintech reporter, and she's demonstrated it over a career of 8 years at The Ken.Our second guest is Vikram Bhat. Vikram is one of India's most accomplished Product leaders, he was in product leadership roles at Myntra, Abof, Ekstep Foundation, LendingKart, Capillary Technologies, Goodworker, and most recently CPO at Setu, which is a fintech company that enables API-based infrastructure for financial services.Welcome to episode nine of Two by Two, The Ken's weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!You can also sign up for the Two by Two newsletter for free. Each week you'll get to read a “storified” version of that week's episode.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.Write to us twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you think of the show.Please rate, share and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. It helps more like-minded people like you to find out by Two by Two.

If you are a Product Manager, especially in India, you're probably going through a crisis of faith and existence.As a career, Product Management in India has gone through multiple eras — in the early days, PMs struggled to explain to people what they actually did. Think about all the people you'd imagine who work at a software company. Marketing. Engineering. Sales. Analytics. Design.You can explain what they do to your grandmother. But the one exception to the rule is Product Management. It's the only function where the people who do it struggle to explain to their parents what they do.Then suddenly there was a gold rush when everyone wanted to become a Product Manager. And now, there's an existential crisis — partly driven by the reduced funding and attrition, the rise of AI, and the changing nature of products themselves, more and more leaders are asking the question : Do we even need Product Managers?In today's episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan interview two accomplished product leaders in India. First, there's Chandrashekhar Vattikuti (CPO and SVP at InMobi, ex-Yahoo, Microsoft) and Shreyas Srinivasan, Chief Product Officer at Paytm*, and also founder of Paytm Insider. During the discussion, they trace the origin, the evolution and the crisis that Product Management as a career faces in India. They try to figure out why and how Product Management became a science and stopped being an art.And they try to answer what makes for a great Product Manager, and how to find them.And they also ask the question that CEOs and Founders are asking themselves — do we even need Product Managers at all?Welcome to Episode 13 of Two by Two.Two by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday short storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here.(Listen to the free highlights only episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts)Further reading:Product Managers used to be creators. Now they are mostly bureaucratsWho killed the art of Product Management in India?Who made the Frauduct Manager?Episode referenced:Google Pay: Big. Successful. VulnerableThis episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode. This is a shorter version which contains some of the most interesting part of the close to 90 minute full episode available only to the Premium subscribers of The Ken and on Apple podcasts with a separate monthly subscription.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.

We have unlocked the full and unedited subscriber version of episode eight which we released on September 05 for Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken's app and on Apple Podcasts.School education is a fundamental right in India. An average Indian child spends 10-12 years in schools. And for most parents and families, the money they spend on educating their child is one of the largest over time.And yet, school education is slowly becoming (or perhaps being made) irrelevant in the next step that comes after that: college.The schools-exams-college “chain” is broken. Perhaps because it is now the schools-private-coaching-exams-college chain. And your school education is not going to cut it for you to make the cutoff as millions line up to clear the exam every year.Private coaching is how you manage to get into the school and your actual schooling is just a condition you have to fulfil to sit in for the exam. It plays no part in preparing you for the entrance exam.Private coaching, estimated to be a $25 billion industry by 2025, is becoming the determinant of a good quality education. Not schooling. Thus, as entrance exams get centralized, and private coaching becomes the most reliable way to clear them, the results are only accentuating numerous privileges and biases, including central boards like ICSE/CBSE, bigger cities, boys, and families with higher incomes.12 years of schooling – one of the biggest spends for families – is becoming disconnected from college education and jobs.And to discuss this, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan were joined by three guests.Maheshwer Peri, the founder and CEO of Careers 360, a company that helps hundreds of millions of students each explore career plans. Mahesh has been an investment banker with SBI Capital Markets, then was with the Outlook group for 17 years, including heading it for more than 10 years.Sumeet Mehta, Co-founder and CEO, LEAD Group. LEAD Group offers school edtech solutions across 8000 schools in India, which in turn touch 3.5 million+ students.Nitin Pai, our third guest and the co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution,  an independent think tank and school of public policy based in Bengaluru.Additional references:How fair are entrance exams?Welcome to episode eight of Two by Two, The Ken's weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.You can also sign up for the Two by Two newsletter for free. Each week you'll get to read a “storified” version of that week's episode.Write to us twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you think of the show.

Ather Energy is the third largest seller of electric two-wheelers in India. Founded in 2013, Ather Energy is known to have kicked off the electric two-wheeler wave in India. They came in with a great product which offered the best of software and hardware on a two-wheeler. And over a decade of its existence Ather has delivered on its promise of a great product which will create a “magical experience” for its customers.Ather spent years building their own electric two-wheelers from the ground up. They built their own batteries, their own chassis, their own electronics and powertrain, and even their own software. But in the process, they lost the opportunity to become the  market leader, a spot that was filled by Ola Electric, a much later entrant.On September 9th this year Ather filed its draft red herring prospectus as it plans to go ahead and list on the Indian bourses. And as hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sat down to discuss and understand what the market looks like for electric two-wheelers and how Ather will fare in a market it kickstarted and popularized. They also got two great guests to discuss this.First is the co-founder and CEO of IPO-bound Ather Energy Tarun Mehta himself and the second guest we had was Professor Rishikesha Krishnan, Director of IIM Bangalore, and a professor of Strategy.It's not often that we have the co-founder and CEO of a company heading for its IPO discussing its strategy with the director of one of India's most prestigious management institutes who both studies and teaches strategy.And over the course of 90 minutes, they discussed the strategy and vision Ather Energy is going ahead with into the future and how they intend to keep innovating on their product leadership while also stepping up and getting on the front foot to improve their market leadership.Welcome to Episode 12 of Two by Two.This is shorter version of the episode which highlights some of the most interesting parts of the discussion. The full episodes are available to Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken app and Apple Podcasts.Two by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday short storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here.This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com and let us know what you thought of the episode.

We have unlocked the full and unedited subscriber version of episode six which we released on August 29 for Premium subscribers of The Ken on The Ken's app and on Apple Podcasts. Now you can stream the full episode on Spotify, Amazon Music , Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for free for a few weeks.Google Pay is India's second largest UPI app with a market share of 38%, with 500+ crore transactions a month. It's one of the world's mightiest companies, and yet, we argue that it's possibly in a vulnerable, strange position. By this, we don't mean that it will disappear overnight, but that all kinds of competitors are coming for it. Already it's market share has declined from 44% to 37%. It's an outpost of an empire that's fighting a global war. And most importantly, the first wave of UPI is over, and the second phase is starting. UPI itself is changing and going through some transitions, and there are questions on whether signs that Google Pay won't be able to keep up.Joining hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar in the discussion were two guests with incredible experience in the area of UPI and payments – Abhishek Madan, Vice President of Product at Paytm and Vasisht S Ravichandran, COO at Pop, a new UPI app which is inverting the way we're looking at UPI and commerce. Vasisht previously also had a stint at Flipkart where he was Senior Director of Customer Loyalty and Retention before leaving Flipkart to start to Pop.And while the conversation was centered around Google Pay, the discussion also went in the direction of understanding the infrastructure on top of which most of India's most valuable fintechs are built upon – UPI.Two by Two is also a newsletter. You can read the edition of for this episode here by signing up for the Two by Two newsletter, it's free.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for the episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.

Netflix is trying hard to crack the Indian market. Ever since the US streaming giant entered the country it has been hard at work to make an impact. And over the years they've learnt a thing or two about how the Indian streaming space functions.Netflix is also not shy about expressing how it sees India as its last growth market. Most of the other geographies it has saturated its reach to a large extent, but India has always been a pain point for it to get a leg up on. So much so, that the then CEO, Reed Hastings expressed his frustration about why they weren't able to crack India during an earnings call in 2022.But from then to now, Netflix has managed an interesting turnaround by climbing down the pricing ladder on its subscriptions in India, even as it raises its prices in North America, and throwing in a somewhat limited regional and diversified slate of shows into the mix.But Netflix is clear on one thing, it sees India as its last growth market and expects to add 100 million paying subscribers in the country. But for that to happen it has to put in a lot more work and now it faces the added pressure of competing with the merged entity of Jio Cinema and Disney+ Hotstar which would create a mammoth of a content library stacked with regional content, endless range of movies and prestige television,  and the massive distributional heft Jio brings to the table.All of this begs the question, given the situation, how seriously is Netflix looking at India as its last growth market?To discuss this, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Kunj Sanghvi who is the Content and Creative Head at Kuku FM, and Nishad Kenkre, who presently is an Operating Partner at Verlinvest. Nishad has previously worked at Swiggy and was also Director and Head of Strategy at Disney.Welcome to episode 11 of Two by Two.Two by Two is also a newsletter, where every Friday a short storified version of the latest episode is sent out to subscribers for free. You can sign up for the Two by Two Newsletter here.(Listen to the free highlights only episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts)Further reading:>Netflix house will let you experience your favorite shows, movies in real life>Netflix climbs down India's ladderFurther listening:Why couldn't Stripe become the Stripe of India?This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode. This is a shorter version which highlights major some of the most interesting part of the close to 90 minute full episode available only to the Premium subscribers of The Ken and on Apple podcasts with a separate monthly subscription.New episodes are released every Thursday. So follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and tell us what you think of the show.

We have unlocked the full and unedited subscriber version of episode four which we released on August 22 for Premium subscribers of The Ken and on Apple Podcasts. Now you can stream it wherever you listen to your podcasts for free for a few weeks.Software engineering careers used to be a ladder. You studied for 4 years, got a job as a fresher, and could virtually take for granted a steady career filled with learning opportunities, salary hikes, and role promotions.In fact being an engineer was so cool that we mocked MBAs and MBA-types – “suits” – for their desperation to find that elusive technical co-founder. The one who would translate an idea (common) into code and products.Except, that's increasingly not true.An NYT story published earlier this week put it best.“I have a pretty good sense how fast the progress that students should make in a semester should be,” he said. “In 14 years, I've never seen students make the kind of progress that they made this year.”And he knew exactly why that was the case. For the first time, Mr. Ammirati had encouraged his students to use generative artificial intelligence as part of their process — “think of generative A.I as your co-founder,” he recalled telling them.Many AI chatbots are fully capable of writing code now. So your technical co-founder could be an AI?Where does that leave engineers? Are we staring at the end of the golden era for engineers?Welcome to episode six of Two by Two, The Ken's weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!Earlier this week, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, my co-host, and I met with Amod Malviya, co-founder of Udaan and the former CTO at Flipkart, and Kailash Nadh, CTO at Zerodha*.Both Amod and Kailash have been programmers and engineers for over two decades now. They are also both deeply in love with their craft. Naturally, they are passionate about engineering and have strong views on its future.Additional Reading:Computational Thinking by Jeannette M. WingThe Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard HammingThis episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.Please rate, share and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. It helps more like-minded people like you to find out by Two by Two.*Zerodha's perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken.

The fastest growing segment of insurance in India is individual health insurance. It's growing steadily at a, well, healthy pace of 20% annually. But scratch just a little beneath the surface and things don't appear so rosy. Of the 20% annual growth in revenue, nearly 15% comes from medical inflation. Meaning, existing customers paying higher premiums each year because the costs of treatments are going up.The growth in the number of customers each year is just around 5-6%. Health insurance in India is broken from top to bottom. 70-75% of Indians have no health insurance. Of those who do, the largest chunk have free or low cost insurance provided by the government, followed by usually employer provided group insurance. Less than 10% Indians have their own health insurance. Scratch that. It's more accurate to call it hospitalization insurance, not health insurance. Because the industry has developed in a way that incentivizes catastrophic illnesses and hospitalization and treatment, not health. Why, you wonder? Because much of the industry wrongly incentivizes, for legacy reasons, all the wrong things. Like, large groups that make lots of claims. High commissions to distributors. Expensive procedures. Expensive premiums. Instead of incentivising the right things. Like, getting the young and healthy covered early on. Insuring blue collar workers. Building products customers actually want. And most importantly, staying healthy.So when hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar sat down to discuss this complex topic, they decided to invite two guests who had the experience and candour to tell them what needs to change. Our first guest is Viren Shetty, the Executive Vice Chairman of one of India's largest hospital groups, the listed Narayana Health. was our first guest. Viren has also been spearheading Narayana Health's foray into providing its own health insurance, built to address many of the gaps I spoke about earlier.Our second guest is Shivaprasad Krishnan. Shivaprasad currently runs an investment banking firm, Kricon Capital, but was a part of the founding team at ICICI Lombard, one of India's first private health insurers. He also has over 3 decades of experience in finance and management. This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Sound engineering and mixing is by Rajiv C N.What you just listened to were just some of the highlights from an almost 90 minute discussion that Praveen and Rohin had with Viren and Shivaprasad. You can listen to full episodes either with a Premium subscription to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two Premium on Apple Podcasts.Of course, you could also wait 4 weeks, because we do make full episodes available for a while after that.[This is a highlights episode which you listen for free on Spotify, Amazon Music or YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts if you're not a paid subscriber yet]If you enjoyed listening to this episode of Two by Two or have some thoughts that you'd like to share with us you can always write to us twobytwo@the-ken.com. We'll be back next week with a new episode for you.

Meet Shaik Salauddin, a 38-year-old cab driver from Hyderabad, who is fighting for the rights of eight million gig workers from across the country. While India's gig economy is burgeoning, the workers on whose backs it is built barely enjoy any rights or legal protections. Salauddin realised this early on and in 2019, after five years of relentless pursuit, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) was born. With over 25,000 members working for aggregators like Uber, Amazon, and Zomato, through IFAT, Salauddin is redefining the way we look at trade unions. To begin with, the union has no political affiliations. Instead, Salauddin encourages all of its members to understand power structures and approach the right people to drive change.Thanks to his efforts, two states, Karnataka and Rajasthan, have introduced legislations to protect the rights of gig workers. Others like Kerala are working on their own.In this episode, hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to Salauddin himself and to Prof. Vinoj Abraham from Labour Economics at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram to understand the significance of Salauddin's work and why it is important to protect gig workers.  Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.A special shout out to Hari Krishna, from the Two by Two team, who kindly agreed to dub parts of this episode. Thank you, Hari!Fill in Akshaya's Happiness Survey here

We have unlocked the full and unedited subscriber version of episode four which we released on August 15 for Premium subscribers of The Ken and on Apple Podcasts. Now you can stream it wherever you listen to your podcasts for free for a few weeks.The Swiggy of 2024 is a shadow of its former self. Boxed in by younger, nimbler and hungrier competitors from all sides, it has been defending itself for so long that it seems to have forgotten how to play offense. It wasn't always like this. Swiggy used to define innovation, product chops and “Bengaluru cool”. In many ways it pioneered food delivery in 2014 after pivoting from a courier service.Zomato, originally a restaurant discovery company, got into food delivery a year after Swiggy. It may have started as a late follower, but today Zomato's market share in the food delivery space is estimated at 56-57% by Goldman Sachs, with Swiggy in second place.Then there's quick commerce. In 2020 Swiggy was the first to launch a quick commerce grocery business, which we now know as Instamart. Zomato meanwhile bought Blinkit and rapidly integrated and scaled it across India. Once again, it would go on to beat Swiggy in market share. Blinkit is estimated to have a 46% market share, followed by Swiggy at number 2. Underpinning all of Swiggy's business were its apps and products, long considered the gold standard of user experience and design. They were slick, intuitive, fast, and fun.But Swiggy's apps today are a haphazard and constantly changing collection of sub-products, menu items, offers and distinct sections.How did it come to this?This week on Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss Swiggy with Arnav Gupta, the Director of Engineering at Jio Cinema, and Deepak Shenoy – the co-founder and CEO of Capitalmind*.Arnav, who used to lead product and engineering for Zomato's consumer apps, explains how product and teams work within a food delivery company. Deepak runs a company handling 2000 crores worth of investments and is a great expert on how the public markets work. He breaks down exactly what the market wants and needs from Swiggy, and what it needs to do to succeed once it goes public.Additional Reading:Swiggy is at the mercy of Zomato for its IPOSwiggy and Timidity 1,500 stories about India's complex relationships with Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, Zepto, and Bigbasket*Both Rohin and Praveen are investors with Capitalmind.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is our lead writer and researcher and our resident sound engineer Rajiv C N is our audio producer.What did you think of the episode? Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your opinions and suggestions.

It seems like ‘invite only' is a rite of passage for Stripe. If Stripe entered India with an invite-only step, then it seems reasonable to assume that it's leaving India on the basis that it's doing invite-only again. Over seven years, Stripe, the world's mightiest fintech, currently valued at $70 billion (and at $95 billion at its peak), could not make a dent in India. It had a great product, a massive untapped opportunity in India, and didn't have much competition. And yet, it failed. Why? There's an internet quip that was quite popular until recently. The Amazon of China is Alibaba, the Uber of China is Didi, and the Google of China is Baidu, the Apple of China is Xiaomi. In India, the thinking was : Amazon of India is Amazon, the Uber of India is Uber, the Google of India is Google, and the Apple of India is Apple. In today's episode of Two by Two, we discussed why Stripe couldn't become the Stripe of India.And to discuss this, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan were joined by two guests.Arundhati Ramanathan, Deputy Editor at The Ken. Arundhati is India's preeminent Fintech reporter, and she's demonstrated it over a career of 8 years at The Ken.Our second guest is Vikram Bhat. Vikram is one of India's most accomplished Product leaders, he was in product leadership roles at Myntra, Abof, Ekstep Foundation, LendingKart, Capillary Technologies, Goodworker, and most recently CPO at Setu, which is a fintech company that enables API-based infrastructure for financial services.Welcome to episode nine of Two by Two, The Ken's weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!You can listen to the full conversation on The Ken App or Apple PodcastsThis episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.Please rate, share and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. It helps more like-minded people like you to find out by Two by Two.

12 years of schooling is losing out to private coaching as entry into India's colleges gets increasingly centralized via entrance exams.  School education is a fundamental right in India. An average Indian child spends 10-12 years in schools. And for most parents and families, the money they spend on educating their child is one of the largest over time.And yet, school education is slowly becoming (or perhaps being made) irrelevant in the next step that comes after that: college.The schools-exams-college “chain” is broken. Perhaps because it is now the schools-private-coaching-exams-college chain. And your school education is not going to cut it for you to make the cutoff as millions line up to clear the exam every year.Private coaching is how you manage to get into the school and your actual schooling is just a condition you have to fulfil to sit in for the exam. It plays no part in preparing you for the entrance exam.Private coaching, estimated to be a $25 billion industry by 2025, is becoming the determinant of a good quality education. Not schooling. Thus, as entrance exams get centralized, and private coaching becomes the most reliable way to clear them, the results are only accentuating numerous privileges and biases, including central boards like ICSE/CBSE, bigger cities, boys, and families with higher incomes.12 years of schooling – one of the biggest spends for families – is becoming disconnected from college education and jobs.And to discuss this, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan were joined by three guests.Maheshwer Peri, the founder and CEO of Careers 360, a company that helps hundreds of millions of students each explore career plans. Mahesh has been an investment banker with SBI Capital Markets, then was with the Outlook group for 17 years, including heading it for more than 10 years.Sumeet Mehta, Co-founder and CEO, LEAD School. LEAD School offers school edtech solutions across 8000 schools in India, which in turn touch 3.5 million+ students.Nitin Pai, our third guest and the co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution,  an independent think tank and school of public policy based in Bengaluru.Additional references:How fair are entrance exams?Welcome to episode six of Two by Two, The Ken's weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!You can listen to the full conversation on The Ken App or Apple Podcasts.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.You can also sign up for the Two by Two newsletter for free. Each week you'll get to read a “storified” version of that week's episode.Write to us twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you think of the show.Please rate, share and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. It helps more like-minded people like you to find out by Two by Two.

Google Pay is India's second largest UPI app with a market share of 38%, with 500+ crore transactions a month. It's one of the world's mightiest companies, and yet, we argue that it's possibly in a vulnerable, strange position. By this, we don't mean that it will disappear overnight, but that all kinds of competitors are coming for it. Already it's market share has declined from 44% to 37%. It's an outpost of an empire that's fighting a global war. And most importantly, the first wave of UPI is over, and the second phase is starting. UPI itself is changing and going through some transitions, and there are questions on whether signs that Google Pay won't be able to keep up.Joining hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar in the discussion were two guests with incredible experience in the area of UPI and payments – Abhishek Madan, Vice President of Product at Paytm and Vasisht S Ravichandran, COO at Pop, a new UPI app which is inverting the way we're looking at UPI and commerce. Vasisht previously also had a stint at Flipkart where he was Senior Director of Customer Loyalty and Retention before leaving Flipkart to start Pop.And while the conversation was centered around Google Pay, the discussion also went in the direction of understanding the infrastructure on top of which most of India's most valuable fintechs are built upon – UPI.This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for the episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.P.S. The Ken podcast team is looking for a talented podcast producer and an audio journalist. If you fit the bill or know someone who does, you can apply here.[You can listen to the full episode on The Ken's app or on Apple Podcasts, with a paid subscription! You can, of course, still listen to a 30-minute free version of this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts]We're a new podcast so help spread the word about Two by Two by taking a few moments to leave a review and sharing this episode with your friends. Also, follow the show to keep up with the latest episodes. We release new episodes every Thursday.Subscribe to the Two by Two newsletter for free here. You'll get a storified version of each week's episode and get to participate in The Ken's subscribe-driven initiatives.You can also reach out to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Software engineering careers used to be a ladder. You studied for 4 years, got a job as a fresher, and could virtually take for granted a steady career filled with learning opportunities, salary hikes, and role promotions.  In fact being an engineer was so cool that we mocked MBAs and MBA-types – “suits” – for their desperation to find that elusive technical co-founder. The one who would translate an idea (common) into code and products.Except, that's increasingly not true.An NYT story published earlier this week put it best.“I have a pretty good sense how fast the progress that students should make in a semester should be,” he said. “In 14 years, I've never seen students make the kind of progress that they made this year.”And he knew exactly why that was the case. For the first time, Mr. Ammirati had encouraged his students to use generative artificial intelligence as part of their process — “think of generative A.I as your co-founder,” he recalled telling them.Many AI chatbots are fully capable of writing code now. So your technical co-founder could be an AI?Where does that leave engineers? Are we staring at the end of the golden era for engineers?Welcome to episode six of Two by Two, The Ken's weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!Earlier this week, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, my co-host, and I met with Amod Malviya, co-founder of Udaan and the former CTO at Flipkart, and Kailash Nadh, CTO at Zerodha*.Both Amod and Kailash have been programmers and engineers for over two decades now. They are also both deeply in love with their craft. Naturally, they are passionate about engineering and have strong views on its future.[You can listen to the full episode on The Ken's app or on Apple Podcasts, with a paid subscription]Additional Reading:Computational Thinking by Jeannette M. WingThe Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard HammingThis episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.Please rate, share and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. It helps more like-minded people like you to find out by Two by Two.*Zerodha's perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken.

(You're listening to the 30-min version of Episode 5, Two by Two. Our full conversation can be accessed by premium subscribers on The Ken's iOS and android app. But if you're not a subscriber, you can now listen to our full episode, 30 days before anyone else, on Apple Podcasts with a monthly subscription!)The Swiggy of 2024 is a shadow of its former self. Boxed in by younger, nimbler and hungrier competitors from all sides, it has been defending itself for so long that it seems to have forgotten how to play offense. It wasn't always like this. Swiggy used to define innovation, product chops and “Bengaluru cool”. In many ways it pioneered food delivery in 2014 after pivoting from a courier service. Zomato, originally a restaurant discovery company, got into food delivery a year after Swiggy. It may have started as a late follower, but today Zomato's market share in the food delivery space is estimated at 56-57% by Goldman Sachs, with Swiggy in second place. Then there's quick commerce. In 2020 Swiggy was the first to launch a quick commerce grocery business, which we now know as Instamart. Zomato meanwhile bought Blinkit and rapidly integrated and scaled it across India. Once again, it would go on to beat Swiggy in market share. Blinkit is estimated to have a 46% market share, followed by Swiggy at number 2. Underpinning all of Swiggy's business were its apps and products, long considered the gold standard of user experience and design. They were slick, intuitive, fast, and fun. But Swiggy's apps today are a haphazard and constantly changing collection of sub-products, menu items, offers and distinct sections. How did it come to this?This week on Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss Swiggy with Arnav Gupta, the Director of Engineering at Jio Cinema, and Deepak Shenoy – the co-founder and CEO of Capitalmind*. Arnav, who used to lead product and engineering for Zomato's consumer apps, explains how product and teams work within a food delivery company. Deepak runs a company handling 2000 crores worth of investments and is a great expert on how the public markets work. He breaks down exactly what the market wants and needs from Swiggy, and what it needs to do to succeed once it goes public.Additional Reading:Swiggy is at the mercy of Zomato for its IPOSwiggy and Timidity 1,500 stories about India's complex relationships with Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, Zepto, and Bigbasket* Both Rohin and Praveen are minor investors with Capitalmind.---P.S. We're hiring! Our podcast team is looking for an audio journalist and a podcast producer. Apply here.---This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is our lead writer and researcher and our resident sound engineer Rajiv C N is our audio producer.What did you think of the episode? Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com with your opinions and suggestions.

Mary Jane and Mike drool over cheesy polenta steak bowls and get into decriminalized drugs in Portugal, restaurant leftover policies, Mike's perfect blood, Hari Krishna recipes, Ketamine breathwork, what MJ leaves at her crush's house, homemade dog food, and why Ziggy is a Proud Boy, all while puffing on a glass blunt. FOLLOW US! / LEAVE A ⭐️ REVIEW! / DON'T HOLD BOLOGNESE OVER MIKE'S HEAD Music by Jesse Case Follow Weed + Grub IG Watch Weed + Grub YT Mike's Tour Dates MJ's Make Me a Sandwich series Fruit & Flower newsletter BOTW: @mycopreneurpodcast & @rickonia 

On today's show, we explore the spiritual connections in Goose music, lyrics, and fans. We touch on Rick's experiences with Hari Krishna and the healing power of music and are joined by Nikki Jones, who is researching the “Yoga of Goose”. We also tell the story behind the writing of Time To Flee, spotlight the Voice is Power Podcast, and show some love to Tonya Williamson owner of Wester Sun Tie Dye. Links: WSF Announces 914 Cares for The Cap Campaign - https://goosecommunity.com/the-gaggle/announcements/wsf-makes-public-debut-closes-out-nye-campaign-and-expresses-gratitude-copy Conscious Together - https://www.conscioustogether.net/ Voice is Power by Tyrik Pierre - https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mCFYiv9MYcPLWMBYEVbig  Western Sun Tie Dye by Tonya Williamson Website: www.Westernsuntiedye.com  Instagram: @westernsuntiedye Nikki Jones Website: wellcoachnikki.com Instagram @wellcoachnikki Rick Interview on Goose Community: https://goosecommunity.com/the-gaggle/announcements/chatting-with-rick-about-life-the-universe-and-everything Red Bird El Goose Times Article: https://www.elgoosetimes.com/the-voice-beneath-the-quill-in-depth-song-analysis/the-voice-beneath-the-quill-red-bird Time To Flee: Has been played 95 times by Goose: https://goosetheband.bandcamp.com/track/time-to-flee Time To Flee Lyrics: https://www.goosetheband.com/time-to-flee-lyrics Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

EPISODE IN BRIEF Fresh from the UpCoach Two Day Mastermind event on the Gold Coast, Nick and Chris talk more about the Giver's Gain principle. Giving first and giving something of value – without expectation of return – is a powerful business tool. If you replace expectation with appreciation, all parts of your life will change. Nick calls them `Connection Credits'… and this episode is all about building value through relationships and generosity. There's a lot to take-away from today's Coaching Conversation so let's get into it…. Time Code/Show Notes   0.26  Intro: Business coach expert Nick Psaila and Chris Herbert break down the elements behind the Giver's Gain ethos. 1.33  The principle of Giver's Gain is to give something without the expectation that you shall receive something in return. Ivan Misner speaks of the profound advantages of Giver's Gain with referrals – sooner or later it will come back to you. The concept was later formalised in the book The Psychology of Influence. Nick shares insight on the Hari Krishna. 5.30  How can you invite this principle into your business… it's the idea of the `free sample' or complimentary consult. 7.30  Remember, the principle of the Giver's Gain is that the ‘bonus' you give does not have to be a physical product. It can be as simple as advice. It must, however, represent value. 8.30  Free information is a great example of Giver's Gain in business. Your advice can be via EDM, audio, in the form of a face-to-face consultation that costs nothing. But it must be meaningful. 9.15  Nick talks about business ‘karma'. A big part of the equation is the more you help others, the more you help yourself. 10.50  Tony Robbin's `appreciation over expectation' is a great mantra to follow. 11.30  Cultures that give to each other without expectation, thrive. 13.00  Be generous with your expertise or product. To give without receiving. See how that feels. But then you must eventually have the courage to ask for the sale/signature. 80 percent `give' and 20 percent `ask' is a fair structure. The principle is not to feel used but to be the first to ‘give'. 18.50  Give with genuine intent even though you may find some people are sceptical. Like attracts like – you'll attract those people who genuinely like to give as well. 20.20  The Giver's Gain principle cuts through to feelings of gratitude instead of the simple act of survival/putting out fires. It presents happiness as an option. It brings meaning outside of money-making. 22.36  If you'd like to know how a business coach can help you integrate the Giver's Gain principle into your business, ask@upcoach.com.au for more information on today's podcast. EPISODE SUMMARY        Giving without the intention of receiving anything in return is an age old principle that is simply good business. Showing you care can mean you receive more in ‘karma'. But ensure the care or advice is valuable. When you run with the Giver's Gain principle you subscribe to the notion of appreciate over expectation. If you make a difference to someone's life, you will be `their top-of-mind person'.  This is not about feeling used, it's about building a relationship where you give first.  Reciprocal energy exchange is important. So keep giving and the rewards will eventually be yours.

George Prout joins the show to discuss an array of topics related to lab-grown diamonds. George is the President of the Independent Division of Craft Diamonds, the lab-grown diamond entity within Hari Krishna, which is a De Beers Sightholder and one of the largest diamond mid-stream companies in the world. The conversation begins with George telling the story of how he was inadvertently introduced to the jewelry business while having lunch with his father, a renowned surgeon and professor in Boston. George then describes Hari Krishna's state-of-the-art campus in Surat (India) and explains how much of the business is now dedicated to lab-diamonds. Next, the two discuss the current penetration of lab-grown diamond jewelry in the U.S. market and how declining lab-diamond prices are impacting the industry. Next, the two speculate on what a “mature” lab-grown diamond market could look like. Finally, Paul asks George what his strategy would be if he was theoretically asked to market and distribute natural diamonds in this environment.   Hosted by: Paul Zimnisky Guest: George Prout Guest plug: www.craftdiamonds.co More information on PZDA's State of the Diamond Market report: www.paulzimnisky.com/products   Show contact: paul@paulzimnisky.com or visit www.paulzimnisky.com.   Please note that the contents of this podcast includes anecdotes, observations and opinions. The information should not be considered investment or financial advice. Consult your investment professional before making any investment decisions. Please read full disclosure at: www.paulzimnisky.com.

Welcome to Episode #44 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! This week, I welcome Gergentia Shoombe onto the show. She is a yoga teacher from Namibia. She teaches power yoga, yin yoga, and yoga alignment at the Virgin Active Windhoek clubs and at the Yoga Shala. She has been teaching yoga full time since 2016. After a serious car crash, and doctors saying she'll never walk again, Gergentia beat the odds through yoga and eastern healing techniques like Qi Gong and Reiki. My conversation with Gergentia Shoombe, a yoga teacher from Namibia, was so astounding as we took a deep look at the power of the body and spirit to heal. I hope that this conversation gave you a glimpse into how everything can come together even as it falls apart. If you're looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about inner strength and the strength community gives you, then this is the conversation for you. What to expect in the Yoga In Namibia episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast After a serious car crash, Gergentia knew she needed healing, and she found meditation. She couldn't sit, stand, or walk— but she found peace in meditation as she was on her journey of healing. In the beginning, yoga was simply meditation for her, before she even learned asanas. In all actuality, she didn't think her body could do asanas, as after the car crash, her doctors thought she would never walk again. She had never even tried asanas before her car crash, and it wasn't until after she had done some healing therapy work with Qi-Gong and Reiki. In Swaziland, a monk introduced Gergentia to bhakti yoga and Maha-matra chanting which led her to change her whole life and led her to study holistic healing therapy. She applied to do a yoga teacher training with a the Africa Yoga Project. For the skimmers - What's in the yoga in Namibia episode? Being desperate for healing after a serious car crash Learned meditation from a monk in Swaziland Stayed in the Hari Krishna temple for 2 years while she was studying holistic healing Wanted to run away from yoga asanas Everything comes together even as it falls apart Yoga is life itself, it's coming together The power of seeing yourself clearer Connect with Gergentia Shoombe https://www.instagram.com/Holisticyogini/ https://www.instagram.com/oshanayogaproject/ https://www.facebook.com/gshoombe https://www.facebook.com/oshanayogaclub Want more? Head on over to my website https://wildyogatribe.com/thepodcast/ Questions? Comments? Let's get social! https://www.instagram.com/wildyogatribe/ https://www.facebook.com/wildyogatribe https://twitter.com/wildyogatribe Everything you need is just one click away! Check out all the resources here: https://linktr.ee/wildyogatribe --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wildyogatribe/message

Before we start, feel free to support the podcast if you've been listening for a while by signing up for my Patreon for $1 and I will love you forever. Baby Gopal was fronted by Australian-born singer/guitarist Sri Kesava the band fused Hari Krishna dogma laced lyrics with a meld of hardcore and pop-punk to astonishing results. The music is endlessly catchy and Sri‘s beautiful voice will keep you captivated like a siren from wire to wire. This amazing album was sadly overlooked in 1996 because of another similar “girl power” band that was already ripping up the charts. You might have heard of them, No Doubt anyone? They later signed to Tommy Boy in 1998 before breaking up shortly thereafter. Shot out to Casey Iodine for the intro I got Alex on the Skype and this is what we chat about: Playing in Kingpin Playing in Shelter How he got involved in Baby Gopal How was it seen that Shelter made money off the band What happened with him and Shri How he got into recording bands Out of Band Experience Stickers in Boston American Nightmare Why they had to change their name Touring with them in 2022 And a ton more If you want to record your band in all-analog studio in Medford, MA then check out Alex's studio Mystic Valley Studio. Check out my new book The Couples' Checklist for my webcomic dailyBred. It's a great gift for Valentine's Day. I also have an Instagram for it. If you market aggressively on Instagram Stories and want custom stickers then go here to get custom stickers or just email mike@drive80.com and I can send you samples. These are great for B2C companies and Realtors. Feel free to support the podcast for as little as $1 a month through Patreon Or go to thiswasthescene.com to possibly buy some merch.

Lyrics:Krishna Shri Hari KrishnaGovinda Gopala Krishna KrishnaKrishna Shri Hari KrishnaNanda Mukunda Govinda Navanita Chora GopalaGovinda Gopala Gokula Nandana GopalaKrishna Shri Hari Krishna Meaning:Chant the various names of the Lord - Krishna, Hari, Govinda, Gopala, Mukunda, of the son of Nanda, the One who steals butter, and Sai Krishna.

On this week's 51%, we speak with Sangeetha Kowsik, a Hindu Chaplain at New York University, as part of our series speaking with women religious leaders and scholars. Kowsik discusses the multitude of ways Hinduism is practiced, her love of pujas, and her thoughts on how the religion is depicted in popular culture. Guest: Sangeetha Kowsik, Hindu Chaplain at New York University 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's hosted by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is "Lolita" by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Follow Along You're listening to 51%, a WAMC production dedicated to women's issues and experiences. Thanks for joining us, I'm Jesse King. This week, to kick off your new year, we're continuing our series speaking with women religious leaders and scholars, to celebrate the different ways that we worship. Our guest today is Sangeetha Kowsik, a Hindu Chaplain and founder of the Hindu Center at New York University. Kowsik has a lot of loves: she's an artist and fashion designer by profession, a scholar of Arabic calligraphy, an activist, and even a trained dancer. But she says her faith plays a role in every aspect of her life — and it has for as long as she can remember. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Kowsik says her father helped start three Hindu temples across the U.S., including her childhood temple in Livermore, California. Tell me about growing up by the temple. What was it that you connected with in Hinduism? Unfortunately in the West, there's a negative connotation, that they call our deities “idols,” and that Hindus are idol worshipers – which is not correct. The correct term for the statues, the deities that you see inside the temple, is “murti,” which is a symbolic representation of the divine. So these murtis stayed at my house and our puja room – a puja room is a special room, or a corner, or a cupboard, or anything in your house that you dedicate just for worship. We have an extra bedroom downstairs, so that's our puja room. So before the temple was consecrated, the deities stayed in our home. And for me, as a child – I'm a very small child here, [about] 4-years-old – these deities, I thought they were my friends. Just like I would play with my Barbie dolls and my stuffed toys, I would feed them, I would play with them. I gave them tea, played tea party with them. I loved them, and especially Durga. Hinduism is the only religion in the world that sees the divine as not just an almighty father, but almighty mother. So this murti, Durga, stayed in our puja room, and I thought she was my friend. I thought she was my bestie. I loved her so much. So when the deities – I think I was four – when the deities got moved, the temple was consecrated, I remember throwing a huge temper tantrum. Because you took my friends away. You took my dolls away, basically, right? But as I got older, I realized how much they mean to me, and how much Hinduism means to me. I'll give you an overview. So, India is the birthplace of Hinduism – South Asia, basically this giant landmass. So what is now India: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Iran, Nepal, Afghanistan. They were all one giant landmass before partition and lines occurred. So Hinduism has no historical founder, like the three Abrahamic religions. Islam, Christianity and Judaism all come from the prophet Abraham, peace be upon him. [But] we don't have that. Hindus don't have that. What I thought was so cool, is that you can see the divine in so many different ways. It's not some scary being in the sky, with a huge beard, telling you like, “This is wrong. That is wrong.” It could be the soft, sweet, beautiful deity like Ganesha – the elephant I'm wearing, it's written in Arabic here, right? So Ganesha, he's so sweet and gorgeous that you just want to pick him up and play with him, like a child. Or you see Lord Shiva, almighty Shiva, who is the mighty father. So whenever you have an issue or problem, you can call to Lord Shiva – like your dad, “Go kick his ass,” you know what I mean? It's like, “That dude is rude. Go kick his ass.” You can pray to Lord Shiva. You can see beautiful Mahalakshmi dressed in her gorgeous robe… And the fact that the songs that my mom taught me, the meaning behind them, is so beautiful – it's a very personalized relationship with God. That's why I love Hinduism so much. It's very personal, like you can feel it. You can feel him / her/ it, I don't know all these pronouns, [but] we believe in all the pronouns. So it's like all of them in your heart, and Hinduism doesn't state that something is wrong. It gives LGBTQI rights. It gives women's rights. It gives rights to all creation, because everything in this world is created by the mighty divine. Like paper, pens are all of the goddess Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and learning. So we don't step on any paper or step on paint brushes or musical instruments with our feet – feet are nasty and gross, you walk outside with it – I always thought that was so cool, and wonderful, that we respect everything. Everything is divine. When you say namaskar or namaste to somebody, it literally means, “I bow to the divine in you.” The fact that you can see multiple ways of the divine is something that always appealed to me. Like whatever you're feeling inside, there's space for you. There's room at the table for you. There's room for you in the temple. Kowsik says the Shiva-Vishnu Temple in Livermore showcases that inclusivity with a range of languages and priests, as well as a combination of North and South Indian architecture. When Kowsik moved to New York City, she found herself attending and volunteering at another temple her father had a history in: The Hindu Temple Society of North America in Flushing, Queens. Kowsik says her work with youths there caught the attention of NYU — that, and her participation in another, what she calls “more hipster” temple at the time: Eddie Stern's Broom Street Temple in Brooklyn. Tell me about your work at Broom Street Temple and NYU. Well, I got 80 white people to sing [in service]. Pat on my back. Yeah, pronunciation was wack, but whatever. God accepts everything, you know. It's the intention behind the prayer, not your pronunciation. Anywho, NYU – they'd never met anyone who was born and raised in the U.S. who knows Hindu scriptures. Because generally, Jesse, most people who go to Hindu temples in the U.S., you just see older people. You see grandmas and grandpas, aunties and uncles. More people from India going to temples – you rarely see people born and raised here [in the U.S.] going to temple, because it's not clearly explained. I get it, I totally get it. You take a kid into a temple, the priest is doing something for like 40 minutes, he doesn't get what he's doing. He's bored, and thinks, “I'm gonna watch The Simpsons or some s***." You know what I mean? So it's like, I get it. Hinduism, it might be the oldest religion in the world, [but] it's still very much a baby religion in the United States. It's brought by immigrants. And so it's going to take a while for people to understand what this faith is. So I help the students [by] not just having events to teach about Hinduism [and] take part in worship, but also if they need spiritual advice, if they're having an issue, [I help them] solve that. I can refer them to a scripture passage, or teach them a mantra, or teach them a saying to help them get through their darkness as well. For those who might not know, what do Hindu prayers and services look like? OK, so again, Jesse, this depends on how you were born and brought up and raised – whether you're South Indian, North Indian, East Indian, this and that. “Puja” means ritualistic prayer. In Hinduism, when we're praying, we're not worshiping the idol. We're worshipping what this murti represents. We're asking the divine to come and inhabit this Ganesha, for example. Let's set Ganesha as an example, right? We're asking Lord Ganesha to inhabit this. And you have to go back into history: South Asia was very rich with gold, as well as agriculture, back in the day before colonization and partition. And so to express gratitude, they used to give everything to the temple. And they imagine that Ganesha is sitting right in front of them. We worship as though God is sitting right in front of us. So like the exalted king, or the exalted queen, these words that we're saying in the puja: “Avahayami, avahayami,” means, “Please come forth, my beloved.” So like a king or a queen, you offer them a seat, you offer them food, you offer them ritualistic bathing. At the end is the Aarti. People might be familiar with Aarti, because of all the Bollywood films. Everyone does it, right. But again, it's beautiful because when they sing it, it's saying, “You are my mother, you are my father, you are my friend, you are my beloved.” “You are my everything,” is what they are calling to the divine. So that's what a puja is. Puja is ritualistic prayer. Everything has to be neat and clean. Like, for example, before the priest starts the prayer, he cleanses himself with water, he'll drink the water to clean his insides, clean his heart, clean his brain, his ears – you know, to let only good thoughts [in] and let [him] be pure and clean when [he] offers these prayers. So a priest, he leads the prayer – but he's not God. Anybody can do this, that's another thing. But priests are trained, because they go to special schools in India where they study all these mantras, these chants, prayers. And then they come to the United States, and they lead it. And they're not chaplains. Like, you know how in Christianity, there's a pastor, and he goes up there, and he takes a Bible verse, and then he explains it? Or then he talks about day-to-day life, what's going on, and helps people? We don't have that. The priest, that's not his job to do something like that. His job is to lead the prayer rituals. And then he gives you the offering, the flowers, or the food that you offered, and stuff like that. So that's what puja is like. Pujas are very high flown in South India – because again, they didn't have the Islamic influence, they didn't have the Christian influence, because there's a mountain range that protects South India. Where my parents are from, it's called the Temple State. So these rituals for years on end, eons on end, have remained the same. Because they didn't have an influence from anybody else. North India, they have the Islamic influence. So a lot of North Indian women, they cover their hair when they go to prayer. And in North India, Sanskrit is the language, [they use] Sanskrit prayers. Sanskrit is supposed to be the mother of all languages – that's where Hindi came out of, Urdu came out of. Everything, all of our prayers and rituals, came out of Sanskrit language and came down here. But Tamil people also have a unique way of worshipping. So do Bengali people. So do Punjabi people. That's what makes Hinduism so cool, is its diversity, and multitude of practices. For example, if you took the New York City area: in Manhattan, there's only the Hari Krishna center, the Bhakti Center, which is in the East Village. So their main deity is Radha-Krishna, and they follow the sayings of the saint who started the Hari Krishna movement. But that's it. If you want to see a South Indian ginormous temple, you haul yourself on the seven train to go to Flushing, Queens, and then you can see the Flushing Ganesha temple. And then across the street from Flushing temple, there's a North Indian one that's there too. They have marble deities. And there's an Afghan Hindu temple, also. Afghan people were Hindus back in the day, and there's still some Afghan Hindus left. And the way they do things vary. But Flushing temple, you go on their website, and ever since COVID, they've been live streaming their prayer rituals every single day. And it's beautifully done. It starts on time ends on time, no Indian Standard Time, no brown standard time. Everything starts and ends on time. Why Jesse? Because it's run by a woman. Dr. Uma Mysorekar, for 45 years, she's been the president of flushing temple. Everything starts and ends on time, you know, complete efficiency. Well, on that note, is it becoming more common to see women becoming priests or taking leadership roles in temples? I think so. Like I read about in the New York Times, there's a – I think she's a North Indian lady – who married LGBTQI couples. She was featured in the New York Times, so that was pretty cool. I know another two or three like pujaris – “pujaris” means “lady priests” – in Chicago and in the New York area. So there are some people taking the initiative to learn these prayers and hymns and to be able to lead puja. Slowly but surely things are changing now in the community. You've mentioned some of the misconceptions about Hinduism. What are some other things that you feel people confuse between Hinduism in practice versus other societal or cultural norms? Of course, like, for example, the idea of arranged marriages. Did you see that crappy show, that show Indian Matchmaking on Netflix? Yes, I have. Yeah, I hate binge watched it along with Amina, my Muslim lady chaplain friend. We hate binge watched it, OK? Because, first of all, what she's saying – not all Indian people act like that. Not all Hindu people act like that. In fact, in Hinduism, none of our deities were arranged marriages. Goddess Parvati, who is the embodiment of beauty, and who's Shakti – “Shakti” means “energy,” like no male deity can live without his female counterpart, the energy, the almighty mother, right? Parvati won Shiva through penance. And her penance was so intense that the entire world shook. She chose Lord Shiva. She chose Lord Shiva. Lakshmi, she came out of the churning of the ocean. She chose Lord Vishnu. So not an arranged marriage, right? And Ganesha is technically Parvati's kid, Parvati didn't need Shiva to have a kid. Ganesh came out of a piece of Parvati's body, right. So why do we make fun of single mothers? Why is it such a taboo to be a single mom, when technically Parvati is a single mom? Subramanya, Kartikeya, [Ganesha's] younger brother came from the six sparks of Lord Shiva. So this is a modern-day family. Shiva and Parvati are a modern-day family because you have a father, you have a mother, and they have these two children. Ganesha's the first deity, you can't get around him. Every prayer begins with Lord Ganesha, can't get around him. Ganesha and Subramanya are brothers, but technically, they're not even half-brothers. They're brothers who came, one from Lord Shiva, one from Goddess Parvati. So why do we judge single parents? Why do we judge divorced people? Another cool thing, Lord Ayyappan – Ayyappa is a deity of South India, Kerala. He is the son of two male deities, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva. So why is there so much animosity towards the LGBTQI community, when Ayyappa is the son of two fathers? Even though Vishnu took the form of the enchanter Mohini, the lady, to have the baby, still. It's like, why do we have these stigmas and taboos? Arranged marriages, it's a cultural phenomenon. It's not a religious phenomenon. And why is it always considered a Hindu thing, when the tutors in the European dynasties also had arranged marriages, in order to keep wealth in the family? Why is it a taboo that, “Hindus believe in arranged marriages?” No, we do not. It's a cultural thing. Maybe it's an Indian practice, or South Asian practice, you can say, but it's not a Hindu practice. That's something that I firmly believe in. Also, and we have Brahmacharya deities, celibate deities. Hanuman is a celibate deity. He didn't want to get married. Ganesha's technically a celibate deity. You know how he got out of marriage? They were pressuring him to get married. And he's like, “OK, fine.” He's also the lord of wisdom, right? It's like, “Alright, fine. Find me a woman more accomplished than my mama, more beautiful than my mama, and I will marry her,” right? And you can't get more beautiful or more accomplished than goddess Parvati, so he got out of it. But in some stories, in some ways of thinking, he has Siddhi and Buddhi, he has two wives. Also, when women have periods, they're considered impure. I remember, Jesse, when I went to India, and we went to a temple in North India, there's a huge sign outside that said, “Women on their periods who are menstruating should not enter the temple premises at all.” I'm like, “What are you going to do, check?” When I saw that, I was horrified, and I was disgusted also. I gave a lecture on this topic with Amina. So you have to go back, again, in history. When women had their periods, people didn't live in cities [back then] – they were gatherers and wanderers and nomads. They lived in like, tents in the middle of the forest. So when women bled, animals could smell the blood, right? Then they would attack. So that's why they kept these women isolated – so people could protect them. They would build the village around them. And where did everyone socialize and gather? It was at the temple back in the day. So when women are going there, animals could smell the blood, and they would attack. So that's why it's they kept them separate, they kept them from going there to keep [the community] safe. Plus, I don't know about you, but women, when we get our periods, we go crazy with PMS. It feels like someone stabbing us in the back with a stiletto. So why would you want to go to temple, when you're trying to pray and connect with God, and you're like, “Oh, my back hurts. Oh, my legs hurt.”? You know, that's another reason people kept them separate. But it's not because you're impure, or you're unclean. Actually, there are a couple of temples in northeastern India – I read about this – where the goddess menstruates. They have an entire festival built around this lady who menstruates. I thought that was so beautiful and so cool. You had asked me before what I love about Hinduism. There's always something new and fun and fascinating to learn about in Hinduism. Another deity, another way of thinking, another practice, another book, another scripture. Everyone says that in Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita is the only scripture that they're familiar with. No, that's not the only scripture we have. We have Vedas, we have Shastras. We have different books written by different saints and sages. So Bhagavad Gita isn't our “Hindu Bible.” That's another stigma that needs to be broken. While I was working at the Metropolitan Museum, a curator told me, he's like, “Think about it. Before the British came, the Bhagavad Gita wasn't really illustrated. It wasn't really written down. It wasn't really illustrated on paper. You saw carvings of it, but there's no paintings, no paper of this. Why? Because when the British came to South Asia, they saw all these people thinking in a multitude of different ways, praying in all sorts of ways, and they were massively confused, because they came from a Christian background. Because they came from one book, one prophet, one thing. And they saw all of this and they're like, ‘OK, you know what, we're going to take Mahabharat, the poem that Bhagavad Gita is extracted from, and here you go, this is the Hindu Bible.” And that's not right. So after the British came, you see a lot more paintings and drawings of Lord Krishna giving the sermon to Arjuna, and stuff like that written down. But it's interesting, you look in art history, and it teaches you a lot as well. So we don't just have one central text, we have a multitude of ways of thinking, and multiple books, and everyone should accept how the other ones think. North India isn't better than South India, South India isn't better than East India, East isn't better than the West. We're all equal, under the divine. You mentioned that Hinduism is growing in the US, but it's still one of the smaller religions. What do you see as both the obstacles and opportunities in Hinduism right now? For opportunities, first of all, we're all spending more time online, because we can't congregate in person because of COVID. Right? That means the reach is far. People can get to know about Hinduism through YouTube, through Facebook, through all these channels of communication, through the digital world. So that opportunity, and the fact that the world is becoming more inclusive. You see all of these different colleges have inclusivity and diversity trainings, so that's a step in the right direction – at least they're starting to care a bit more. The obstacles I face is that people don't know so much about Hinduism correctly in order to actually help. For example, I was part of NAHCA, the North American Hindu Chaplains Association when it was formed. And that's to help with spiritual caregiving and find chaplains to work in hospitals, the military, and the university system. But even the word chaplain, we don't have that in Hindu language. Like, when I went to NYU, Imam Khalid was the first person who took me under his wing, and I'm like, “What the hell's a chaplain, dude?” And he explained to me, it's spiritual caregiving. It's being there for someone the way they need you to be there for them. “Dope, that's so cool. I can do this.” But when you say Hindu chaplain, most Hindus, even the ones born and raised here, they don't know what a Hindu chaplain is. My parents don't know what a chaplain is, until I explained to them. Slowly, Hindu chaplaincy is growing in the United States. Like, I've had people contact me from the military, and from also prisons as well. But they also need to know the right terminology. For example, I'll get requests, “Can you marry this couple?” And I'm like, “OK, in Hinduism, what is the language that they speak? What culture did they come from? How are they raised? What do they prefer?” They can't explain these things to me, so you need to ask the right questions. Also, for example, one of my students at NYU, he wanted to study chaplaincy. So I wrote his recommendations to divinity schools – there's Harvard Divinity School, and there's one in Chicago. And the box check [on the form] says, “Affiliation: Church, Synagogue.” Yo, you forgot temple, you know what I mean? Stuff like that. But you know, Jesse, I have a positive outlook that things are growing. And because the world is becoming more inclusive, and people are starting to understand each other more, and have access to each other more – like, no matter how much I have a love-hate relationship with social media, at least you learn information, learn about new things. You can hear about some cool graffiti artist in the middle of Africa someplace, because he has an Instagram account. You know, there's a huge Hindu temple in Ghana, Africa, that I can't wait to go to. Yeah, Black people, African people are Hindus. There's a gigantic temple in Ghana, Africa. So [likewise] there are different Hindu people in the U.S. who are trying their level best to bring Hinduism to the mainstream. But I really don't appreciate [things like] this Indian Matchmaking show. You need to put a disclaimer on that, that this is only certain types of people who act like this. Meanwhile, there are other like good TV shows like Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever. Did you see that? I haven't seen that, no. It's about an Indian American family who lives in Southern California, in L.A. But you know, she beautifully illustrates what Indian American Hindu kids feel. Devi, that's the lead [character] in that show, she doesn't know anything about Hinduism. She's growing up like any other American kid, like, she has a crush on the hot guy or whatever. And then they take her to a Hindu puja in a school gymnasium, and it's just more a cultural thing than anything. No one is really worshiping. They don't understand the meaning behind it. That's how a lot of people feel, a lot of Hindu kids feel in the U.S. But I thought that was a beautifully done show. Because people assume, also, culturally, that everyone speaks Hindi. Like all Indians speak Hindi, which is not true. I don't speak Hindi. I don't understand Hindi so much, here and there. My father speaks Hindi fluently, because he lived in the north, and my mom does not. So it's like, at least Tamil has been put on the map, like, a South Indian language has been put on the map. And people need to realize that India is extremely diverse. There's over 5,000 languages that are spoken there. English and Hindi are not the only two, you know. People need to accept the diversity of Hinduism, the diversity of Indian cultures, as well as their different ways of thinking. And accept all of them. Lastly, do you have a favorite religious message or deity or story that you'd like to share with listeners? Oh, my God, I love all of them. That's the biggest thing is for me is this Sanskrit phrased that means, the world, the entire world, is one family. That's the principle that I adhere by. So technically, you're my sister. He's my brother. She's my mother. She's my sister. If you see everyone as one, as oneness, then you wouldn't have hatred or malice or judgement in your heart and your brain. And then another phrase, which means, “Let all creation be healthy, happy, prosperous.” It's said at the end, after every prayer ritual. So we're not just praying for Hindu people to be happy, or Indian people to be happy. We're praying for the entire world, entire planet, all creation. And creation includes animals, birds, plants, vegetation – all of that, too. Sangeetha Kowsik is the Hindu Chaplain at NYU. You can learn more about her work on the university's website, and her artwork at www.ihsanishan.com. You've been listening to 51%. 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's hosted by me, Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is “Lolita” by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Thanks again to Sangeetha Kowsik for taking part in this week's episode. Until next week, I'm Jesse King for 51%. Happy New Year!

On this week's 51%, we speak with Sangeetha Kowsik, a Hindu Chaplain at New York University, as part of our series speaking with women religious leaders and scholars. Kowsik discusses the multitude of ways Hinduism is practiced, her love of pujas, and her thoughts on how the religion is depicted in popular culture. Guest: Sangeetha Kowsik, Hindu Chaplain at New York University 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's hosted by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is "Lolita" by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Follow Along You're listening to 51%, a WAMC production dedicated to women's issues and experiences. Thanks for joining us, I'm Jesse King. This week, to kick off your new year, we're continuing our series speaking with women religious leaders and scholars, to celebrate the different ways that we worship. Our guest today is Sangeetha Kowsik, a Hindu Chaplain and founder of the Hindu Center at New York University. Kowsik has a lot of loves: she's an artist and fashion designer by profession, a scholar of Arabic calligraphy, an activist, and even a trained dancer. But she says her faith plays a role in every aspect of her life — and it has for as long as she can remember. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Kowsik says her father helped start three Hindu temples across the U.S., including her childhood temple in Livermore, California. Tell me about growing up by the temple. What was it that you connected with in Hinduism? Unfortunately in the West, there's a negative connotation, that they call our deities “idols,” and that Hindus are idol worshipers – which is not correct. The correct term for the statues, the deities that you see inside the temple, is “murti,” which is a symbolic representation of the divine. So these murtis stayed at my house and our puja room – a puja room is a special room, or a corner, or a cupboard, or anything in your house that you dedicate just for worship. We have an extra bedroom downstairs, so that's our puja room. So before the temple was consecrated, the deities stayed in our home. And for me, as a child – I'm a very small child here, [about] 4-years-old – these deities, I thought they were my friends. Just like I would play with my Barbie dolls and my stuffed toys, I would feed them, I would play with them. I gave them tea, played tea party with them. I loved them, and especially Durga. Hinduism is the only religion in the world that sees the divine as not just an almighty father, but almighty mother. So this murti, Durga, stayed in our puja room, and I thought she was my friend. I thought she was my bestie. I loved her so much. So when the deities – I think I was four – when the deities got moved, the temple was consecrated, I remember throwing a huge temper tantrum. Because you took my friends away. You took my dolls away, basically, right? But as I got older, I realized how much they mean to me, and how much Hinduism means to me. I'll give you an overview. So, India is the birthplace of Hinduism – South Asia, basically this giant landmass. So what is now India: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Iran, Nepal, Afghanistan. They were all one giant landmass before partition and lines occurred. So Hinduism has no historical founder, like the three Abrahamic religions. Islam, Christianity and Judaism all come from the prophet Abraham, peace be upon him. [But] we don't have that. Hindus don't have that. What I thought was so cool, is that you can see the divine in so many different ways. It's not some scary being in the sky, with a huge beard, telling you like, “This is wrong. That is wrong.” It could be the soft, sweet, beautiful deity like Ganesha – the elephant I'm wearing, it's written in Arabic here, right? So Ganesha, he's so sweet and gorgeous that you just want to pick him up and play with him, like a child. Or you see Lord Shiva, almighty Shiva, who is the mighty father. So whenever you have an issue or problem, you can call to Lord Shiva – like your dad, “Go kick his ass,” you know what I mean? It's like, “That dude is rude. Go kick his ass.” You can pray to Lord Shiva. You can see beautiful Mahalakshmi dressed in her gorgeous robe… And the fact that the songs that my mom taught me, the meaning behind them, is so beautiful – it's a very personalized relationship with God. That's why I love Hinduism so much. It's very personal, like you can feel it. You can feel him / her/ it, I don't know all these pronouns, [but] we believe in all the pronouns. So it's like all of them in your heart, and Hinduism doesn't state that something is wrong. It gives LGBTQI rights. It gives women's rights. It gives rights to all creation, because everything in this world is created by the mighty divine. Like paper, pens are all of the goddess Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and learning. So we don't step on any paper or step on paint brushes or musical instruments with our feet – feet are nasty and gross, you walk outside with it – I always thought that was so cool, and wonderful, that we respect everything. Everything is divine. When you say namaskar or namaste to somebody, it literally means, “I bow to the divine in you.” The fact that you can see multiple ways of the divine is something that always appealed to me. Like whatever you're feeling inside, there's space for you. There's room at the table for you. There's room for you in the temple. Kowsik says the Shiva-Vishnu Temple in Livermore showcases that inclusivity with a range of languages and priests, as well as a combination of North and South Indian architecture. When Kowsik moved to New York City, she found herself attending and volunteering at another temple her father had a history in: The Hindu Temple Society of North America in Flushing, Queens. Kowsik says her work with youths there caught the attention of NYU — that, and her participation in another, what she calls “more hipster” temple at the time: Eddie Stern's Broom Street Temple in Brooklyn. Tell me about your work at Broom Street Temple and NYU. Well, I got 80 white people to sing [in service]. Pat on my back. Yeah, pronunciation was wack, but whatever. God accepts everything, you know. It's the intention behind the prayer, not your pronunciation. Anywho, NYU – they'd never met anyone who was born and raised in the U.S. who knows Hindu scriptures. Because generally, Jesse, most people who go to Hindu temples in the U.S., you just see older people. You see grandmas and grandpas, aunties and uncles. More people from India going to temples – you rarely see people born and raised here [in the U.S.] going to temple, because it's not clearly explained. I get it, I totally get it. You take a kid into a temple, the priest is doing something for like 40 minutes, he doesn't get what he's doing. He's bored, and thinks, “I'm gonna watch The Simpsons or some s***." You know what I mean? So it's like, I get it. Hinduism, it might be the oldest religion in the world, [but] it's still very much a baby religion in the United States. It's brought by immigrants. And so it's going to take a while for people to understand what this faith is. So I help the students [by] not just having events to teach about Hinduism [and] take part in worship, but also if they need spiritual advice, if they're having an issue, [I help them] solve that. I can refer them to a scripture passage, or teach them a mantra, or teach them a saying to help them get through their darkness as well. For those who might not know, what do Hindu prayers and services look like? OK, so again, Jesse, this depends on how you were born and brought up and raised – whether you're South Indian, North Indian, East Indian, this and that. “Puja” means ritualistic prayer. In Hinduism, when we're praying, we're not worshiping the idol. We're worshipping what this murti represents. We're asking the divine to come and inhabit this Ganesha, for example. Let's set Ganesha as an example, right? We're asking Lord Ganesha to inhabit this. And you have to go back into history: South Asia was very rich with gold, as well as agriculture, back in the day before colonization and partition. And so to express gratitude, they used to give everything to the temple. And they imagine that Ganesha is sitting right in front of them. We worship as though God is sitting right in front of us. So like the exalted king, or the exalted queen, these words that we're saying in the puja: “Avahayami, avahayami,” means, “Please come forth, my beloved.” So like a king or a queen, you offer them a seat, you offer them food, you offer them ritualistic bathing. At the end is the Aarti. People might be familiar with Aarti, because of all the Bollywood films. Everyone does it, right. But again, it's beautiful because when they sing it, it's saying, “You are my mother, you are my father, you are my friend, you are my beloved.” “You are my everything,” is what they are calling to the divine. So that's what a puja is. Puja is ritualistic prayer. Everything has to be neat and clean. Like, for example, before the priest starts the prayer, he cleanses himself with water, he'll drink the water to clean his insides, clean his heart, clean his brain, his ears – you know, to let only good thoughts [in] and let [him] be pure and clean when [he] offers these prayers. So a priest, he leads the prayer – but he's not God. Anybody can do this, that's another thing. But priests are trained, because they go to special schools in India where they study all these mantras, these chants, prayers. And then they come to the United States, and they lead it. And they're not chaplains. Like, you know how in Christianity, there's a pastor, and he goes up there, and he takes a Bible verse, and then he explains it? Or then he talks about day-to-day life, what's going on, and helps people? We don't have that. The priest, that's not his job to do something like that. His job is to lead the prayer rituals. And then he gives you the offering, the flowers, or the food that you offered, and stuff like that. So that's what puja is like. Pujas are very high flown in South India – because again, they didn't have the Islamic influence, they didn't have the Christian influence, because there's a mountain range that protects South India. Where my parents are from, it's called the Temple State. So these rituals for years on end, eons on end, have remained the same. Because they didn't have an influence from anybody else. North India, they have the Islamic influence. So a lot of North Indian women, they cover their hair when they go to prayer. And in North India, Sanskrit is the language, [they use] Sanskrit prayers. Sanskrit is supposed to be the mother of all languages – that's where Hindi came out of, Urdu came out of. Everything, all of our prayers and rituals, came out of Sanskrit language and came down here. But Tamil people also have a unique way of worshipping. So do Bengali people. So do Punjabi people. That's what makes Hinduism so cool, is its diversity, and multitude of practices. For example, if you took the New York City area: in Manhattan, there's only the Hari Krishna center, the Bhakti Center, which is in the East Village. So their main deity is Radha-Krishna, and they follow the sayings of the saint who started the Hari Krishna movement. But that's it. If you want to see a South Indian ginormous temple, you haul yourself on the seven train to go to Flushing, Queens, and then you can see the Flushing Ganesha temple. And then across the street from Flushing temple, there's a North Indian one that's there too. They have marble deities. And there's an Afghan Hindu temple, also. Afghan people were Hindus back in the day, and there's still some Afghan Hindus left. And the way they do things vary. But Flushing temple, you go on their website, and ever since COVID, they've been live streaming their prayer rituals every single day. And it's beautifully done. It starts on time ends on time, no Indian Standard Time, no brown standard time. Everything starts and ends on time. Why Jesse? Because it's run by a woman. Dr. Uma Mysorekar, for 45 years, she's been the president of flushing temple. Everything starts and ends on time, you know, complete efficiency. Well, on that note, is it becoming more common to see women becoming priests or taking leadership roles in temples? I think so. Like I read about in the New York Times, there's a – I think she's a North Indian lady – who married LGBTQI couples. She was featured in the New York Times, so that was pretty cool. I know another two or three like pujaris – “pujaris” means “lady priests” – in Chicago and in the New York area. So there are some people taking the initiative to learn these prayers and hymns and to be able to lead puja. Slowly but surely things are changing now in the community. You've mentioned some of the misconceptions about Hinduism. What are some other things that you feel people confuse between Hinduism in practice versus other societal or cultural norms? Of course, like, for example, the idea of arranged marriages. Did you see that crappy show, that show Indian Matchmaking on Netflix? Yes, I have. Yeah, I hate binge watched it along with Amina, my Muslim lady chaplain friend. We hate binge watched it, OK? Because, first of all, what she's saying – not all Indian people act like that. Not all Hindu people act like that. In fact, in Hinduism, none of our deities were arranged marriages. Goddess Parvati, who is the embodiment of beauty, and who's Shakti – “Shakti” means “energy,” like no male deity can live without his female counterpart, the energy, the almighty mother, right? Parvati won Shiva through penance. And her penance was so intense that the entire world shook. She chose Lord Shiva. She chose Lord Shiva. Lakshmi, she came out of the churning of the ocean. She chose Lord Vishnu. So not an arranged marriage, right? And Ganesha is technically Parvati's kid, Parvati didn't need Shiva to have a kid. Ganesh came out of a piece of Parvati's body, right. So why do we make fun of single mothers? Why is it such a taboo to be a single mom, when technically Parvati is a single mom? Subramanya, Kartikeya, [Ganesha's] younger brother came from the six sparks of Lord Shiva. So this is a modern-day family. Shiva and Parvati are a modern-day family because you have a father, you have a mother, and they have these two children. Ganesha's the first deity, you can't get around him. Every prayer begins with Lord Ganesha, can't get around him. Ganesha and Subramanya are brothers, but technically, they're not even half-brothers. They're brothers who came, one from Lord Shiva, one from Goddess Parvati. So why do we judge single parents? Why do we judge divorced people? Another cool thing, Lord Ayyappan – Ayyappa is a deity of South India, Kerala. He is the son of two male deities, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva. So why is there so much animosity towards the LGBTQI community, when Ayyappa is the son of two fathers? Even though Vishnu took the form of the enchanter Mohini, the lady, to have the baby, still. It's like, why do we have these stigmas and taboos? Arranged marriages, it's a cultural phenomenon. It's not a religious phenomenon. And why is it always considered a Hindu thing, when the tutors in the European dynasties also had arranged marriages, in order to keep wealth in the family? Why is it a taboo that, “Hindus believe in arranged marriages?” No, we do not. It's a cultural thing. Maybe it's an Indian practice, or South Asian practice, you can say, but it's not a Hindu practice. That's something that I firmly believe in. Also, and we have Brahmacharya deities, celibate deities. Hanuman is a celibate deity. He didn't want to get married. Ganesha's technically a celibate deity. You know how he got out of marriage? They were pressuring him to get married. And he's like, “OK, fine.” He's also the lord of wisdom, right? It's like, “Alright, fine. Find me a woman more accomplished than my mama, more beautiful than my mama, and I will marry her,” right? And you can't get more beautiful or more accomplished than goddess Parvati, so he got out of it. But in some stories, in some ways of thinking, he has Siddhi and Buddhi, he has two wives. Also, when women have periods, they're considered impure. I remember, Jesse, when I went to India, and we went to a temple in North India, there's a huge sign outside that said, “Women on their periods who are menstruating should not enter the temple premises at all.” I'm like, “What are you going to do, check?” When I saw that, I was horrified, and I was disgusted also. I gave a lecture on this topic with Amina. So you have to go back, again, in history. When women had their periods, people didn't live in cities [back then] – they were gatherers and wanderers and nomads. They lived in like, tents in the middle of the forest. So when women bled, animals could smell the blood, right? Then they would attack. So that's why they kept these women isolated – so people could protect them. They would build the village around them. And where did everyone socialize and gather? It was at the temple back in the day. So when women are going there, animals could smell the blood, and they would attack. So that's why it's they kept them separate, they kept them from going there to keep [the community] safe. Plus, I don't know about you, but women, when we get our periods, we go crazy with PMS. It feels like someone stabbing us in the back with a stiletto. So why would you want to go to temple, when you're trying to pray and connect with God, and you're like, “Oh, my back hurts. Oh, my legs hurt.”? You know, that's another reason people kept them separate. But it's not because you're impure, or you're unclean. Actually, there are a couple of temples in northeastern India – I read about this – where the goddess menstruates. They have an entire festival built around this lady who menstruates. I thought that was so beautiful and so cool. You had asked me before what I love about Hinduism. There's always something new and fun and fascinating to learn about in Hinduism. Another deity, another way of thinking, another practice, another book, another scripture. Everyone says that in Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita is the only scripture that they're familiar with. No, that's not the only scripture we have. We have Vedas, we have Shastras. We have different books written by different saints and sages. So Bhagavad Gita isn't our “Hindu Bible.” That's another stigma that needs to be broken. While I was working at the Metropolitan Museum, a curator told me, he's like, “Think about it. Before the British came, the Bhagavad Gita wasn't really illustrated. It wasn't really written down. It wasn't really illustrated on paper. You saw carvings of it, but there's no paintings, no paper of this. Why? Because when the British came to South Asia, they saw all these people thinking in a multitude of different ways, praying in all sorts of ways, and they were massively confused, because they came from a Christian background. Because they came from one book, one prophet, one thing. And they saw all of this and they're like, ‘OK, you know what, we're going to take Mahabharat, the poem that Bhagavad Gita is extracted from, and here you go, this is the Hindu Bible.” And that's not right. So after the British came, you see a lot more paintings and drawings of Lord Krishna giving the sermon to Arjuna, and stuff like that written down. But it's interesting, you look in art history, and it teaches you a lot as well. So we don't just have one central text, we have a multitude of ways of thinking, and multiple books, and everyone should accept how the other ones think. North India isn't better than South India, South India isn't better than East India, East isn't better than the West. We're all equal, under the divine. You mentioned that Hinduism is growing in the US, but it's still one of the smaller religions. What do you see as both the obstacles and opportunities in Hinduism right now? For opportunities, first of all, we're all spending more time online, because we can't congregate in person because of COVID. Right? That means the reach is far. People can get to know about Hinduism through YouTube, through Facebook, through all these channels of communication, through the digital world. So that opportunity, and the fact that the world is becoming more inclusive. You see all of these different colleges have inclusivity and diversity trainings, so that's a step in the right direction – at least they're starting to care a bit more. The obstacles I face is that people don't know so much about Hinduism correctly in order to actually help. For example, I was part of NAHCA, the North American Hindu Chaplains Association when it was formed. And that's to help with spiritual caregiving and find chaplains to work in hospitals, the military, and the university system. But even the word chaplain, we don't have that in Hindu language. Like, when I went to NYU, Imam Khalid was the first person who took me under his wing, and I'm like, “What the hell's a chaplain, dude?” And he explained to me, it's spiritual caregiving. It's being there for someone the way they need you to be there for them. “Dope, that's so cool. I can do this.” But when you say Hindu chaplain, most Hindus, even the ones born and raised here, they don't know what a Hindu chaplain is. My parents don't know what a chaplain is, until I explained to them. Slowly, Hindu chaplaincy is growing in the United States. Like, I've had people contact me from the military, and from also prisons as well. But they also need to know the right terminology. For example, I'll get requests, “Can you marry this couple?” And I'm like, “OK, in Hinduism, what is the language that they speak? What culture did they come from? How are they raised? What do they prefer?” They can't explain these things to me, so you need to ask the right questions. Also, for example, one of my students at NYU, he wanted to study chaplaincy. So I wrote his recommendations to divinity schools – there's Harvard Divinity School, and there's one in Chicago. And the box check [on the form] says, “Affiliation: Church, Synagogue.” Yo, you forgot temple, you know what I mean? Stuff like that. But you know, Jesse, I have a positive outlook that things are growing. And because the world is becoming more inclusive, and people are starting to understand each other more, and have access to each other more – like, no matter how much I have a love-hate relationship with social media, at least you learn information, learn about new things. You can hear about some cool graffiti artist in the middle of Africa someplace, because he has an Instagram account. You know, there's a huge Hindu temple in Ghana, Africa, that I can't wait to go to. Yeah, Black people, African people are Hindus. There's a gigantic temple in Ghana, Africa. So [likewise] there are different Hindu people in the U.S. who are trying their level best to bring Hinduism to the mainstream. But I really don't appreciate [things like] this Indian Matchmaking show. You need to put a disclaimer on that, that this is only certain types of people who act like this. Meanwhile, there are other like good TV shows like Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever. Did you see that? I haven't seen that, no. It's about an Indian American family who lives in Southern California, in L.A. But you know, she beautifully illustrates what Indian American Hindu kids feel. Devi, that's the lead [character] in that show, she doesn't know anything about Hinduism. She's growing up like any other American kid, like, she has a crush on the hot guy or whatever. And then they take her to a Hindu puja in a school gymnasium, and it's just more a cultural thing than anything. No one is really worshiping. They don't understand the meaning behind it. That's how a lot of people feel, a lot of Hindu kids feel in the U.S. But I thought that was a beautifully done show. Because people assume, also, culturally, that everyone speaks Hindi. Like all Indians speak Hindi, which is not true. I don't speak Hindi. I don't understand Hindi so much, here and there. My father speaks Hindi fluently, because he lived in the north, and my mom does not. So it's like, at least Tamil has been put on the map, like, a South Indian language has been put on the map. And people need to realize that India is extremely diverse. There's over 5,000 languages that are spoken there. English and Hindi are not the only two, you know. People need to accept the diversity of Hinduism, the diversity of Indian cultures, as well as their different ways of thinking. And accept all of them. Lastly, do you have a favorite religious message or deity or story that you'd like to share with listeners? Oh, my God, I love all of them. That's the biggest thing is for me is this Sanskrit phrased that means, the world, the entire world, is one family. That's the principle that I adhere by. So technically, you're my sister. He's my brother. She's my mother. She's my sister. If you see everyone as one, as oneness, then you wouldn't have hatred or malice or judgement in your heart and your brain. And then another phrase, which means, “Let all creation be healthy, happy, prosperous.” It's said at the end, after every prayer ritual. So we're not just praying for Hindu people to be happy, or Indian people to be happy. We're praying for the entire world, entire planet, all creation. And creation includes animals, birds, plants, vegetation – all of that, too. Sangeetha Kowsik is the Hindu Chaplain at NYU. You can learn more about her work on the university's website, and her artwork at www.ihsanishan.com. You've been listening to 51%. 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's hosted by me, Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is “Lolita” by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Thanks again to Sangeetha Kowsik for taking part in this week's episode. Until next week, I'm Jesse King for 51%. Happy New Year!

This interaction is very unique. 1. I got introduced to a new kind of app - that is not a social media app, but a TRIBE media. CheKMarc - an app that is set out on a journey to create Communities of Communities. ChekMarc is a free global social platform where people connect one-on-one and in communities to help each other achieve goals. Connections are positive, private and safe. 2. I introduce my friend Hari Krishna to join as a Guest Host for this episode. This conversation is with Vrinda Johnson and a deep dive into the world of ChekMarc. www.chekmarc.com Vrinda Johnson Co-Founder & COO The Inspired & Creative Drill Sergeant. The Tireless Cheerleader. Vrinda has always been passionate about mentorship and the power of human connection. She began this journey with ChekMarc because she believed (and continues to believe) wholeheartedly in the need for a platform that unites people in the simplest, purest of ways. Vrinda is an academic and believes that one never really stops learning. She is eagerly looking forward to what she can learn from the ChekMarc community. In addition, she is excited to bring her professional and personal experiences to ChekMarc and drive others closer to their goals. Prior to ChekMarc, Vrinda spent most of her career in Leadership and Financial Services consulting at Russell Reynolds Associates and PwC. She has over 15 years of experience in strategic consulting including leadership development, customer experience and digital transformations, and large-scale enterprise transformation projects. Vrinda gained extensive expertise in the growth of digital across all industries, including FinTech & InsurTech, Vrinda is a devoted mother of two, and she and her husband spend most evenings and weekends between homework, art lessons, and basketball and track competitions. In her nonexistent free time she is also an athlete & fitness enthusiast, and is just getting back into her first love, dance. What does ChekMarc mean to you? “I strongly believe that before anything else, we are human beings first; and it is this fundamental commonality that lays the foundation for our ability to 'be'. ChekMarc is the only platform that brings this belief to life and shows us the power of human connection

It’s not often you come across a person who has graced the front cover of Men's Fitness magazine, and it’s even rarer when that exceptionally chiseled person happens to be vegan. In fact, today’s guest, Nimai Delgado, is the only one. Nimai is a former IFBB Pro in the Men’s Physique category, but there’s more to him than just muscles. Raised in a Hari Krishna farming community in the South until he was eight years old, Nimai is insightful, compassionate, and surprisingly relatable. He’s garnered nearly one million followers through his multiple Instagram accounts and uses his fame to teach others about the health benefits of a vegan diet. If it can power his kind of mass, it can certainly sustain the average human. This conversation roams from protein myths to ahimsa, public relationship break-ups to nutrition tips. Go for a walk, get to the gym, or start doing squats—you’ll want to be active when you listen to this show.    What we discuss in this episode:   - Nimai’s relationship with protein and the misconception around macronutrients   - Standard bodybuilding nutrition versus Nimai’s plant-based routine   - Growing up in a Hari Krishna community in the South and the concept of ahimsa   - His very public breakup during the pandemic    - Fitness and nutrition tips for the everyday person    - Finding your “WHY”   - Nimai’s Buddha Bowl recipe   - VeganFitness.com   - Vedge Nutrition and the role of supplements   - Follow Nimai on Instagram @nimai_delgado   Connect with Switch4Good - YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ2toqAmlQpwR1HDF_KKfGg   - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Switch4Good/   - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/switch4good/   - Twitter - https://twitter.com/Switch4GoodOrg   - Website - https://switch4good.org/

Tom and Josh continue their journey of discovering inspirational teachers from around the world by interviewing Hari Krishna Patcharu, an AMAZING teacher from India. He tells us about how he has inspired and continued to educate his entire region of India through the Covid-19 pandemic!! Hari has connected his students with teachers from around the globe and is a 2021 Fulbright Teacher!!

The Book of Revelations predicted it, those who wrote it could see the past, present and future with clarity. However it was a time of censorship and control, like now, and so they had to put it in symbolic language. Is the city of revelations a particular city, represented by 'Babylon'? Is it the inorganic ones' system of control ever since humanity's fall from grace? What do the the 12 Kantos of the Hari Krishna movement tell us about current events? What about the Pyramids and Stonehenge, or various mythologies from cultures around the world? And then there's western Astrology - it has also predicted great change at this time. This is a time of great clearing, of dark, pent up emotions, on every level of society. The dark edifice that has slithered itself into every aspect of our lives, telling us what to do and what to believe, conditioning society, is it collapsing?

My dear funny friend ABBY sits down with me to CASUALLY TALK ABOUT HIS TRAUMA OF GROWING UP IN A HARI KRISHNA CULT IN CANADA (we discuss if Hari Krishna is actually a cult or not) where he finally left and moved directly LOS ANGELES A VERY HEALTHY CITY TO DO STANDUP COMEDY!!! ...and guess what? Turns out Abby is GOING BACK TO THE CULT(NOT CULT??) THIS HOLIDAY SEASON!!! FOLLOW ABBY: https://www.instagram.com/abbyroberge/?hl=en Stay tuned for the premiere of his new podcast coming out soon! *FOLLOW US:* Podcast Instagram/Twitter: @ConfidentlyPod Host @KelseyDarragh DROP US A LINE: Confidentlyinsecurepodcast@Gmail.com CONFIDENTLY INSECURE MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/kelsey-darragh plz. buy. my. book. ** *https://shopc.at/dfp* ( https://shopc.at/dfp ) Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/confidently-insecure/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Duncan Trussell returns! Duncan is a comedian, podcaster, and creator of the hit Netflix show The Midnight Gospel. Duncan Trussell is a comedian, podcaster, and creator of the hit Netflix show The Midnight Gospel. The Midnight Gospel follows a spacecaster (video podcaster in space) named Clancy Gilroy who lives in a dimension called "The Chromatic Ribbon", where simulation farmers use powerful bio-computers to simulate universes to harvest technology. Each episode revolves around Clancy's travels through planets within the simulator, with the beings inhabiting these worlds as the guests he interviews for his spacecast. Duncan is one of my favorite people in the world. He’s also one of the reasons I started this podcast in the first place. We explore everything and more in this episode. It’s always a wild ride when Duncan’s on the program. Be sure to listen to the DTFH. Hari Krishna! This episode is sponsored by Swedish Columbia. Ultimate vibes and post-NES electro jams! Be sure to check out El Huervo’s latest album: A Thing With Feathers A psychedelic electronic lofi beats album that skirts the liminal world of dreams and vision. Available everywhere! El Huervo is a visual artist and musician whose artwork and music can be seen and heard on numerous indie video games. A brain traveler himself, he explores alternate realities, dark/light duality, with a colorful audio/visual palette in his works. His latest album "A Thing With Feathers" is a psychedelic electronic lofi beats album that skirts the liminal world of dreams and vision. Available everywhere! Links mentioned in this episode: http://www.duncantrussell.com Links mentioned in this episode: http://rainbowbrainskull.com http://raminnazer.com This podcast was recorded remotely from Rainbow Brainskull Studios in Los Angeles, CA.

Warning: This episode discusses adult themes. Disclaimer: The views expressed do not reflect the policy of Baobulb.org. Not suitable for children under the age of 18.YouTube Acharya Nista Das is a Krishna Monk based in Chicago Il. USA. We talk about the journey of a Krishna Monk. He also shares some of his sacred wisdom and teachings. He sheds some light on some of the mysteries surrounding the life of a monk and the Hari Krishna tradition. The Other Side of the Sun is a podcast by Solarkidd. He currently lives in London in the United Kingdom. His is a journey of self discovery. With eclectic tastes. Ranging from Ancient History to Music. And likewise, astronomy and language. Similarly, ancient alien theories. For more podcasts, visit Spudcaster. Most importantly, please rate and review this episode at the bottom of the page. Links:Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube CreditsIntro music produced by solarkidd (the A Team) @abstractsunpro. Outro music produced by @st4x_music (the A Team) @abstractsunpro. Video Edited by @optimizevisuals.

After a tough childhood, turning to spirituality by becoming a Hari Krishna monk, then trying to follow his bliss by putting out hip hop music, Jason Fladlien finally found his way to success with webinars. But he’s not just any webinar creator. Jason has a unique way of presenting and has been uber-successful with his tactics, once earning ten million dollars in just eight days. You are going to absolutely love today’s show as Jason is a master at his craft, and gives us a boatload of tactics on how to stand out from the webinar crowd as well as various ways in which he handles the most common objections that arise, to turn people on the fence into buyers. This is definitely a show that’s chock full of tactics as well as different ways to look at what you are presenting so that’s it’s a win-win for you and your customers. When you’re done listening be sure to check out our conversations with Joel Erway and Drew Burks for more lessons on how to give a perfect presentation. “I took the same content that I had sold as a $17 ebook and started using that as educational content on a webinar to fulfill the same training but in a different modality being live online and I found you could charge $97 for the same information if it was fulfilled via webinars.” - Jason Fladlien Some Topics We Discussed Include: How Jason went from being a Hari Krishna monk to become a marketing genius Is Muscatine, Iowa really a hip-hop capital of the world? The beauty of the “One-One-One Product” How Jason pioneered the webinar model and sold $100,000,000 of stuff along the way The result of the “Haley’s Comet” of webinars Using the “Million Dollar Guarantee” The Time Dilation Technique and how to use it both in the future and the past How to reframe your audience’s problem in a different way to make them take action Awesome replies to common objections that you can swipe and use The close Jason uses for the $10,000,000 webinar Getting your customers to purchase courses a second time (even when it costs more) because the bonuses are so good Instead of trying to convince your webinar attendees and simply show them the methodology, what you want to do instead And much, much more! Resources From Jason Fladlien: Get Jason’s book here: One to Many: The Secret to Webinar Success Book  References and Links Mentioned: Are you ready to be EPIC with us?! Then grab our EGP Letter here! Did you know we have an awesome YouTube Channel?  Join the Facebook Community - be sure to hop in our Facebook group to chat with us, our other amazing guests that we’ve had on the show, and fellow entrepreneurs! This episode is sponsored by our go-to SEO research tool, Ahrefs.com, and by  Easy Webinar - be sure to check out these special deals for our listeners. Current Tactics To Get Amazing Results With Webinars – Joel Erway How To Automate Sales And Drive Traffic – Drew Burks

Look within and live your life on the edge of two worlds. A reality where you find true understanding of who you are. Take the step into the unknown with Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby as they explore the thinly veiled world of consciousness, spirit, and the human condition. Join them in embodying the oneness of all. Walk the cliffs edge between the seen and the unseen realities. Welcome to Higher Density Living. www.higherdensityliving.com   Who would have thought that a highly advanced blue being born thousands of years ago could heavily influence Indian culture so drastically? Probably no one, but Jason-Alex review a historical account of this BEING in the Bhagavad Gita and how the lessons taught by a more spiritually advanced entity could last through the ages. The Bhagavad Gita is a song for all eternity that has had its influences even on the Bible itself. Listen in for some time tested wisdom from Hari Krishna.   Look within and live your life on the edge of two worlds. A reality where you find true understanding of who you are. The learning is done. Become the teacher in embodying the oneness of all. Become a Higher Density Being. Instagram Facebook Twitter Youtube Pinterest

You will see that money is everywhere if you have the right 'money mindset, which I cover in my book, Yes, Money Can Buy You Happiness. There are trillions of Dollars in circulation right now. This does not include the hundreds of billions in pension funds, venture capital and hedge all looking for places to invest. Examples of people who had a different money mindset are two former members of the Beatles pop group, the late John Lennon and George Harrison. John Lennon wife once asked him for a swimming pool and he said, okay I’ll write you one. When the ISKCON Hari Krishna movement approached George Harrison, for help to fund a new centre in the UK in the early 1970’s, he donated money for a property and wrote the album All Things Must Pass to help raise the money for the movement. One of the massive hits from that triple album was My Sweet Lord, which featured the chant Hari Krishna and went on to sell 7 million copies, outstripping sales by his former Beatle colleagues after the band split. The property Bhaktiavedanta Manor in Hertfordshire is still there today. I have visited the manor many times and walked in the commemorative garden opened by his widow Olivia. You might be thinking, "ok, that's alright if you're a songwriter, but what about me? Fine, you may not be a writer or an artist, but you have talent, knowledge and experience in some other area. In another example, a Guru in India, who needed millions of dollars to fund a new temple and centre., was asked, where is the money going to come from? He replied, “from where ever it is now “. People with this level of mindset realise that when you have a project or a goal money is no object. The money is out there and you just have to find it, attracted, manifest it, ask for it or whatever you want to call it. Lionel Richie said songs and ideas are "in the air". Billionaires are multimillionaires truly believe that if they lost everything today they would soon be rich again. Don’t forget, only a few years ago Donald Trump’s business empire was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and people were saying he was finished. If Richard Branson lost it all today, how long do you think it would be before he would be a billionaire again? Much of his fortune has been made using other people’s money, ideas and work. All they needed was the virgin name. Develop an abundance mindset by remembering that there is more money in the world chasing good ventures and ideas than there are ventures available. If you are interested in developing and improving your money mindset, check out more on this subject in my book, Yes, Money Can Buy You Happiness, on Amazon - http://bit.ly/2MoneyBook

When the family of footballer Emiliano Sala needed money to search for his body after the plane in which he was travelling to his new club Cardiff City went down in the English Channel, they launched a fundraising campaign which raised £300,000 Euros in a few days. The money came very quickly out of nowhere, which illustrates that despite what some people say, money around everywhere. In fact, there is over a trillion Dollars circulating right now. This does not include the hundreds of billions in pension funds, venture capital and hedge all looking for places to invest.   Here are a few more examples; John Lennons wife once asked him for a Swimming pool and he said "okay I’ll write you one".   When the ISKCON Hari Krishna movement approached George Harrison, for help to fund a new centre in the UK in the early 1970’s, he donated money for a property and wrote the album All Things Must Pass to help raise the money for the movement. One of the massive hits from that triple album was My Sweet Lord, which featured the chant Hari Krishna and went on to sell 7 million copies, outstripping sales by his former Beatle colleagues after the band split. The property Bhaktiavedanta Manor in Hertfordshire is still there today. I have visited the manor many times and walked in the commemorative garden opened by his widow Olivia.   I read a story once of a Guru in India who needed millions of dollars to fund a new temple and centre. He was asked, where is the money going to come from? He replied, “from where ever it is now “.   People with this level of mindset realise that when you have a project or a goal money is no object. The money is out there and you just have to find it, attracted, manifest it, ask for it or whatever you want to call it. I remember once in the 1990s when property prices were at rock bottom, confidence was at almost an all-time low and experts were predicting that it would take 20 years for the market to recover. I knew in my gut that this was nonsense and had an idea to buy a certain type of property which could easily be split up into rooms. At the time, the houses in East London was selling for £65,000. I knew that the three bedroom properties could easily be split into five rentable rooms as I was arranging mortgages for a client of mine who is making a fortune doing just that. The problem was, I was broke! I had no cash and lending was super tight.   I put together a plan and approached two of three people who just couldn’t see it the way I did. Disheartened and disillusioned, I gave up. I still have that for page plan somewhere, but that’s all it is a piece of paper with some ideas that never came to fruition. I often pass that street, with the houses now so far close to half £1 million and wonder “what if”! If I had the sort of mindset that I have now I would’ve easily raised the money with a couple of phone calls. By contrast, a famous financier and ‘corporate raider’, Jim Slater, who was an early mentor to billionaire Sir James Goldsmith had been made bankrupt when his investment fund collapsed. Within a few years, he had bounced back and made a fortune for him and his city friends by converting warehouses along the river Thames into expensive apartments. You could argue that it was” alright for him” as he had all his mates in the city. But you could also say that he had the vision and foresight and the correct mindset to get back on top. He also thought big and had a much bigger vision. He went for a large, profitable project which would attract the sort of wealthy investors who shared his vision. Billionaires and multimillionaires truly believe that if they lost everything today they would soon be rich again. Don’t forget, only a few years ago Donald Trump’s business empire was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and people were saying he was finished. If Richard Branson lost it all today, how long do you think it would be before he would be a billionaire again? Much of his fortune has been made using other people’s money, ideas and work. All they needed was the virgin name. Develop an abundance mindset by remembering that there is more money in the world chasing good ventures than there are ventures available.     See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Nimai Delgado is an American body builder raised in South Mississippi and was raised vegetarian by his Hindu parents. “Both of my amazing parents are converted Hindus, and I was raised with a strong sense of compassion. Growing up, my diet has always been about 95% vegan, with the exception of dairy products.” In 2015 he dropped all animal products from his diet. This transformed his life & outlook. Nimai and I spoke about his life as a full-time bodybuilder and health advocate, growing up in a Hari Krishna family. We also touched on topics such as effective advocacy, dealing with friends and family and the constant shock people experience when they find out he has never eaten meat. "Thoughts and actions are connected so tightly if we change the act of eating meat and eliminate it from our diet our thoughts on this topic will change." You can follow Nimai and his journey here https://veganfitness.com Presented by Robbie Lockie | Edited by Ciaran Austin Listen on other platforms Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/plantbasednews Spotify: http://bit.ly/PBN_onSpotify iTunes: http://apple.co/iTunes_PBNPodcast REVIEW/SHARE: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ If you enjoyed the episode and have a spare 1-2 minutes please leave a review on iTunes so the Plant Based News podcast ranks higher and becomes more discoverable for other listeners. And if you have any friends that you think will benefit from listening to this episode or any of the other Plant Based News podcast episodes please share – together we can make this world a more compassionate place.

RSG — Ahimsa is een van die belangrikste beginsels in die Hindoegeloof en ander Oosterse lewensfilosofieë soos Boeddhisme. Dit is ʼn lewenswyse geskoei op eerbied en geweldloosheid teen alle vorms van lewe. Jean Oosthuizen gesels hieroor met twee Hari Krishna's, dr Irene Brand of Kamala-sita Dasi soos wat sy nou bekend is, en Axl Maas.

Two guests for the price of one, you lucky ducks.In a brilliantly bizarre episode, (after finishing his bowl of stew) comedian Sean Walsh joined myself and fellow comedian Fred Cooke to talk the origins of our comedy, nerve-coping mechanisms and fighting (all while we were getting heckled by a Hari Krishna parade)You can catch the lads at the Edinburgh Fringe festivalFred: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/fred-cooke-fredinburghSean: https://www.comedy.co.uk/fringe/2018/seann_walsh/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tomomahonybuckshotShop: https://www.teepublic.com/user/tomomahonyFollow Tom:SC: tombearomahonyInsta: @tomomahonycomedyTW: @tomomahonycomedyFB: https://www.facebook.com/TomOMahonyComedy

Album Name: Kirtan Vandna Artist: Various Publisher: Shree Swaminarayan Mandir Kalupur

John Joseph McGowan is a musician, author and triathlete from New York City, most famous for his work as the lead singer of the Cro-Mags in the 1980s.  WATCH THIS FULL EPISODE FOR FREE: https://londonreal.tv/john-joseph/  Chapters: 00:00 Trailer. 02:15 Brian’s thoughts on the episode. 04:47 Brian’s introduction. 05:26 Incredible London music scene different to New York. 10:15 Abusive and violent childhood in New York City leads to a dangerous drug scene. 19:57 Whatever hell we were going through, music was the salvation. 23:23 A time-bomb waiting to go off is conclusion of his Navy SEAL psychological test. 28:38 No band could ever touch the Bad Brains in a live performance. 31:21 AWOL, fighting for his life in New York, in need of healing. 44:15 Facing racial hatred down south and how John got his nickname Bloodclot. 47:27 How a crazy, drug dealing, scrapping in street guy comes to front a band. 50:25 Honour the music, study your craft; learning a lot from Robert McKee before writing his story. 51:35 It was hard in Evolution of a Cro-Magnon to write openly about abuse he suffered as a child. 53:21 Forsaking drugs and alcohol for eating raw foods and being a fighting Hari Krishna monk. 1:00:53 The hot girl on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii: would applying PMA have changed John’s future? 1:02:47 Return to NY punk scene then realising corruption existing within the Hari Krishna movement. 1:08:41 Why he had to live in crazy, lawless Alphabet City, NY. 1:12:21 Insane stunts at Cro-Mag performances, his lifestyle giving authenticity to song lyrics. 1:16:49 “My history is of being betrayed, so when betrayal happens something inside me breaks”. 1:26:21 Descent to rock bottom, constantly running from the cops with wealthy girlfriend. 1:43:53 Below rock bottom in a crack house. How and who gave the focus to climbing out of the hell. 1:48:21 John’s life now and his relationship with fellow vegans. 1:53:58 Competing the Ironman races.   “The mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy”. 2:01:31 What will John being doing in five years-time? 2:02:14 Success secrets. 2:02:49 Is John ready for the ultimate test? 2:07:51 What keeps John away at night. 2:08:07 Advice to the twenty-year old John Joseph. 2:10:00 Best advice ever received. 2:11:41 Advice to the young person listening. 2:14:36 Brian’s summing up. FULL SHOW NOTES: https://londonreal.tv/john-joseph/   

In this episode, the guys decide between killing their childhood dog and breaking up with their cohabitant (watch out Rover!), and display an alarming lack of knowledge concerning the Dalai Lama and Hari Krishna. In a moment of candor, Greg concedes David’s physical attractiveness. Also, hang on after the outro to hear more uninformed discussion … Continue reading #17: Does the Dalai Lama Bang?