Welcome back to Episode 37 of First Principles.If you’re here to find our latest edition of the First Principles Newsletter, here you go!A few weeks ago, we had a wonderful conversation with Viren Shetty – the executive vice chairman of Narayana Health.  Narayana Health – formerly called Narayana Hrudalaya – is a hospital network that’s also listed on the stock exchanges. Today’s episode is the second part of our conversation with Viren. In part 1, Viren talked about healthcare in India – something he described as an “assembly line.” If you remember listening to it, you’ll know that Viren has both intricate knowledge and undeniable intuition about the healthcare landscape in India. We discussed Viren’s ambitions to fix healthcare in India and where Narayana Health is headed. That led us to why Viren holds this mission so close to his heart, in this second part of our conversation.What led him to healthcare? What drives him to wake up and do this, day after day? In our opening, you heard about Viren’s innate pattern recognition superpower, which is very different from his father Dr. DeviShetty’s.So, how did he build this intuition? And how does he use it to run a vast hospital network?Viren answers all of these questions with stories from his life, career and even from the hospitals where he grew up. This is episode 37 of First Principles—The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast.P.S. Please recommend your favourite books for the First Principles community here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If this isn’t the first time you’re listening to First Principles, you’re probably wondering what’s going on. Why did we have five different founders opening the episode, instead of just one. It’s because today’s is a special episode. We went back to the first five episodes we didto compile some of the most interesting, original and often counterintuitive conversations from five accomplished founders. While I’d urge you to listen to each of their conversations in full, this episode is a good place if you took to First Principles recently and are searching for reasons to listen to older episodes. We begin with Kabeer Biswas, the co-founder and CEO of Dunzo, the cult-like instant delivery service that started from Bangalore. He talks about the 10,000 plus tasks he’s run himself on Dunzo, the impossible grind of fundraising, how founders’ traits tend to show up as organization’s culture and many more things. Episode 1: Kabeer Biswas of Dunzo talks about raising money, gathering user insights, battling deadlines and moreNext, we have Baskar Subramanian, the co-founder and CEO of Amagi, the most unlikely of unicorns to emerge from India. It is a media technology company that enables virtually the entire video production and distribution chain for all sorts of media companies globally. “Glass to glass solutions” is how Amagi describes itself, implying its presence from the glass of the camera where video is being shot to the glass of the screen on which it is finally watched. Baskar dropped out of his master’s program at IIT Bombay because he found it oriented around getting grades, not necessarily learning. He talks about why entrepreneurship is like a drug for him, why vulnerability is a core value at Amagi, why a CEO’s job is to be a clock-builder and not a time-keeper, and many more things. Episode 2: $1.5B Amagi Founder Baskar Subramanian talks about culture at work, parenting, and building from ground upNext is Nithin Kamath, the co-founder and CEO of Zerodha, India’s largest online brokerage. He doesn’t believe in setting targets or goals for his company or employees. He also is one of those rare Bangalore founders who have succeeded at scale without taking a single dollar of venture capital. No, in fact Nithin insists Zerodha’s success is partly due to avoiding venture capital.From his anonymous days as “Nathan Hawk”, “Tarzan” or “Columbus” at a call center or internet forums, to running one of the most profitable and yet leanest startups in India, Nithin covers a lot of ground. He talks about thinking like a trader, running a company with zero attrition, creating optionality and many more things. Episode 3: Nithin Kamath of Zerodha candidly talks about building his bootstrapped business, weighing risks, and finding opportunitiesWhich brings me to Naveen Tewari, the co-founder and CEO of adtech giant InMobi, which is not only a unicorn in terms of its own valuation, but was also the first Indian company to incubate another unicorn of its own, lockscreen giant Glance. Naveen is one of the earliest tech entrepreneurs from India, having started his very first company, SMS-based search provider mKhoj, way back in 2007. Thus, survival is one of his recurring themes.Over the conversation he talks about the mistakes he made as an entrepreneur and his lessons from them, building careers and companies slowly instead of “blitzscaling”, CEOs pushing the envelope of what’s possible within companies, and a lot more. Episode 4: InMobi founder Naveen Tewari gets candid about survival, innovation, and playing the game by changing the rulesAnd finally, we have Ananth Narayanan, the co-founder and CEO of Mensa Brands, a global tech-led house of brands – I know, it’s a mouthful – which earned the distinction of becoming India’s fastest unicorn. It buys existing brands, and then punches up their scale by providing the resources and knowledge to do so. Ananth says that’s no different from a P&G, which too is a house of brands if you really look closely.Ananth talks about the emotional toll founders pay silently each day, learning to manage energy and not time, the best way to solicit and give feedback, and many more things.Episode 5: Learnability, curiosity, and brand building; Ex-Myntra CEO and Mensa Brands founder Ananth Narayanan gets candidI hope I managed to interest you in at least a few of those incredible conversations, if not all of them! Tell us what you thought of today’s format. Did you like it? No? What other new features would you like from First Principles or The Ken?  Write to me at podcasts@the-ken.com. And if you haven’t already rated us on your favourite podcast platform, why is that? I would truly appreciate your rating, no matter what it is. Lastly, a big thanks to my colleague Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, for helping put together this special episode across nearly 8 hours of conversations. See you next time with a new conversation with another accomplished founder. Till then, this is me Rohin thanking you for listening and for your support. 

Shan Kadavil, one eighth a co-founder and 100% a CEO at Fresh To Home, one of the largest online sellers of fish and meat in India, made a rough business plan in 2015. From roughly $2 million in sales in 2016 he wanted to grow to $200 million by 2022. That’s 100X in 6 years.This year Fresh To Home will do around $130 million. 65X is not bad at all.As TAMs – total addressable markets – go, you can’t go wrong selling meat and fish in the world’s largest country where the majority of the population are nonvegetarians. Go one level deeper and Kadavil says the consumption of fish outstrips that of poultry by nearly a factor of three. And fish offers gross margins of 40-50%, unlike, say smartphones or consumer products.Starting with a mission to “Clone Mathew” (Mathew Joseph being one of the Fresh To Home co-founders and its current COO) to running an OKR-driven organization modelled around gaming pioneer Zynga (where Kadavil was an early employee, and subsequently executive), this conversation covers a lot of bases around the first principles of running a business that isn’t easy.From obsessing over CURR, NURR and RURR metrics or encouraging employees to look for ways to disrupt their own business, Kadavil offers a lot of first hand insight from his multiple stints as an entrepreneur.This is episode 15 of First Principles. If you like our deep interviews with some of India’s best known founders across a range of domains, please consider rating us on your podcast platform.And if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but when it comes to entrepreneurial success, straight lines rarely exist. Instead, the paths taken by most successful entrepreneurs are meandering, if we’re applying the benefit of hindsight. If we don’t, well, they’re often random, confusing and even frustrating.Take Srikanth Iyer, the co-founder of CEO of Home Lane, one of the market leaders in the online home interiors space today.But wind the clock back on Iyer’s entrepreneurial journey and we see him doing terribly in class 12, but getting into a good college because he was a state-level table tennis player. He gets into Wipro after finishing his degree, but quits in just 3 months to…assemble and sell PCs. When that business naturally gets commoditized, he shuts it down and starts an edtech business way before it was cool to do so.Unfortunately, not enough Indians have PCs or broadband to buy his “CD-ROMs” (a concept as alien today as rotary telephones). So he hitched his wagon with PC makers, book publishers and even soap brands!He would end up selling the same business thrice over.By the time he started Homelane in 2014, Iyer already had over two decades of entrepreneurial experience, though none of it was in home interiors.His first year was chaos. His first NPS score was -27. He almost went into depression.The popular view of enterprise is that you succeed by doing more things. Iyer offers a well-argued (and well-experienced) countertake to that. Sometimes it’s best to say no to things or to focus on understanding what you’re bad at.“I'm a better wartime general,” says Iyer to me during an honest, candid and insightful conversation that spans his three decade career as an entrepreneur.If you like First Principles, please help us reach more listeners and subscribers by rating us. And if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

One of the recurring themes when it comes to entrepreneurship is “valuation”. How much a company is “worth” is in many ways the tail that wags the enterprise dog in our times.I’ve asked this question to every single one of the guests on First Principles. But the answer from Kamal Sagar, the co-founder and CEO of Bangalore-headquartered real estate and design company Total Environment, still came as a bit of surprise. (Last year the company did around $250M in sales.) “I don't know what the valuation is,” said Sagar. “We didn't build it with the idea of selling it, so we haven’t ever looked at that option.” And this is nearly 27 years after he started Total Environment.During that time, the company has charted a distinctly contrarian path for itself. At every stage of its evolution, it chose to do things that took more time, more money and more effort. It built its own design software. It vertically integrated its operations, down to the bricks, tiles and furniture that went into its homes. It stuck trees and lawns into balconies and roofs. It turned apartment designs into versioned products, much like productized software.In a candid and reflective conversation that spans his three decade career as an architect and entrepreneur, Sagar shows us an alternate view of building a company. A word that comes up multiple time in the conversation is “authenticity”.Starting with the “C” he got at IIT for being obstinate, to the many times he chose to take Total Environment down paths that traded rapid growth for slower design, Sagar gives us a glimpse into the incredibly inefficient, frustrating and lucrative sector that is real estate.If you’d rather (or perhaps also) read than listen, we have also published the full transcript for this interview on our website. You can click here and read through it.As usual, a big thanks to my colleague Rahul Choudhary who diligently helps me with the transcripts each fortnight.If you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

In 2015 Ruchi Kalra was a partner with McKinsey in their Financial Services practices. In 2016 she, along with four co-founders, started OfBusiness, a business that saw the world in raw materials like plastic, steel, almonds where everyone else saw products like bottles, bridges and cookies. By using tech to disintermediate the various buyers and sellers in the raw material supply chain, OfBusiness wanted to make purchases cheaper and faster. In 2017 Kalra, again with her four co-founders, one of who also happens to be her husband and former colleague, started another business, Oxyzo. What would it do? It would provide credit to businesses that wanted to buy raw materials. Cut to 2023. OfBusiness and Oxyzo are both unicorns. They’re also growing at an incredibly fast rate. Kalra is the CEO of Oxyzo, while also doubling up as the CFO of OfBusiness. Last year OfBusiness drove around Rs.7,500 crore of sales, says Kalra. Which is slated to jump to over Rs.20,000 crore this year. In the same period Oxyzo’s balance sheet size as a lender will swell from Rs.3,500 crore to Rs.5,000 crore. For these numbers, the two sibling unicorns employ just about 1000 professionals between them. “If I were to do a rough employee-to-valuation calculation, that would place you in, I'm guessing, one of the highest...”Kalra cuts me off. “I think more than the employee-to-valuation, it's more an employee-to-profit calculation.”That’s because the B2B siblings also both profitable. Together they are slated to grow their profit after tax (a phrase that’s quite rare in the unicorn space) 150% over the last year, to Rs500 crore. Kalra starting at McKinsey after an engineering degree from IIT Delhi and an MBA from ISB is a pattern easy to understand. What’s not so easy is how and why she decided to quit after making partner, and start a business in a very different and “uncool” sector.In a candid and reflective conversation, Kalra talks about career choices, business building, market sizing, operational discipline, and her own transformation from an executive to a founder, and finally, leader. It’s a masterclass on how starting up later in life often brings perspectives and experiences that are hard for others to replicate.If you’d rather (or perhaps also) read than listen, we have also published the full transcript for this interview on our website. You can click here and read through it. We normally record First Principles episodes inside a professional studio, but this episode was recorded inside one of the meeting rooms at Oxyzo’s buzzing Gurugram offices in December. Which is why, in spite of our best efforts, the audio will sound a bit different. A big shout out to my colleague Rahul Choudhary who diligently helps me with the transcripts each fortnight. Lastly, if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

The year was 2004. MakeMyTrip was a struggling 4-year old company and Deep Kalra, its founder, hadn’t taken a salary for nearly 18 months and had exhausted all of his financial savings. His co-founders had already taken salary cuts ranging from 50-70%. That’s when they got an offer from a much larger company to buy MakeMyTrip out. After discussing between themselves, they decided that they’d sell if the offer was $10 million. The first offer from the potential buyer was $5 million. Which Kalra refused, of course. Then the haggling started. Over a few hours and price inched up bit by bit to around $7 million. “And the meeting ended. And I was actually very relieved,” says Deep in episode 11 of First Principles.He says his single biggest advice to young founders is to “just hang in there and don't give up too early because so many businesses haven't seen the light of day because someone gave up too early.”MakeMyTrip went through long periods of struggle, often existential, before it became the online travel giant that it is today. And Kalra has been part of it all through.In a reflective and wide-ranging conversation, Kalra covers a two decade span of evolution of India’s internet and startup space, including his own journey as an entrepreneur. It’s a masterclass on not giving up, staying in the game, and building to last.If you’d rather (or perhaps also) read than listen, we have also published the full transcript for this interview on our website. You can click here and read through it.And if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

Serendipity usually plays a huge role in entrepreneurship. It played an outsized role in Tarun Mehta’s journey to founding Ather Energy, easily India’s best-known electric scooter maker.When Mehta graduated from IIT Madras, he wanted badly to become a consultant because it was where the money and aura was. But he didn’t get a job as a consultant. Then he tried to get into Harvard Business School for an MBA, but that didn’t pan out either.Instead, he ended up at Ashok Leyland, a maker of buses and trucks. It took four months after he joined for Mehta to be allocated a computer of his own. During that time, he’d walk around and find a computer belonging to someone who hadn’t come to office. Or he’d walk through its sprawling Chennai campus and read books in its library. Of course, his salary wasn’t high by any standards.The low salary and lack of any meaningful work allowed Mehta to drift back to the IIT Madras campus he’d graduated from. After convincing a professor of their desire to build battery packs, Mehta and his co-founder Swapnil Jain, moved to an empty hostel room to start building things.Building hard things.That’s the origin story of Ather Energy, the company that started out wanting to build battery packs, but ended up doing multi-year deep dives to re-imagine virtually every part of an electric scooter. This stubbornness would bring Ather Energy to the brink of death five times.Today, Ather sells over 10,000 electric scooters in India. Next year, it wants to double that number. And then some more.Tarun speaks at length about his journey to convince investors of his vision; doing hard things that defied common sense; building an organisation over decades; and why it takes at least three years to make a true impact at work.If you’d rather (or perhaps also) read than listen, we have published the full transcript for this interview on our website. You can click here and read through it.If you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them, but we do read every single one of them.

Few companies define themselves so sharply on the basis of what they’re opposed to like NoBroker, the 8-year-old Bengaluru-headquartered real estate platform. Opposition to brokerage is baked into its name, its business model, and even its ambitions.US$19 billion is the amount Indians shell out as brokerage fees on real estate rentals.That’s the market NoBroker wants to disrupt. Flip the mirror and that is also, thus, the total addressable market that NoBroker is targeting for itself.“At the end of the day, all a broker does is introduce people. You want to pay him one month's rent for an introduction? Really?”—that was Amit Agarwal, the co-founder and CEO of NoBroker, speaking to The Ken back in 2017 for a story.It’s almost 2023 and Agarwal is still sticking to his guns. (Which is why he can’t reveal the exact locations of his offices).In this episode, the “IIT-IIM” founder speaks candidly over an hour and a half on a range of topics. From entering management consulting as a young MBA because it paid the most, to starting a business that almost no investor wanted to fund, to convincing notoriously value-minded Indians to pay a subscription fee before finding a rental apartment, to running a frugal organisation with a cockroach mentality. If you’d rather (or perhaps also) read than listen, we have also published the full transcript for this interview on our website. You can click here and read through it. And if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them, but we do read every single one of them.Daybreak—a brand new podcast from The Ken (https://the-ken.com/podcasts/daybreak/)Business news is complex and overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be. Thrice a week, Daybreak tells one business story that’s significant, simple, and powerful. All in fifteen minutes or less. Hosted from The Ken’s newsroom by Snigdha Sharma, Daybreak relies on years of original reporting and analysis by some of India’s most experienced and talented business journalists. Episodes drop on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

In a career spanning 25 years, Amrish Rau has been on multiple sides of the leadership equation. He’s been a corporate leader, founder, professional CEO and angel investor. As the CEO of Pine Labs, the payments solution provider whose point of sale terminals can be seen in most Indian shops and stores, Rau says his ambition is to “make money from every transaction”.In 2016, Citrus Pay, an online payments provider Rau co-founded, was acquired by rival PayU for $130 million in cash. It was one of the biggest acquisitions back then.But Rau says it is also one of his biggest regrets. As a first-time founder, he made the decision to sell his company too quickly. As an entrepreneur, he says, “at the end of the day, you need your own horse and your own carriage. And you need to be able to hug it every day and saying, this is mine.”In this wide-ranging conversation Rau touches upon a range of topics. From creating corporate cultures to “FU money” to risk-taking to the evolution of fintech, there’s interesting themes every few minutes.If you’d rather (or perhaps also) read than listen, we have also published the full transcript for this interview on our website. You can click here and read through it.And if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

SUGAR Cosmetics, though now amongst the most popular and fastest growing cosmetics brand in India, wasn't the first choice when Vineeta was asked to name her new cosmetics company, and neither was cosmetics the first business that Vineeta undertook when she set out to be an entrepreneur. Getting SUGAR to it's users was a tumultuous journey and as Vineeta sits down with Rohin to recount some of the most important points in the journey, we get a peek at the lenses she uses to look at the world around her. We have also published the full transcript for this interview on our website. You can click here and read through it. If you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or rants, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com. We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them. 

Today’s guest on First Principles is Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder of Razorpay.Razorpay claims to be India’s first full-stack financial solutions company. And if that sounds very much like how a coder would describe a company, it’s because that’s exactly what’s happening.When Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, two coding enthusiasts fresh into their first jobs, started working on what would later become Razorpay, they never really set out to build a company or be entrepreneurs. They just wanted to solve a problem.But in doing so, they were compelled to create Razorpay.Today’s episode is a delightful mix of first principles thinking, thoughts on product development, and the importance of deliberately driving company culture. Earlier in August, The Ken’s journalist Shashwat Mohanty did a story on the challenges Razorpay faces in realising its neo-banking dream. The story is now behind a paywall but you can find it here.Feedback? Write to us on podcasts@the-ken.com

Mensa Brands is India’s fastest unicorn. It took them only six months to zoom past the one-billion-dollar valuation mark. Having raised over US$300 million in debt and equity so far, Ananth Narayanan, the founder and CEO of Mensa Brands and the former CEO of Myntra, seems to be on to something.In this episode, we tap into all of it. From his time at McKinsey as a consultant and his stint as Myntra's CEO, to leading MedLife and its sale to PharmEasy, and eventually founding Mensa Brands, Ananth shares everything good and some things that weren't. We touch upon his thoughts on ploughing through the tough times, the ability to bounce back after major lows, and the value of learnability and curiosity.As always, we’re happy to hear your feedback. Please share it with us at podcasts@the-ken.com. You can write to us with feedback, questions you want us to ask future guests, or even guests you would like to see on the show!The free story mentioned in the episode can still be found here albeit behind a paywall: Mensa, Evenflow pitch e-comm brand aggregation to rigid Indian sellers

The InMobi Group is a curious giant. Not only is it comprised of India's very first tech unicorn, the mobile advertising platform InMobi, it also houses another unicorn within which is one of India's youngest and fastest. That's the lock screen service Glance that's on hundreds of millions of smartphones globally. There's also live video app Roposo, which is pressing down the accelerator on its live commerce offerings.All of these are linked together by Naveen Tewari, the co-founder and CEO of InMobi., His entrepreneurial journey has seen numerous pivots, innovations and failures. And an abiding survival instinct honed through first-hand learnings around business and creativity. We begin all the way from mKhoj, Naveen's first tech start up, and trace his journey down to the current day behemoth that InMobi is. Through this journey, there are stories, anecdotes, notes on culture, and in each of them, some first principles. These are the principles that help Naveen look at the world a little differently than the rest of us. We're thankful for the feedback and suggestions you keep sending us with each episode. Please don't stop. If you have thoughts, suggestions, questions we could ask our guests, or even guests you wish to see on the show, please write to us on podcasts@the-ken.com We read every single email that comes in there. 

This time around First Principles makes its way to possibly one of the most fascinating success stories to come out of the Indian start-up space. Zerodha's cofounder Nithin Kamath joins Rohin Dharmakumar in this free wheeling chat about what makes him tick, why he is thankful no one ever invested in his idea early on, thoughts on their early success, and a lot more around building relationships, identifying risks, and seeking opportunities.First Principles is a show where Rohin Dharmakumar, founder and CEO of The Ken, interviews some of the most successful business leaders, and entrepreneurs of our time on the lenses they use to look at the world around them. Lenses that help them see things that most of us don't. You can look at all the other Ken Podcasts here

In this episode of First Principles we speak to Baskar Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Amagi, a profitable unicorn you probably haven't heard about. Yet. Valued at almost 1.5 billion dollars, and a leader in the broadcast-technology domain, Amagi's road to the top wasn't easy, but it definitely makes for a fun listen. Listen to that and more about how Baskar built the company, how he leads life, his thoughts on leadership, parenting, and more.First Principles is a show where Rohin Dharmakumar, founder and CEO of The Ken, interviews some of the most successful business leaders, and entrepreneurs of our time on the lenses they use to look at the world around them. Lenses that help them see things that most of us don't. You can look at all the other Ken Podcasts here

This pilot episode of First Principles features Kabeer Biswas, founder and CEO at Dunzo, one of India's fastest growing quick commerce companies. Kabeer talks about how he navigates failure, accepts feedback, and makes sure that Dunzo is always focused on the things that matter.First Principles is a show where Rohin Dharmakumar, founder and CEO of The Ken, interviews some of the most successful business leaders, and entrepreneurs of our time on the lenses they use to look at the world around them. Lenses that help them see things that most of us don't. You can look at all the other Ken Podcasts here