These days it’s fashionable to have an AI story, no matter what you do. 

But in December 2024, Bajaj Finance took it a few steps further. Instead of calling itself "a lender investing in AI," it started to describe itself as a "FinAI company" - a category of one, which it committed to in a five-year plan to FY29. 

Eighteen months in, no other Indian lender is putting AI on their slides the way Bajaj Finance is. Here are some of them : 31 million voice interactions converted into data last quarter. 27 autonomous agents live, 118 more planned. 600,000 loans on a single Diwali day, up from a pre-AI ceiling of 100,000. 

And next Diwali, they're aiming for a million.

A few years ago, the obvious answer to who would win Indian finance's AI era was the digital natives — PhonePe, CRED, the cloud-born fintechs with no call centres and zero baggage. Instead, the company that started financing two-wheelers and still runs one of India's largest outbound calling operations is out in front. The thing that looked like Bajaj's archaic legacy is turning out to be its moat.

What else did Bajaj Finance have that got it here? 

And how long before the others get there too?

Praveen is joined by Seetharaman G, Deputy Editor at The Ken, who just spent 5.5 hours on Bajaj's history for Intermission, The Ken’s new longform video podcast — and Vasuta Agarwal, Chief Revenue Officer at Gnani.ai, which provides Voice AI to enterprises.

The episode works through four pieces of Bajaj's edge: the data it built around its consumer-durables network, the incentive of being a publicly listed NBFC without access to cheap deposits, the leverage of buying from a voice AI market with dozens of competing vendors, and the DNA that may not be replicable i.e the willingness to fight for every inch, sustained under one CEO since 2007.

References: 

Intermission Ep 2 on Bajaj Finance : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhgvdo9rb0w

Bajaj Finance is the AI bar-raiser, not Indian fintechs:

https://the-ken.com/kaching/bajaj-finance-is-the-ai-bar-raiser-not-indian-fintechs/

In 2017, four ex-Flipkart engineers made a bet that looked seemingly ridiculous at the time. They decided to build a company that let anyone buy mutual funds directly, with no commissions or hidden fees. And then on top of it, they built it as a clean app that made it easy and simple for anyone to start investing.

Nobody thought it would work.

Well, it worked.

Nine years later, Groww is India's largest stockbroker by active clients, its most profitable consumer fintech, and the first major Y Combinator portfolio company in India to go public. ₹1,824 crore net profit in FY25. 83% organic customer acquisition. 81% of users outside the top six metros. A DAU/MAU ratio of 56% which is the kind of number you'd expect from a social media app. It even paid ₹1,340 crore in taxes to move its holding company back from Delaware to India, then listed on Indian public markets at an IPO subscribed 17 times over.

Every decision looked risky at the time and obvious in retrospect.

But Groww in 2026 is not Groww in 2017. The company that built trust by doing one thing exceptionally well is now building lending, wealth management, insurance, and its own AMC. The revenue line that powered its profitability i.e F&O is under regulatory pressure. And every other large consumer platform in India from PhonePe, Dhan, Dream11, Jio Financial are rushing towards the stock broking industry, arriving late to the party Groww built.

Praveen sits down with Anand Kalyanaraman, finance editor of The Ken who has tracked Groww since its earliest days, and Avinash Luthria, founder of Fiduciaries and one of eight SEBI-registered investment advisors who charges only an hourly fee. Praveen comes in with a strong prior — that Groww is one of the most consequential Indian companies of the last decade. His guests are here to disagree and add context to his claim. Anand comes in with the perspective of whether the valuation is justified, and Avinash on whether the business models and incentives that brokerage companies have so far can help them go ahead.

And the question everyone discusses: can the company that won by being simple stay trusted while becoming everything?

Additional reading:

https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/lalit-keshre-groww/

https://the-ken.com/story/growws-ipo-pitch-we-are-more-than-a-discount-broker-investors-really-show-us/

https://the-ken.com/story/get-a-loan-buy-more-stock-groww-and-angel-ones-latest-pitch-to-investors/

The old way to grow as a product designer meant doing the grunt work (button variants, banner sizes, edges cases) until your instincts calibrated.

In the new world, AI does the grunt work, faster and cheaper than any junior designer ever could.

And the numbers reveal this crisis : UX job postings fell 73% between 2022 and 2023. Less than 5% of tech companies hire entry-level design talent.

Rapid changes are afoot and we need some reorientation

So, Praveen met Jay Datta—founder of Designup, Southeast Asia’s largest design conference, and 25 years in design at Deutsche Bank, Adobe, Flipkart, and Makemytrip—and Shreyas Satish, founder of Ownpath, who has spent years trying to rebuild the apprenticeship model from outside the system to discuss that question to answer a big question: how does a 22-year-old build judgement now? 

Eighteen months ago, Hyrox did not exist in India. Last month, 8,200 people paid Rs 9,000 each to do a sled push at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre. Attendees described the event as a “carnival”, and for several weeks, everyone was talking and proudly sharing their Hyrox timings.

If you’re wondering what on earth is going on, well, this episode is for you.

Fitness as an event isn’t new in India. Every wave of participative fitness in India solved something the previous one couldn’t. Marathons gave the urban professional class a finish line and an identity. Crossfit gave them a tribe and a daily ritual. Both peaked, both retreated, both ended up circling the same thin, affluent cohort in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Now Hyrox has arrived, and in one season blown past anything either of those formats built in India. The question is whether Hyrox is the next iteration of the same product, or something fundamentally different.

Then there’s the business side of it. Hyrox is a premium commercial format, with revenue lines through event tickets, a global licensing model, a PUMA deal, and a middleman at every layer between the participant and the finish line. That commercial stack sits on top of a culture that markets itself on community and participation. Does that accelerate the fitness ecosystem or does it extract from it?

And to find out that answer, Praveen Gopal Krishnan sits with two guests:

Prasanna Akela is the cofounder of Belong, a personal training studio in Bengaluru. Before Belong, Prasanna was an early growth leader at companies like CRED, Apple, and Uber India. He’s also competed at the national level in ultimate frisbee and has trained extensively in endurance and strength. He brings the operator’s view: what does someone building a fitness business in India actually see when a global format like Hyrox walks in?

“I’ve not seen this culture of people at scale wanting to get better. Everybody does their first Hyrox. Nobody’s like, how do I do my second Hyrox better than my first one.”

Dilip Kumar leads investments at Rainmatter*, Zerodha’s health and fitness fund, which has deployed over Rs 250 crore across dozens of investments in health and fitness—including Hyrox India, Ironman, and Devil Circuit. He’s also a serious endurance athlete with a 2:55 marathon personal best and a finisher at the Boston Marathon. He has publicly called Hyrox as India’s “2008 IPL moment” for fitness. He came to this conversation with a declared interest and a clear conviction.

“99% of the people are not intrinsically motivated. The invention of all these events kind of expanded that category — and that’s where we started investing.”

Prasanna is building inside the wave and Dilip is investing and betting on it. Both of them are also participants. They competed in last month’s Hyrox event at Bengaluru. The episode tries to find out how long the wave is going to last—and what might happen after that.

*Zerodha’s perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken.

This episode was hosted and produced by Praveen Gopal Krishnan. Rajiv C N, our resident technical producer did the audio production.

“There is no pride in this. Kya karoon (what can I do), I’m just a delivery boy.”

Every time someone raises the topic of gig economy in India, the conversation follows the same script. Side A: this is exploitation. Side B: but employment. And then everyone moves on, nothing changes, and 12 million people keep showing up every morning to deliver your groceries.

This episode tries to push past that script. Sid Pai, co-founder of Bengaluru-based consulting firm UK & Co., joins Praveen and Rahel to go through a new report—India’s Gig Economy: The Promise and the Paradox—based on conversations with 1,355 gig workers across Karnataka. The numbers are granular in ways you don’t usually see: working hours, screen time, savings rates, and one metric borrowed from product management that turns out to be damning. You can guess which one.

The question they start with i.e. “what breaks first if things continue this way?” doesn’t have a clean answer. The more unsettling finding might be that 95% of gig workers report being satisfied with their income even when 52% of them have zero savings. Understanding why that contradiction exists, and what it’s actually holding together, is what this episode is really about.

You can see the report here.

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This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

What happened to the company that once understood India better than anyone else? 

For decades Hindustan Unilever has dominated kitchen pantries and bathroom cabinets across the country: Surf Excel in the laundry, Brooke Bond in the kitchen, Clinic Plus in the bathroom.  It was the undisputed gold standard of brand building in this country. 

Well, until it wasn’t. 

Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, a journalist shared a chart from an HSBC report on social media.The chart listed some of HUL's biggest brands — Ponds, Lux, Rin, Lifebuoy, Kissan, Surf, Glow & Lovely, Vim, Bru — and showed where each of them stood ten years ago versus today.

Turns out, most of them have barely grown, if at all. Something has shifted at the company that was once India's consumption barometer. The brands that generate genuine excitement today aren't HUL brands. More often than not, they are scrappy D2C upstarts that, on paper, shouldn't stand a chance against a behemoth like HUL.

In the latest episode of Two By Two, we try to answer one simple question: Are HUL's best days behind it?

Two By Two hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rahel Philipose are joined by Seetharaman G, Deputy Editor at The Ken and Sandeep Nair, co-founder of marketing consultancy firm, David and Who. Both of them see this story play out in opposite ways. And that's where it gets interesting. 

Tune in.

Read more:
- Is HUL still the envy of the FMCG world?

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This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

"Of course BHIM is giving crazy cashbacks. That's where I pay my bills."

That's not a BHIM fan but a product head at a competing UPI app.

After demonetisation hit in 2016, India desperately needed a way to go cashless overnight. UPI existed but barely anyone was using it. Banks were dragging their feet and private players were too small and too few. So, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) built an entire payments app in weeks and put the Prime Minister behind it. BHIM clocked 10 million downloads in just 10 days. 

But just as quietly, NPCI put it to sleep and the private players took the bait.

Fast forward to today, PhonePe and Google Pay between them own over 80% of all UPI transactions. Two American-backed companies are winning on the very road NPCI laid, while the architect has 0.8% market share on its own railway.

So BHIM is back. With MS Dhoni as brand ambassador, cashbacks flying left, right and centre and a stated goal of hitting 5% market share. 
But can a government app out-app the giants it created? And why is it back and why now?

Rahel Philipose and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Arundhati Ramanathan, deputy editor at The Ken who wrote the original BHIM story in 2017, and Abhishek Madan, co-founder of Alt Inc and former VP of product at Paytm, to find out.

Read more:

- The unlikely story of BHIM, the upsetter of plans by Arundhati Ramanathan (25 January 2017)

- NPCI resurrects its own UPI payments app dreams with Bhim by Arundhati Ramanathan (19 March 2026)

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

"This is our Frankenstein. We made it. And now it's left the room." 

A cricketer said this about the IPL and our guest, Sharda Ugra, India's most respected cricket journalist with thirty years of covering the game, brought it to our studio. And honestly, we couldn't think of a better way to open this episode.

Last week, RCB and Rajasthan Royals sold for nearly $3 billion combined. With private equity in the building, it looks like the IPL has never looked bigger, richer or more untouchable. But something is off.

The broadcaster paid $6 billion for rights and is bleeding $2 billion. On the other hand, the media rights that fund 80% of every franchise's revenue are projected to flatline and the most perfect advertiser IPL ever had, real money gaming, just got banned.

So we did what any sensible person would do and called Sharda.

In what was honestly one of the most electric studio sessions we've had on Two by Two, Sharda brought 18 years of institutional memory while Praveen Gopal Krishnan brought the business lens and Rahel Philipose asked every question you'd want to ask if you had Sharda across from you for 90 minutes.

The IPL cannot fail. But can it figure out how to succeed? That's what this episode is really about.

Read more:

- Sharda's 2008 India Today piece titled 'Changing the rules'.

- Sumit Chakraborty's piece in The Ken titled 'What private equity sees in IPL...'.
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Last week, Rapido launched Ownly, its zero commission food delivery app and went straight for Swiggy and Zomato's throat.

This is the same company that dismantled the Uber-Ola duopoly with just a simpler model, cheaper rides, and a very different idea of what India actually needs.

Their weapon this time is zero commission. They're betting on restaurants that are fed up, customers who want cheaper food, and a rider fleet that's already in place.

So we got Kunal Khattar, the investor who backed Rapido from day one and made 88x on that bet to break down whether lightning can strike twice. We also have Gautam Balijepalli, who runs one of the largest cloud kitchen operations in India and tells us what it looks like from the restaurant side.

Along with our guests, Rahel Philipose and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss, can Rapido steal a bite from Swiggy and Zomato? Or is food delivery a completely different beast?
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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mix and mastered by Rajiv CN.

If you liked this episode, 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.

Last year, when Trump's tariffs blindsided the world, we called Mohit Satyanand. He made sense of the chaos before most people had even figured out what to panic about.

This time, we didn't wait.

A war broke out in the Middle East, the Strait of Hormuz closed, and within days India was rationing cooking gas, cancelling flights and watching the rupee slip. Everyone has an opinion, but Mohit has something rarer. He has his skin in the game. As an investor who has spent decades watching India's economy up close, his question isn't what happened. It is what it reveals about India's deepest, oldest vulnerabilities.

He explains the oil dependency we've ignored for 50 years. How we have seven days of strategic reserves nobody talks about. The remittances that hold up millions of households. And the uncomfortable truth that none of this should have caught us off guard.

In this episode of Two by Two, Mohit sits down with Rahel Philipose and Praveen Gopal Krishnan to answer not what is happening, but what it means for India and for how long.
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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Uddantika Kashyap.

If you liked this episode, 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.

Most businesses die quietly. They miss a wave, lose relevance and fade out.

Healthify nearly got hit by two in quick succession. First, AI that could do what took the company years to build. Then, a drug which meant you didn't need the discipline anymore.

So Rahel Philipose and Praveen Gopal Krishnan asked Tushar Vashisht, Healthify's co-founder and CEO, the uncomfortable question directly: if anyone can build an AI coach and a drug can kill your appetite, what exactly are you selling?

This episode is really about three things most people don't know. 
One, why people who take Ozempic without a lifestyle program gain almost all the weight back within a year. 
Two, what actually happens to a platform business when AI replaces one entire side of it. 
And three, why Tushar believes his most dangerous competitor hasn't been founded yet.

We were also joined by Professor R Srinivasan from IIM Bangalore, who had a very different read on whether Healthify's bet is genius or cope.
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

"They are not disloyal. They are unforgiving."

Sector by sector, a new generation of brands is doing the same thing by ignoring millennials entirely and going straight for Gen Z. Zepto did it to Blinkit. Snabbit is doing it to Urban Company. The thesis is simple: Gen Z has no loyalty to the old guard, so steal them first and use them as a wedge to crack the rest of the market open.

But is that actually true? And if you do win them, can you hold them?

Our guest Adarsh Menon has put Fireside Ventures' money behind this question. His portfolio includes brands that have read this generation inside out. On the other hand Ajay Thandi built Sleepy Owl without a single marketer on the founding team and ended up with a brand Gen Z and millennials claim as their own.

The most interesting thing they land on isn't about Gen Z at all. It's about aspiration and how it stopped pointing upward. This generation doesn't want to be the person above them. They want to be the person next to them. That one shift changes everything about how you build a brand.

Turns out the most fickle generation might be the most loyal one you've ever had. If you deserve it.

Further reading

- Fireside Ventures — The Indian Consumer at 2030

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mix and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Quick question: Would you give someone your money for ten years if they promised you'd get back roughly what an FD would give you? And they'd also take 2% of your money every single year, no matter what happens, plus 20% of any profits at the end.

You'd laugh them out of the room, right? Well, that's venture capital.

Peak XV lost three of its partners. Ashish Agarwal who backed Groww, Ishan Mittal who invested in Razorpay and Tejasvi Sharma who bet on Cred. These guys crushed it and they still walked out over "disagreements on economics and payouts."

That's when we realized: this isn't a Peak XV problem but a VC industry problem that nobody wants to admit. So we brought in Mayank Bansal, a hedge fund manager who pulled the actual numbers: Crisil data, Peak XV's fund performance, small cap index returns, FDs. All of it. Joining us is also Arundhati Ramanathan, deputy editor at The Ken, who's been tracking these partner exits closely.

Mayank's take? "What is happening in the VC industry currently is they are charging the profit shares of that Medallion fund while returning less than index funds, which is blasphemous."

Most Indian VC funds are charging 36% profit share to deliver 12% returns while a small cap index fund gave 13.35% over the same period which you can withdraw anytime. So why do the smartest investors in the world keep putting money into this? Why does two and twenty still exist?

Fair warning, this episode is number-heavy. We've linked the reports in the show notes so you can follow along. But the punchline is simple: venture capital in India might just be an overpriced underperforming asset class nobody's willing to admit is broken.

Listen to find out why the exits are just beginning.
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Additional resources:
1. Accel India's fund returns (Newcomer, paywalled)

2. Crisil's AIF Benchmarks Report

3. Indian VCs’ boss wants them to take a pay cut by Arundhati Ramanathan

4. India's VCs are getting disrupted… by India's tax-payers by Praveen Gopal Krishnan

5. The invisible whale that capsized India’s leaky options boats- Two by Two episode 51
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

If you are in your 20s or 30s in India right now, things probably feel a little weird. The headlines say the country is a rocket ship, but your reality might be hiring freezes and stagnant salaries.

To understand why, we sat down with someone who actually moves the money. Since the 1990s, Rohit Chopra, portfolio manager/analyst at Lazard Asset Management, has managed billions of dollars across emerging markets: from Brazil to Korea to China and India. He doesn't look at the Indian market with pride or pessimism but with one question: is this the best place on Earth for his clients' money right now?

In this episode of Two by Two, Rahel Philipose and Rohin Dharmakumar dig into Rohit’s playbook. They discuss how he identifies "the Holy Grail" of businesses, why capital has been leaving India recently, and which sectors will actually define the next decade. 

If you have ever wanted to sit across from a global fund manager and get the uncomfortable truth about where India really stands, this is the conversation you’ve been waiting for.
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Last week, nearly ₹2 lakh crore vanished from Indian IT stocks in just four days. A big reason was Anthropic's new product, Claude Cowork. Suddenly investors were confronted with an unsettling reality: what if the work Indian IT has long depended on is now the easiest to automate?

For almost 20 years, India's IT giants have been unstoppable compounding machines. They built empires worth hundreds of billions of dollars by doing one thing very well: renting out smart people by the hour to write code and run technology for Western clients. But when code starts to write itself, what happens to these companies?

Conversations about IT services usually lump all these firms together, as if they are the same business with different logos. 

In this episode, we break them apart. We ask a simple but uncomfortable question: in an AI-first world, who thrives and who gets left behind? We take five of the biggest IT services firms in India's orbit—TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Tech and Cognizant—and rank them on who is best placed right now for what's coming next. Spoiler: the answer is not what the last 20 years of market-cap tables would suggest.

To do this, we brought in two people who have lived this industry from the inside.

Krishnakumar Natarajan co-founded Mindtree in 1999 and built it into a multi-billion dollar global IT services firm. He later chaired NASSCOM and now runs Mela Ventures, where he backs early-stage deep tech and enterprise startups.

Vivek Kant spent over two decades in IT services across Tech Mahindra and Cognizant, then moved to the other side of the table as CTO at Bajaj Markets and as an advisor at Boston Consulting Group. He still codes 3-4 hours a day using AI. You can check out his blogs here.

The board is set. The King, the Rook, the Knight, and the Bishop. The question is: who makes the first move?
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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer. 

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Software engineering as we knew it is over and the entry-level job has vanished. So what do you tell someone graduating today?

This question splits even the experts. Arnav Gupta, Engineering Manager at Meta and co-founder of Coding Blocks, argues the knowledge must compress. He says that the future belongs to those who adapt fast and embrace the AI tools.
Meanwhile Abhay Saraf, Director at Bushel Technologies and ex-Microsoft, pushes back hard. He believes you cannot build a calculator and stop teaching multiplication. The fundamentals matter more than ever, even if it takes longer to learn them.

Together with co-hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rahel Philipose, they break down what skills actually matter now, why typing still beats voice coding, and whether engineering college should be two years or ten. The answers might surprise you.
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Similar episode:
Episode 6 Is the golden era of the (software) engineer over?

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

PhonePe leads nearly half of India's UPI transactions, but as it gears up for a $1.3 billion IPO, a tough question looms: can a company built to defend its lead ever learn to make real profit?

In this episode, Rohin Dharmakumar argues that PhonePe's dominance might actually be a strategic trap. With zero-margin transactions and shifting regulations, the next ten years cannot look like the last. To win, PhonePe must decide whether it's willing to risk its crown to become a bold market creator. Will it evolve into an aggressive disruptor like Zomato, or remain a safe, boring utility like PayPal?

Joining co-hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan is Arundhati Ramanathan, Deputy Editor at The Ken and resident fintech expert. Arundhati recently published a story on January 26 titled 'Should PhonePe be worth more than Paytm's $7.9B?' which dives deep into the company's valuation puzzle. We also introduce a new voice to the 2x2 team: Rahel Philipose joins as our third co-host to help unravel the cultural and strategic shifts required for PhonePe's survival.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Uddantika Kashyap mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

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Additional resources:

- Platform ambitions: The story of how Ispirit lost its true north by Rohin Dharmakumar
- The unlikely story of BHIM, the upsetter of plans by Arundhati Ramanathan
- Naryana Health's Viren Shetty on learning 'how much insurance is about selling and how little about health' by Seema Singh
- Two by Two episode 1: Will Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe becomes flipkart?

Swiggy has launched Noice, a private label brand that's popping up across categories on Instamart. But is this a genuine brand-building play or just another experiment destined for Swiggy's product graveyard?

In this episode, co-hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Sandeep Nair, co-founder of brand strategy consultancy David & Who and former Swiggy marketing director, and Mrunmayi Oke, SVP of Strategy at Zilo and former head of business at Dunzo. Together, they debate whether Noice is Swiggy's answer to Kirkland or closer to Amazon Solimo with ‘truck-style’ packaging.

The conversation explores short-term performance metrics and long-term brand building, why most private labels fail, what makes retailers like Costco and Aldi succeed, and whether Swiggy has the organizational discipline to stick with this strategy. They also discuss the economics of private labels and what it takes to build a brand that consumers actually trust.
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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.
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Additional reading:

1. Swiggy used to be a playground for innovation. Now, it’s a graveyard by Gaurav Bagur

2. Pepsi’s biggest bottler is pouring more cola to fight Reliance’s Campa by Aakriti Bhalla

3.  Two by Two episode 5- Swiggy needs to reclaim its past glory

4. Two by Two episode 26- Zomato, Swiggy, and the rise of the 10-minute "dark" cafe

5. Two by Two episode 45- Are we seeing the unbundling of quick commerce?

6. Two by Two episode 72- Can Urban Company avoid BigBasket’s fate?

Urban Company has spent years building trust as the go-to platform for home services. But a new generation of founders is now using the Zepto playbook to target its most profitable segments. On Two by Two this week, Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Arpit Agarwal, a partner at Blume Ventures.

The conversation explores the wedge strategy: how specialized startups like Snabbit and Dazzl are driving deep into specific categories like household help and beauty services. Arpit explains why horizontal giants are often wired like sloths, making it difficult for them to stay nimble when a fast moving dragonfly startup attacks a single category.

The hosts also discuss the operational shift from scheduled slots to instant supply. They look at how these new players are treating human labor as an engineering problem, using heat maps and demand prediction to promise services in minutes. But can you actually standardize a home cleaning or a cooking service without losing quality?

It is a deep dive into the battle for your living room and whether efficiency will eventually take over brand loyalty.
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This episode of was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Running a successful restaurant is hard. Scaling one without losing what made it special is even harder.

This week on Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar talk to two people who are deep in that fight: Sameer Seth, founder and CEO of Hunger Inc. Hospitality (The Bombay Canteen, O Pedro, Veronica's, Papa's, Bombay Sweet Shop), and Karan Kapur, Executive Director of K Hospitality Group (Copper Chimney, Bombay Brasserie, The Irish House).

The conversation starts with why restaurants are so difficult to scale. Real estate is expensive and hard to find. Tastes change across cities as India isn't one market, it's several. And unlike other businesses, restaurants have to produce and serve the product at the exact same moment, which makes consistency brutal.

Sameer and Karan walk through the transition every restaurateur has to make: from artist (creating the magic of the first restaurant) to scientist (building systems that let you do it again and again without losing the soul). They talk about diversification and why Sameer kept all his brands in Mumbai while expanding formats. Also why Karan thinks the big inflection point won't come until India's GDP per capita hits $5,000, which he estimates will be around 2032.

They then discuss micro-dining. Pappas serves just 12 people, four times a week, and it works because Veronica's next door serves 300 and pays the rent. They talk about why Bombay Sweet Shop started as a Willy Wonka-style mithai factory. And they tackle the bigger question in the end: in an age where everything comes to your door in 10 minutes, what will keep people going out to restaurants?

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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 or comment below.

2025 is done. Forty-eight episodes. Hundreds of guests. Endless banter between Rohin and Praveen.

This year, Two by Two covered stories from Bengaluru to the world including business, tech, and everything in between. We didn't just stick to the usual. We asked about people, trends, and the things others weren't paying attention to. We brought on guests who didn't rehearse their answers and tried to make sense of things as they happened.

Some episodes turned out to be prescient. Some were messy. Some sparked arguments in our inbox. All of them tried to do what we set out to do: spot hidden connections, ask unasked questions, and figure out what's really going on.

This final episode is Rohin looking back at six moments from the year with clips from conversations that stood out. Between each one, he adds context and some behind-the-scenes perspective on why it mattered.

Here are the episodes featured:

1. Episode 26: Zomato, Swiggy, and the rise of the 10-minute "dark" café
2. Episode 31: Airtel fights spammers. And Truecaller's business model
3. Episode 47: Who broke Bengaluru, and how do we fix our cities?
4. Episode 50: In an AI age, India does not have an open source strategy
5. Episode 51: The invisible whale that capsized India's leaky options boats
6. Episode 66: What will bring ambition back from the dead?

To everyone who listened, argued with us, sent guest suggestions, or just stuck around, thank you. Next year, we're coming back with everything that makes Two by Two what it is, but bigger and better. Maybe even a few surprises. Stay tuned.

There won't be an episode next Thursday. We will return on January 8th, 2026.

See you in the new year.
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. If you have suggestions for guests, episodes or even changes we could make. Please write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com or comment below.

As we try to wind down this year, Rohin and Praveen do something they’ve never done before: go through every single episode they recorded this year. All 48 of them. In 60 minutes.

The rules were simple. Each host had 10 points to build their personal top 10 list for the year. No take-backs, and no pre-discussion. It was a completely live, vibe-based recording where they figured it out as they went.

What follows is a rapid-fire sprint through the year. From Amazon India’s struggles to the electric car slowdown, from B-school placements to the rise of quick commerce dark stores, and from Razorpay versus Juspay to the chaos of concert infrastructure in India. They cover it all—the hits, the misses, the prescient calls, and the episodes they wish had gone differently.

Along the way, they debate whether episodes were too speculative, too early, or just not memorable enough. By the end, they’re locked in a tight race with only five episodes left and one point each remaining.

Because it wouldn't be Two by Two without a matrix, we plotted the results of their debate. Take a look at the graphic to see which episodes they both loved (the green zone) versus their personal favourites.

It is chaotic, nostalgic, and a perfect preview of what 2025 looked like through the lens of Two by Two.

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

With 48 episodes in the books, this is the perfect starting point for anyone looking to catch up on the defining business stories of 2025. If you liked this sprint through the year, please share it with someone who loves a good deep dive. 

Have your own "vibe-based" arguments about our list? We’re all ears. Reach out at twobytwo@the-ken.com or leave a comment.

Swiggy just raised a billion dollars in its IPO last year. Now it needs another ₹10,000 crores. That's not a great sign.

On Two by Two this week, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar try to make sense of the chaos in India's quick commerce space. Joining them are Ashwin Mehta, head of research at Ambit Capital, and Anand Kalyanaraman, finance editor at The Ken.

Here's what happened: Zepto suddenly dropped all fees, forcing Swiggy to scramble and match. Blinkit's CEO is out there declaring the bubble could burst any day now, even though his company is comfortably winning. And everyone's burning cash like there's no tomorrow.

The conversation breaks down why this sector is heading for trouble. They argue India can only support around 12,000 dark stores, and we're already at 70% of that. They discuss why Swiggy keeps reacting to what Zepto does instead of leading its own way. And here's a striking stat: the average quick commerce user spends ₹45,000 a year per household. That tells you exactly who this market is really for and why it might be more limited than everyone thinks.

It's a messy race where nobody's backing down and the next 12 months will decide who survives.
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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 or comment below.

That's Kosturi Ghosh, partner at Tri-Legal, explaining why she almost didn't show up for this podcast. It's a revealing admission and one that gets to the heart of why business and tech podcasts have such a lopsided gender problem.

This week on Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar do something uncomfortable: they examine their own track record. Joined by Kosturi and Swapnika Nag, co-founder and CEO of Periscope, they confront the fact that 95% of guests on Two by Two have been men.

A recent USC Annenberg study found that business and tech podcasts have the worst gender split of any genre—92.3% male guests. The conversation explores why this happens, from relying on existing networks and the challenges of cold outreach, to the fact that women are held to different standards when speaking publicly. They also debate whether this is even a problem worth solving, given that the representation issue starts much earlier—in boardrooms, founder circles, and senior leadership positions.

The group discusses what can be done differently: building trust over time and being more intentional about guest planning. They also touch on imposter syndrome and why men seem more comfortable winging it. 

It's a moment of self-reflection with no easy answers, but plenty of ideas on how to do better in 2026.

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Additional readings:

USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (November 2025)

Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility among India’s Professional Elite by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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 or comment below.

This week on Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar dissect Meesho's strategy with Adarsh Menon (partner at Fireside Ventures and former head of Shopsy at Flipkart) and Ganesh Nagasekar (founder of GSN Invest).

Fresh off filing its DRHP, Meesho has gotten here by doing everything differently. Zero commission when competitors charged fees. Optimizing for cost when others raced for speed. Building a logistics arm that slashed delivery costs. All while serving 210 million middle-class customers that Flipkart and Amazon had largely ignored.

The conversation explores what actually sets Meesho apart—is it the data science powering three-quarters of its orders, the seller economics that let merchants triple revenue in a year, or something else? And more importantly, where does it go from here? The group debates whether Meesho should push deeper into logistics, experiment with content commerce, or solve the cash-on-delivery mess that's creating hidden costs across the business.

Sections:
1. What makes Meesho different?
2. The zero commission bet 
3. Valmo: Building a logistics business from scratch
4. Where it goes next
5. Meesho as India's Walmart

This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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 or comment below.

This week, Two by Two debuts a new format: "Reverse engineering the playbook."

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan attempt to crack the math behind this recent wave of AI-telco partnerships in India. Why are companies like Perplexity, Google, and OpenAI racing to bundle their expensive premium subscriptions with Airtel, Jio, and Phonepe? 

To decode the economics, they are joined by two industry experts with firsthand experience managing these exact types of deals: Chandrashekhar Vattikuti (ex-CPO of Inmobi and SVP of their Telco Cloud business) and Prakash Deep Maheshwari (head of product at Grab and former director of growth for Netflix in India and Southeast Asia).

The group explores whether Indian telcos are desperate for differentiation or simply cashing in on a gold rush where the smartest move is to sell shovels–or in this case, subscribers. Prakash argues this is a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma: once one telco bundles an AI service, the others have no choice but to follow.

They also break down the actual structure of these deals, from minimum guarantees to the marketing halo the partnerships create. The conversation gets into why OpenAI likely entered these deals "kicking and screaming" to protect its platform ambitions, while Chandra offers a reality check on whether these massive user numbers will actually stick around once the free periods end.

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Episodes referenced in the conversation:

1. ‘Do we even need product managers?’- Two by Two episode 13 with Chandrashekhar Vattikuti

2. ‘Threat models, using taste to defend margins, ChatGPT’s ‘collab’ with Phonepe’- Zero Shot episode 9

Sections:

00:00 – The ‘Reverse engineering’ experiment

04:36 – Are telcos becoming just dumb pipes? 

13:14 – The gold rush for subscribers 

29:51 – How these deals are actually structured 

47:38 – Why OpenAI resisted these partnerships 

58:09 – Will users actually stick around?
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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 or comment below.

The popular narrative often blames Gen Z for a lack of ambition, but is it the millennials who are truly suffering from “ambition fatigue”?

This week on Two by Two, the conversation takes its lead from The Ken’s deputy editor, Arundhati Ramanathan’s recent and concerning article, “Indian Tech Companies are Spawning an Ambitionless Generation”.

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down to discuss how to solve this cross-generational problem and bring the “fire back in the belly”, with or without burning the midnight lamp. 

They explore the striking ambition gap between driven founders/CEOs and their often-indifferent employees. Is this growing apathy a fault of the corporate environment and a lack of opportunity, or is the responsibility for finding purpose solely on the individual?

Can the corporate world reignite ambition, and can it truly rise from the dead? Joining the hosts to tackle this multifold issue are three experts:

Gaston Schmitz 

Gaston is a partner/executive and founder coach at the Asian Leadership Institute, guiding senior executives at Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startup founders across 30+ countries. With over 20,000 hours of experience, he employs a personalised approach rooted in mindfulness and neuroscience to help leaders expand their perspective and identify blind spots. 

Vipul Nanda

Vipul is the director of product marketing at Databahn. His professional history includes significant roles at major fintech platforms, including a tenure as director of product marketing at Cashfree Payments and product marketing manager at Razorpay. Additionally, Nanda is the co-founder of the GoPMM community for product marketers in India and holds an advisory position with Antler.

Arundhati Ramanathan

Arundhati is the deputy editor at The Ken. Based in Bengaluru, she is a seasoned journalist who focuses on in-depth, long-form stories about India's startup ecosystem, entrepreneurship, and the fintech industry. Her work often explores the significant trends and challenges impacting the tech landscape, such as venture capital, founder strategies, and shifts in workforce dynamics.

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Additional reading:

‘Indian Tech Companies are Spawning an Ambitionless Generation’ by Arundhati Ramanathan
https://the-ken.com/story/indian-tech-companies-are-spawning-an-ambitionless-generation/?t=251112092335

Last episode Gaston was in- ‘Where AI can and can’t replace human coaching’
https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/where-ai-can-and-cant-replace-human-coaching/

Warren Buffet’s shareholder letters
https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

Marshall Goldsmith’s 6 daily questions
https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/post/six-daily-questions

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers by Patrick Lencioni
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/749937.The_Three_Signs_of_a_Miserable_Job

Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infinite_Games

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This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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.

What is the “listing pop” that everyone is chasing, and does it still matter six months later? This simple question is the starting point for a deep look into the current boom in the Indian Initial Public Offering (IPO) market. Despite a massive influx of investor wealth, the standards for companies going public have significantly dropped. 

In this episode of Two by Two, co-hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by their colleagues, The Ken’s finance editor, Anand Kalyanaraman, and deputy editor, Seetharaman G to explore how the initial “IPO event” relates to a company’s long-term performance. They discuss how high valuations from private investors are merely being validated at the public listing. They also examine the rise of “flipping”—the practice of quickly selling IPO shares for a profit—a tactic now accepted by many large institutions as just part of “the game”. 

The episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, particularly what IPO companies did we miss out on that you know are living happily ever after, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com. We’d love to hear from you.

What’s the dumbest thing about hospitals that we still tolerate in 2025? This simple question kicks off a deep dive into the broken core of the Indian healthcare system. From confusing X-ray pricing and misaligned incentives that prioritise “sick-care” over healthcare, to the irritating experience of endless queues and fragmented records, the problems are deeply entrenched in the system. 

In this episode of Two by Two, co-hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar talk to two founders who are not just trying to patch the system, but rebuild it from the ground up. Varun Dubey of Superhealth and Mayank Banerjee of Even Healthcare are both creating smaller, hyperlocal, and experience-focused hospitals. They break down how they’re unbundling the bloated cost structures of traditional hospitals, redesigning the patient journey, and realigning incentives by putting doctors on full-time salaries with ESOPs. 

The conversation explores the difficulty of disrupting the current healthcare system and the challenges of scaling innovative models that prioritise patient well-being and affordability. 

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com. We’d love to hear from you.

In this episode of Two by Two, we map out a viable AI strategy for India that plays to its unique strengths, not its weaknesses. Co-hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Chaitanya Chokkareddy, co-founder and CTO of Ozonetel–a cloud-based communication platform providing call-centre solutions—who presents a contrarian view: India’s current focus on acquiring GPUs is a flawed, capital-intensive race it cannot win. Instead, the real, defensible moat lies in India’s cultural and linguistic data.

We dive deep into why a “data sets over GPUs” strategy is crucial to prevent the cultural exclusion of a billion people, how it impacts the very way we learn and feel, and why India’s massive IT services industry is sitting on a goldmine for building the next generation of AI agents.

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com. We’d love to hear from you.

*****

Additional reading

Airtel fights spammers. And Truecaller's business model

In this episode, we sit down with Ishendra Agarwal, founder and CEO of Giva, to unpack his mission to democratise fine jewellery in India. We look at how Giva is rapidly scaling its omnichannel presence with over 270 stores and targeting Rs 850 crore in revenue, all while catering to the modern consumer’s desire for accessible, fashionable pieces. 

Co-hosts of Two by Two Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan take a deep dive into the transitioning shift caused by lab-grown diamonds (LGDs). The conversation tackles one core industry debate: can LGDs, dismissed by some legacy players, ever hold emotional value as heirlooms, or are they purely a fashion statement? Ishendra also makes an emphasis on the importance of brand and design and how they will be the ultimate differentiators in a commoditising market. 

We also explore Giva’s operational innovations, from using AI in design to their “Giva Go” quick-commerce model for last-minute gifting. For anyone interested in consumer brands, market disruption, and the future of the jewellery, this is an unmissable discussion.

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com. We’d love to hear from you.

India’s fintech-based NBFC lending sector offers many lessons. Three early pioneers—Capital Float (now Axio), Zestmoney, and Lendingkart—raised significant amounts of venture capital, built solid momentum, and achieved growth and penetration. They pivoted, explored multiple opportunities, and yet, ultimately had to sell out. 

In this episode of Two by Two, co-hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by guests Shivashish Chatterjee, co-founder of DMI Group, and Arundhati Ramanathan, The Ken’s deputy editor. Together, they discuss the business models of these lenders—including balance sheet lending and the rise of “buy now, pay later”—and what lessons can be learned for the future of India’s fintech lending ecosystem.

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Additional reading

Axio—a fintech dream comes to an end https://the-ken.com/kaching/axio-a-fintech-dream-comes-to-an-end/

In this episode of Two by Two, co-hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Ayyappan Rajagopal, founder and CEO of the quick-commerce platform Firstclub. A veteran of India’s e-commerce sector with leadership roles at Flipkart, Myntra, and Cleartrip, Ayyappan shares his vision for a differentiated experience in the crowded quick-commerce market. While existing platforms are highly transactional and compete on speed and discounts, Firstclub aims to be a curated, discovery-led platform offering high-quality products. 

For brands, Firstclub positions itself not just as a retailer, but as an extended distributor and brand-building partner. It works closely with brands, associating only with those whose stature and target consumers align with its curated vision. 

For consumers, Firstclub is drawing inspiration from the Costco model by planning a membership-based system to build a loyal customer base and offer superior products at better value. 

Delve into this conversation to understand how Firstclub is carving out its unique space in the quick-commerce landscape. 

*****

Additional reading

1,500 stories about India’s complex relationships with Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, Zepto, and Bigbasket
Are we seeing the unbundling of quick commerce?

In this episode, co-hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar sit down with Munaf Kapadia (VP of growth and marketing, Natfirst), and Arjun Anjaria (founder, Unbox Health) to discuss the challenge posed by misleading food labels in India and the resulting deterioration in consumer trust. 

Unbox Health uses independent lab testing to verify product claims, creating an objective D to A+ rating scale based on label accuracy, toxicity, and nutritional profile. While Natfirst, and its consumer app Truthin, interpret the data already on product labels—analysing ingredients, additives, and processing levels—to provide a simple 1 to 5 star rating with the goal of empowering “conscious consumers” who want to know what’s in their food. 

Arjun and Munaf, with several years of combined expertise in this domain, help us understand the rocky terrain of consumer labeling in India by breaking down the current regulatory landscape, the ineffectiveness of existing penalties for mislabeling, and much more.

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com. We’d love to hear from you.

How does the India head of a global, category-creating giant view its future in arguably its most complex market?

In this candid episode of Two by Two, we sit down with Prabhjeet Singh, the president of Uber India and South Asia, to deconstruct the company’s biggest strategic challenges and ambitions in the country.

Prabhjeet breaks down Uber’s “barbell strategy”—a delicate balance of serving both premium customers with services like Uber Black and cost-conscious users with affordable options. We dive deep into the evolving competitive landscape, moving beyond the traditional Uber vs. Ola duopoly to discuss the disruption from players like Rapido and Namma Yatri, who are challenging the commission-based business model. Prabhjeet addresses how Uber navigates this complex environment, including the tricky regulatory and taxation issues that create a non-level playing field.

The conversation expands to Uber’s grander vision as a multi-modal platform, not just a ride-hailing app. Prabhjeet reveals a surprising insight: Uber’s courier service is now one of its fastest-growing verticals in India, born from a “hack” during the pandemic. We also explore innovative new revenue streams, from the recently launched Uber Teens for secure rides to a fascinating new feature allowing driver-partners to earn extra income by completing AI-based micro-tasks during their downtime.

Finally, we touch upon the long-term future, discussing the viability of self-driving cars on Indian roads and the constant push-and-pull of regulatory innovation. This is a rare, unfiltered look into the operational and strategic engine of Uber India as it navigates growth, competition, and its own evolution.

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

While India produces millions of graduates every year, the stark reality is that many remain underemployed, and some are increasingly turning unemployable. Contrary to popular belief, this is not merely a problem facing social science or non-STEM students. Data from the past decade shows that 40% to 50% of engineering graduates from Indian universities have not been placed in jobs, underlining the worrying gap between academic education and industry requirements. This is just one of the challenges India’s youth face in transitioning from a fairly uniform school system to career-oriented education. 

Aggravating this issue is the critical gap in career awareness among Indian students. While the modern economy offers over 20,000 career paths, 93% of students are familiar with only seven traditional roles, including doctor, engineer, lawyer, or teacher. 

This mismatch between what traditional degrees offer and modern job-market demands is the focus of this animated episode of Two by Two, where co-hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by two experts in the field of education—Maheshwer Peri, founder and CEO of Careers360, and Abhishek Ghosh, clinical researcher and career counsellor at No Herd Mentality.

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer. 

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

*****
Additional reading:
India’s demographic dividend as a time bomb

Abhishek Ghosh’s blog: No Herd Mentality

Whatsapp is the fastest and the best way to reach hundreds of millions of Indians, which makes it a dream distribution channel for everybody. But its owner Meta maintains an iron grip on its APIs, pricing, and policies, making it a risky place to build. This is Whatsapp’s double life. 

This deadlock is why Whatsapp is universally used but not universally loved by India’s users. It’s why startups have an opportunity in front of them, but one shrouded in doubt. 

In this episode, we have two wonderful founders who are building companies on top of Whatsapp and have their own reasons to try to break this deadlock. Swapnika Nag is co-founder and CEO of Periskope, an AI platform supercharging sales and operations on Whatsapp, and Dharmesh Ba is founder of October Chat, which builds AI agents for Whatsapp. With co-hosts, Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, they unravel the risks and rewards of building on one of the world’s most popular messaging apps.  

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer. 

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

Additional reading

Dharmesh Ba’s substack: https://newsletter.theindianotes.com/

Launched in 2016, UPI now dominates retail digital payments in India, accounting for over 80% of the volume and processing a massive 300 million transactions every month. What began as a government-funded project is now a public utility. 

Unlike private companies like Visa or Mastercard, government-funded entities like the Internet or the World Wide Web are not typically judged in terms of profitability. Their vast economic and innovative benefits far outweigh their costs. Viewing UPI through a profit-making lens is simply the wrong approach. 

In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by two vocal experts—Alok Prasanna, co-founder of Vidhi Legal, and Ateesh Tankha, CEO and co-founder of Alsowise Content Solutions—to dissect the sustainability and future of UPI in India. 

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer. 

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

*****
Additional reading

Alok’s Linkedin post
UPI can be forever or free—not both
UPI wants to go international, but it isn't built for it (yet)
The mystery of usury

In this episode of Two by Two, we discuss pest control. 

It’s an old industry with little to no innovation, but there’s reason to take notice.

Currently valued at $1.8 billion, the market is projected to grow to $3.1 billion by 2033, clocking a steady annual growth rate of 15%.

Private equity wants in. Two service providers have been acquired by UK-based Rentokil. One is Pest Control India (PCI), which was once the market leader. The other is Hicare, which was the second-largest player.

Hicare’s journey is particularly interesting. It was launched by Godrej in 2004 with the help of Arumugham Mahendran, whose mosquito-repellant business was acquired by Godrej in 1994. Then, it was sold to ISS, a Danish firm, in 2013. Later, it was acquired by a private equity fund called IVFA (now True North). True North held it for 10 years before selling it to Rentokil last year. 

Meanwhile, Pecopp is another pest control company that is leaving a mark. Founded in 1970 in Mumbai, Pecopp is different from PCI in that it remains family-run, and has managed to go toe-to-toe with Rentokil. Pecopp is the only other Indian pest-control business that operates in multiple cities. 

All of this is taking place in a market where 55–60% is unorganised, and only 40–45% of demand is met by professional services. 

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan dig into these questions and explore the nooks and crannies of India’s pest control industry. Our guest, Siddharth Balwani, the director of Pecopp, breaks down his company’s strategy, the market dynamics, and future opportunities. 

This episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer. 

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

In the first episode of season two of Two by Two, we unpack India’s evolving economic story at a pivotal moment—amid global uncertainty and rising US tariff threats that some have dubbed India’s "second 1991 moment."

We break down the promise and illusion of India’s economic outlook across two critical dimensions: macroeconomics and markets.

The narrative of GDP growth powered by rising productivity is enticing. India stands alone as a large economy where labour, capital, and productivity are all expanding. We explore concerns around job creation, stagnant manufacturing, and deeper structural threats—from AI to climate change.

In the markets, domestic money is driving one of the most expensive equity valuations in the world, comparable to that of the US. But beneath the surface lies a more cautious picture: foreign investors are staying neutral, while insiders are cashing out at record levels.

From booming inflows into financials to valuation resets in staples and foreign scepticism around consumer discretionary.

Whether you’re bullish on India or wary of the froth, this episode challenges assumptions and brings a clearer picture to the contradictions shaping the country's economic future.

Joining hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar for the discussion are Aditya Suresh, head of India equity research at Macquarie, and Seetharaman G, deputy editor at The Ken and resident expert on all things retail, joining the discussion.

Welcome to Two by Two.

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Additional reading:

‘Make in India’ is a tariff-war sticker job - https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/make-in-india-is-a-tariff-war-sticker-job/

Stop hating on China. Embrace it - https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/stop-hating-on-china-embrace-it/

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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.

Join Rohin and Praveen as they celebrate the one-year anniversary of the 2x2 podcast, reflecting on 52 episodes of business and strategy discussions. This special ‘vibes’ episode looks back at their journey creating Two by Two, the evolution of the show, and future plans, deviating from their usual topic-focused format.

Praveen shares key meta-narratives he picked from the past year, including a "desperation-driven convergence" where companies like Flipkart and Phonepe try to become each other. He also highlights themes such as the government shaping markets as a "competitor" or through "artificial constraints", and a "great career existential crisis" impacting roles from engineers to marketers. Other themes include the "destruction and retreat of big tech in India", the podcast's contrarian framing of topics, and a focus on India's "livability crisis", addressing issues like urban infrastructure and air pollution.

We’d love to hear what you think about Two by Two as well. You can write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com.

In 2016, Mukesh Ambani stood on stage and made a promise that seemed impossible. Jio would give away data virtually free and still build a profitable business. The telecom industry laughed. Six years later, Jio had 450 million subscribers and had driven three major competitors into extinction or merger.

Now imagine that same playbook applied to your money.

Last year, when Jio partnered with BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager with over $10 trillion under management, most people saw it as just another foreign partnership. But here's what they missed.

India's mutual fund industry manages around 50 trillion rupees. And yet, only 3-4% of Indians have ever invested in a mutual fund. That's 1.3 billion people whose savings are locked in fixed deposits, gold, and real estate, earning returns that barely keep pace with inflation.

To put this in perspective, Americans invest approximately 55% of their savings in financial markets, whereas Indians invest around 3-4%.

That gap represents the single largest wealth creation opportunity in the world.

Blackrock's Larry Fink knows this, Jio's Mukesh Ambani knows this.

And more importantly, they know something that the incumbents don't want to admit: that India's investment industry is ripe for the kind of disruption that decimated the telecom sector.

Because what's bigger than one 800-pound gorilla? Two 800-pound gorillas.

Zerodha*, India's largest broker, has 15 million users. That's very impressive, until you realise that Jio adds that many telecom subscribers in a single quarter. The entire Indian mutual fund industry has 40 million unique investors.

Jio has more customers in just Mumbai.

And unlike telecom, where Jio could simply outspend and outlast its competitors, financial services are about trust, not just technology.

You may switch your phone carrier for cheaper data, but will you hand over your life savings to the same company that provides your internet?

In today’s episode, we are asking the question that's keeping every person working in financial services across mutual funds and brokerages awake at night.

Can Jio BlackRock do to investing in wealth what Jio did to telecom?

Joining hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar for the discussion are Manish Jain, co-founder and CPO of Sahi Broking. Manish previously served as the head of product at Fisdom and was the SVP of product and digital transformation at Kotak Securities, and Nirav Karkera, who's the head of research at Fisdom, a leading fintech platform for wealth management.

Welcome to episode 52 of Two by Two.

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Additional reading:

The motley crowd joining the great Indian mutual-fund rush….- https://the-ken.com/long_and_short/the-motley-crowd-joining-the-great-indian-mutual-fund-rush/

Jio Blackrock is not your usual Reliance offensive- https://the-ken.com/long_and_short/jio-blackrock-is-not-your-usual-reliance-offensive/

Additional listening:

Can Smallcase maintain its relevance in a changing market?- https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/can-smallcase-maintain-its-relevance-in-a-changing-market/

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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.

In an unprecedented crackdown, India’s capital markets regulator SEBI has fined the global trading giant Jane Street over ₹4,800 crore, accusing it of systematically manipulating the Indian equity options market. The penalty—one of the largest ever imposed by SEBI—stemming from an investigation into just 21 trading days, could expand significantly, with potential illicit gains estimated between ₹30,000 and ₹40,000 crore still under review.

First reported by Anand Kalyanaraman, The Ken’s finance editor, the case centres on Jane Street’s alleged use of “violent expiry” tactics: buying large positions in call or put options and then executing disproportionate trades in the cash segment of the Sensex or Nifty to sway index levels in their favour. On other days, they profited from “quiet expiry” strategies by offloading options to retail investors, extracting premiums in a manner which signals towards “telltale manipulation” devoid of any economic rationale.

The fallout strikes at the core of India’s derivatives-heavy market. With over 80% of global equity options contracts (by volume) traded daily in India, the segment has become a high-risk zone for retail participants—90% of whom reportedly lost money between FY2021 and FY2024, racking up collective losses of ₹1.8 lakh crore. The lottery-like appeal of low-cost, high-reward bets has turned into a trap for many.

Jane Street has defended its actions as “basic index arbitrage”. The firm is likely to challenge the ban, even as SEBI continues to scrutinise a broader timeline of trades.

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by Anand Kalyanaraman, The Ken’s finance editor and Mayank Bansal, President of a UAE-based hedge fund, who helped break the story, to discuss how all of this played out and what happens next.

Welcome to episode 51 of Two by Two.

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Additional reading
Is Jane Street the all-powerful hidden hand in India’s stock market? - https://the-ken.com/story/is-jane-street-the-all-powerful-hidden-hand-in-indias-stock-market/

The mystery fund playing god and wreaking havoc on the stock market - https://the-ken.com/story/the-mystery-fund-playing-god-and-wreaking-havoc-on-the-stock-market/

Did NSE sleep at the wheel in the Jane Street Saga? - https://the-ken.com/long_and_short/did-nse-sleep-at-the-wheel-in-the-jane-street-saga/
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Check out The Ken's new careers podcast, 90,000 hours:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HEi59iUPRMMFfUvxeio47

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/90-000-hours/id1826777519

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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.

In the 50th episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan examine the contrasting open-source trajectories of China, the US, and India in the context of AI, and where India fell short.

While China, despite being authoritarian, has surged ahead in open-source AI leadership with models like DeepSeek R1, India has fallen behind. The 2010s are framed as a “lost decade” for Indian open source, characterised by a vibrant tech ecosystem that failed to foster a meaningful contribution culture.

China’s rise can be attributed to its unique mix of strategic intent, creative insecurity (following the Huawei ban in 2019), and human capital. It views open source as a geopolitical tool, not a philosophy. India, by contrast, is stuck in a “third way”—neither as open and capitalistic as the US nor as strategically pragmatic as China.

What would it take for Indian to do the same?

Bring academia to the forefront, fund open source efforts without restrictions, and build a developer culture driven by curiosity, not just career advancement. Open source needs to be viewed more broadly than just code—it’s an innovation infrastructure and a form of digital autonomy. Without this shift, India risks missing the AI bus entirely.

And joining them for the discussion are two wonderful guests.

Pranay Kotasthane is deputy director at the Takshashila Institution and chairs its High Tech Geopolitics Programme. He co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi, a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology.

Kailash Nadh is the CTO of Zerodha*. Kailash calls himself a developer, tinkerer and absurdist. Kailash is a hobbyist developer who has been working on open source projects for the last 25 years.

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Additional reading:

Why China is giving away its tech for free - https://www.economist.com/business/2025/06/17/why-china-is-giving-away-its-tech-for-free

Anticipating the Unintended (newsletter) - https://publicpolicy.substack.com/

Deepseek, AI sovereignty, and India - https://nadh.in/blog/deepseek-ai-sovereignty-india/

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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.
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*Zerodha’s perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken.

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, GS, JP Morgan Chase, Deloitte, Walmart, Bosch, Adobe, Target, Salesforce, AstraZeneca.

What’s common to these dozen organisations? Other than the fact that they are, well, large, well-respected and innovative?

They all operate their own development and innovation centres in India. Often sprawling campuses and offices across multiple cities, filled with Indian engineers, project managers, product experts, designers, HR, finance and, well, virtually every function that’s required to run a business.

They’re called GCCs. Global Capability Centres.

There are over 1,000 global organisations that collectively operate over 1,700 GCCs across India. They employ over 2 million professionals. They generate over $40 billion in annual value, set to surpass $100 billion in another five years.

So, what’s the problem?

Well, most GCCs are technically doing work that could have been outsourced to Indian outsourcers like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, etc. In fact, GCCs are so successful a strategy that they’re growing much faster than Indian outsourcers.

And as if taking away potential revenue from Indian outsourcers weren’t enough, GCCs are now also taking away talent. That’s right. They’re hiring experienced and talented professionals using higher salaries, better brands and the promise of better work.

It appears to be a zero-sum game. A pie that isn’t growing.

Both our guests for today’s episode are experts on GCCs, and they had a lot to say about the same. Our first guest is Narayana Ramamurthy, whom you’ll hear us address as ‘Naru’ throughout the discussion. Naru is the founder and CEO of Workfutr, a company which enables US and European organisations to harness India's offshore capability in technology, operations, and transformation. And our second guest is Karthik Padmanabhan, who is the managing partner for GCCs at Zinnow, a global management and consulting firm founded in 2002 that partners and advises global enterprises, outsourcers, PE firms around AI, automation, outsourcing and well, GCCs.

Welcome to episode 49 of Two by Two.

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Additional reading:

ANSR’s Ahuja duo on why “everybody, from Victoria’s Secret to Google, will do pretty much the same thing in India” - https://the-ken.com/story/ansrs-ahuja-duo-on-why-everybody-from-victorias-secret-to-google-will-do-pretty-much-the-same-thing-in-india/

GCCs could pose a potential threat to Indian IT - https://analyticsindiamag.com/gcc/gccs-could-pose-a-potential-threat-to-indian-it/

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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.

Meesho, Rapido, and Zepto have managed to challenge what seemed like firmly established duopolies, such as Amazon and Flipkart, Uber and Ola, and Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart, respectively.

The third-place player trying to break the duopoly with its ‘challenger DNA’ came in and caught up with the incumbents by targeting the unserved or underserved markets they overlooked, innovation, be it through providing a zero commission platform for sellers, delivering groceries in minutes or connecting drivers to riders based on a subscription model.

But what other factors cause this disruption in these duopolies?

A critical factor enabling these new entrants is often incumbent complacency combined with venture capital pressures in India, which push established players towards short-term profits over broader market expansion.

In episode 48 of Two by Two, we discuss how these disruptors came about, and based on their journey, can we observe other such disruptive third players in India?

Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan was Professor Rajendra Srivastava, former dean at the Indian School of Business and presently the executive director at the ISB Centre for Business Innovation.

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Additional reading:

Does your company have an India strategy – https://hbr.org/2023/06/does-your-company-have-an-india-strategy

Why Indigo Airlines may be India’s best export to the world after cricket and bollywood? – https://medium.com/@rks_72086/why-indigo-airlines-may-be-indias-best-export-to-the-world-after-cricket-and-bollywood-5beb92182343

Market-based assets and shareholder value – https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002224299806200102

Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that Will Make or Break Your Company written by George S. Day and Paul J. H. Schoemaker (recommended by Professor Shrivastava)

The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets written by Jagdish Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia (recommended by Professor Shrivastava)

Additional listening:

Is Zepto a gold medallist or a bronze medallist? – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/is-zepto-a-gold-medalist-or-a-bronze-medalist/

Vidit Aatrey on building a problem-first mindset into Meesho’s culture – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/vidit-aatrey-on-building-a-problem-first-mindset-into-meeshos-culture/

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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.

Bengaluru, India’s tech hub, is unfortunately also a poster child for urban chaos. A city bursting at the seams, where unplanned growth has pushed its infrastructure to breaking point. Imagine roads that can’t handle the sheer volume of vehicles, leading to traffic jams that eat away at hours of your day. It’s not a minor inconvenience; it’s a daily grind that impacts productivity and quality of life.

And it doesn’t stop there. Bengaluru is constantly battling water scarcity. When the monsoons hit, it’s a different kind of nightmare. Even something as fundamental as waste management is a perpetual struggle, with the city’s rapid expansion overwhelming existing systems.

Ultimately, Bengaluru’s plight is a reminder of what happens when urban development races ahead without a long-term vision. It’s a web of planning failures, governance challenges, and population boom. Until these issues are addressed, Bengaluru and many other Indian cities will continue to grapple with their struggles.

But despite all of these issues, what is the fix for Bengaluru’s problems?

Hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar try to uncover where it went wrong and what the eventual fix will be for its issues, along with our guest Pravar Chaudhary, creative director at Bengawalk, a creative agency that tells stories about urbanisation and climate change in India.

Bengawalk, for the netizens of Bengaluru, is a familiar face with their regular updates on what’s going on in the city and the inconveniences and quirks of Bengaluru on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and Youtube. They break down the cause of citizens’ frustration with Bengaluru with their detailed breakdowns, and they do this beautifully with their videos, writing, and design published online.

You can follow all of their work here.

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Additional reading:

Bengaluru’s solutions are Bengaluru’s problems – https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/bengalurus-solutions-are-bengalurus-problems/

Bengaluru’s solution for its traffic mess that tech couldn’t fix: even more tech – https://the-ken.com/story/bengalurus-solution-for-its-traffic-mess-that-tech-couldnt-fix-even-more-tech/

It sucks to be a tenant in Bengaluru right now – https://the-ken.com/story/it-sucks-to-be-a-renter-in-bengaluru-right-now/

Videos referenced:

The never ending construction of Bengaluru – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV7s_aks_4A

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 12 June 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

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Can an AI bot coach and counsel you?

AI is getting better every day and bringing us closer to a scalable, always-on support and a model for both leadership coaching and mental performance.

This makes it much more attractive to organisations because it’s less expensive, contextual, personal, self-learning and scalable within organisations.

There are futures where this may become the default, and one-on-one human coaching and therapy may become the exception.

In this week’s episode of Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar discuss whether AI can fit into the mould of coaching and therapy, and if there is a future where it becomes the norm.

And joining them to discuss and debate this are Gaston Schmitz, partner and founder coach, Asian Leadership Institute, which provides leaders and high-performing teams with executive coaching. Our second guest is Aakriti Joanna, founder and CEO of Kaha Mind, which is a leading mental health organisation for individuals and organisations in India.

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Additional reading:

The AI chatbots offering workplace counsel – https://www.ft.com/content/ede799c4-8a1c-4c39-8a9b-01899d5b6754

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 05 June 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

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Bigbasket, Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto are all fighting to capture more and more share of the quick-commerce market. But as they scale, a new set of players fulfilling one use case in minutes is entering the market with hype and funding.

Does this mean we will see an unbundling of quick commerce from being an everything store to having separate apps for everything? Or is it just another cycle of unbundling and bundling?

Hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar discuss in the latest episode of Two by Two with Madhav Kasturia, founder and CEO of Zippee, and Sanjay Ramakrishnan, founder and general partner, Multiply Ventures.

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 29 May 2025.

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Smallcase was an innovative financial product that arrived early to solve a problem for investors. Since its launch in 2015, Smallcase’s proposition has been quite simple. It allowed users to invest directly into thematic baskets of stocks or exchange-traded funds that they called small cases. As an investor, you have complete control and transparency over whatever you want to invest in. Sometimes, there are small cases of stocks that are going to do well during the monsoon season. Sometimes it’s stocks that are going to do well because India is going to push forward in manufacturing. Sometimes it’s a basket of stocks that’s going to do well because India is going forward in things like, say, AI.

Smallcase rode this retail investing wave over the last ten years. It reached 3.5 million users and had about 14,000 crores in transaction value. While a new generation of young traders flocked to the market and were looking for direction on where to invest, how much to invest, and what to invest in.

However, of late, Smallcase has faced a different kind of competition, and that competition comes from mutual funds that have taken Smallcase’s same playbook and started offering thematic investment. It has also started facing competition from passive funds and competitors like Phonepe and other brokerages like Motilal Oswal, ICICI Direct, Geojit, etc. Over the last few years, Smallcase’s revenue has grown, but so have its losses.

In episode 44, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar discuss what makes Smallcase special, whether those advantages still persist in a changing market, and whether it can find a way to live up to its original promise.

Joining the hosts for the discussion are Bhavesh Sanghvi, CEO, Growthfiniti Wealth and  Nirav Karkera, head of research, Fisdom.

Welcome to Two by Two.

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Additional reading:

Smallcase bet on DIY investors. Then DIY investors moved on – https://the-ken.com/story/smallcase-bet-on-diy-investors-then-diy-investors-moved-on/

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 22 May 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

Not a Premium subscriber? You can subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts.

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Reliance Retail is a behemoth that sells everything—from the recently revived Campa Cola to luxury jackets. And the more than 19,300 stores across its verticals makes it the largest retailer in the country. But Reliance Retail seems to have run the race a bit too fast, and is now plagued by its very efforts to dominate every market it enters. 

In episode 43 of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss how Reliance Retail’s size may be turning out to be its biggest challenge with deputy editor Seetharaman G, who leads The Ken’s coverage on retail.

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Additional reading:

Why Reliance Retail will be stock-market pundit’s most perplexing company? – https://the-ken.com/story/no-ipo-talk-at-agm-yet-reliance-retail-will-be-stock-pundits-biggest-puzzle/

Reliance Retail comes back to earth – https://the-ken.com/tradetricks/reliance-retail-comes-back-to-earth/

The curious entry of Jio Financial Services into the Nifty 50 – https://the-ken.com/long_and_short/the-curious-entry-of-jio-financial-services-into-the-nifty-50/

Additional listening:

Dmart versus the challengers at the gate – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/dmart-versus-the-challengers-at-the-gate/

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 15 May 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

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The original big AI bus that came was Large Language Model, or LLMs, the foundational model bus. India missed it.

Then the conversation became let others develop the foundational models, we’ll just do a better job of building applications on top of it. We’ll become the use case capital of the world. There are some startups from India in the space, but none of them are in the same league as their global counterparts.

So in some ways, we’ve missed that bus, too.

Today, the focus has shifted to the need to have compute, the need to set up large data centres, and the need to have our own sovereign data sets.

The government of India is now providing subsidies to startups and large companies.

It’s taking equity. For example, Sarvam AI got a 220 crore grant from the government.

But can we build massive and really expensive data centres at a scale like the United States and China?

What does the future look like for India from an AI point of view?

Host Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss how India has missed many technological waves, including the latest one—AI. Joining them for the episode are Srinath Mallikarjunan, CEO and chief scientist at Unmanned Dynamics, and Nitin Pai, co-founder and director of Takshashila Institution.

Welcome to episode 42 of Two by Two.

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Additional reading:

What China’s cheap AI model tells us about India’s future – https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/what-chinas-cheap-ai-model-tells-us-about-indias-future/

India’s AI mission needs many heroes. But it’s settled for one—Sarvam – https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/indias-ai-mission-needs-many-heroes-its-settled-for-one-sarvam/

Inside the legal drama that may exile Ultrahuman from the US – https://the-ken.com/story/a-private-investigator-a-fabricated-logo-and-ouras-death-blow-to-ultrahuman/

Is AI enhancing education or replacing it? – https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-ai-enhancing-education-or-replacing-it

Additional listening:

Are Trump’s tariffs a crisis or an opportunity for India?  – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/no-easy-moves-is-india-facing-a-crisis-or-an-opportunity/

Ultrahuman and Kukufm have broken out – ​​https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/ultrahuman-and-kuku-fm-have-broken-out/

Sam Altman’s initial comments on India building foundational models – https://youtube.com/shorts/xHVsk7d1L-0?feature=shared

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If you are an existing Premium subscriber, you already have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. 

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 08 May 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

Not a Premium subscriber? You can subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts.

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The coffee culture in India has come far today. But has it reached the point where daily commuters grab their cup of joe from their favourite cafe on their way to work? Or do they get it delivered in minutes? Or is the cafe only a destination for meetings?

The cafe ideally serves all three use cases. But the bigger reason has more to do with what we as Indians associate with cafes when we walk into a cafe. Some answer lies in the split between food and beverages in India. Food is as big a component as coffee and coffee beverages in a cafe in India. While globally, most numbers suggest the split for food is ~10%.

But there are more fundamental reasons why the cafe business is hard to crack at scale. From volume of transactions happening to catching up on the ‘grab and go’ coffee culture.

But even with all the troubles, more players seem keen to enter the market. Why?

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan have a fun and insightful conversation about India’s coffee culture and its coffee drinkers’ tastes in the latest episode of Two by Two. And joining them for the discussion are Abhijeet Anand, founder and CEO, Abcoffee, and Deepak Shahdadpuri, managing director and founder of DSG Consumer Partners.

Welcome to episode 41 of Two by Two.

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Additional listening:

Google Pay: Big. Successful. Vulnerable – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/google-pay-big-successful-vulnerable/

Airtel fights spammers. And Truecaller’s business model – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/airtel-fights-spammers-and-truecallers-business-model/

Ather Energy was a pioneer. Can it also be a leader? – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/ather-energy-was-a-pioneer-can-it-also-be-a-leader/

Additional reading:

Angel One got what it wished for. That’s the problem. – https://the-ken.com/story/angel-one-got-what-it-wished-for-thats-the-problem/

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If you are an existing Premium subscriber, you already have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. 

Not a Premium subscriber? You can subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts.

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 01 May 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

Not a Premium subscriber? You can subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts.

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That’s the question hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar discuss with Vikas Bardia, co-founder and CEO of Shoffr, and Arpit Agarwal, investment partner at Blume Ventures.

Blusmart used to represent success, scale, and customer love—a reputation secured as an insurgent against incumbents like Uber and Ola. At its height, Blusmart had around 8,000 cabs in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru—hardly a small number. But now, things are tumbling down.

In episode 40 of Two by Two, they discuss the reasons why most of the online ride-hailing space looks the way it does because of VC money, why debt financing is preferred by players who own their own fleet, the different models at play presently and a whole lot more.

But the most important question we try to answer is what happens next, and who—if anyone—can become the next Blusmart? Or fill the space they have left?

Welcome to episode 40 of Two by Two.

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If you are an existing Premium subscriber, you already have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. 

Not a Premium subscriber? You can subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts.

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Additional reading:

Blusmart and the dogs that didn’t bark – https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/blusmart-and-the-dogs-that-didnt-bark/

Blusmart’s relationship with co-founder’s listed company could prove costly – https://the-ken.com/story/blusmarts-relationship-with-co-founders-listed-company-could-prove-costly/

Additional listening:

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/

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 24th April 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

Not a Premium subscriber? You can subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts.

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Stage is an interesting, counter-intuitive, and extraordinary company.

It’s a company you’ve probably heard little about and know almost nothing about.

Vinay Sighal, co-founder and CEO of Stage, describes it as a Netflix for Indian cultures. It is a company that’s on the verge of something big. Stage is an OTT company that, in Singhal’s words, offers premium, sensible content in three cultures. Yes, cultures, not languages—Haryanvi, Bhojpuri, and Rajasthani.

At a time when OTT platforms and consumer content companies are figuring out how to make their business work, Stage is an outlier.

It has 4.2 million subscribers and nearly 150 crores in revenue. Stage has also figured out a way to do this sustainably by reducing its burn by nearly 70% from last year to this year.

In today’s episode, Vinay tells the story of how Stage was created, how he built a company and lost it overnight, and how he then re-emerged from it by doing the exact opposite of all the things that brought him success earlier.

He switched from advertising to subscriptions, from going for international markets to local markets and from depending on platforms like Facebook to direct distribution.

To do this, he did not just have to build a company; he had to build entire movie industries. Stage is a story you must listen to if you want to understand how entrepreneurs and founders are building companies for Bharat in ways most of us cannot understand or even imagine.

In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are in discussion with Vinay Singhal, CEO and co-founder of Stage.

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 17th April 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

Not a Premium subscriber? You can subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts.

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Today’s episode is about something you wouldn’t have heard of – search funds. Initially, we thought this would be something arcane and boring, but the more we read about it, the more it started to sound like an arrangement that sounds too good to be true.

Search funds invert and twist all our conventional ideas of how people start, build, scale and fund businesses in India. It’s an old model that has been somewhat popular in more developed markets and is just starting to get some traction in India. For the tens of thousands of small and medium businesses in India that have achieved a level of success and want to go to the next level, the answer may just be…search funds. 

This episode is about a model that’s full of contradictions. It’s about entrepreneurs who aren’t founders. It’s about VCs who spend the first few years raising money and then spend the next few years actually running the business they raise money for. It’s also about operators who decide first that they want to become CEOs and then search for the companies they are going to lead.

And plot twist…all of these are the same person.

And in today’s episode, we have two wonderful guests who are here to tell us how they’re doing this.

Anurag Sinha is the Managing Partner at Milestone Search Capital, one of the pioneers of the Search Fund model, and his bio says, “Looking to buy a great business”.

Anurag’s journey as a business leader began with entrepreneurship at the age of 17, where he spent his formative years building ventures across Healthcare, Consumer Tech, and Retail.

In his latest role, Anurag was the CEO of Raam Group, an automotive retail conglomerate in India. Anurag oversaw businesses generating a topline of $100 million and managing a workforce of over 800 people. With over 12 years of experience spanning entrepreneurship, rapid-scale startups, and leadership roles in traditional business models, Anurag is now embarking on a new chapter: acquiring and scaling a promising business.

Anurag holds an MBA from INSEAD, where he studied across both the France and Singapore campuses. Prior to that, he earned a B.Com (Hons) from Delhi University.

Rehan Netarwala is the founder and managing partner at Okintek Capital, where he’s looking for an SME business to grow and scale. His bio says, “Looking for a great SME business to acquire and grow”.

Prior to starting Okintek Capital, Rehan was the co-founder of Savage and Palmer, where he helped SME entrepreneurs run and scale their businesses with our wide range of solutions right from Digital Marketing to Accounting & Taxation. 

Rehan is a graduate of the Indian School of Business and has a B.E. from Mumbai University.

In this week’s episode of Two by Two, co-hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Anurag Sinha and Rehan Netarwala to break down why and how search funds do what they do.

Welcome to episode 38 of Two by Two.

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Get you tickets here – https://the-ken.com/event/building-unique-career-lattices/

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First Principles is back with a new season.

Listen to the first episode with Vidit Aatrey, co-founder and CEO of Meesho – https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/vidit-aatrey-on-building-a-problem-first-mindset-into-meeshos-culture/

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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 episode of Two by Two was first published on 10th April 2025.

Premium subscribers of The Ken have full access to ALL our premium audio. They are available exclusively via The Ken’s subscriber apps. If you don’t have them, just download one and log in to unlock everything. Get your premium subscription using this link.

You can also subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts. 

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US President Donald Trump’s mission to make America great again has seen him do things that most politicians, with their tall claims and promises, confidently assure but compromise on once in power. Trump, in his second term, has gone all in with his convictions.

The latest announcement from the US President is that he’s pausing the tariff increase he had imposed on most of America’s trading partners who did not retaliate in response with their own tariff increase for the next 90 days. Most trading partners, apart from China, on whom Trump has imposed a tariff increase of another 21%, now.

This pause might mean momentary relief, but it doesn’t change the bigger picture much for India, whose position to negotiate isn’t as advantageous as that of some of the other US trading partners.

In a slightly different episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss what the picture now looks like for India and the world with Mohit Satyanand, entrepreneur, investor, and economy-watcher. 

Tune in for a discussion on what’s been going on underneath all the noise and alarm over the past week.

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Additional reading:

Get your hands bloody – https://substack.com/home/post/p-160712298 (Latest edition of Mohit’s newsletter)

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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.

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Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey – https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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Listen to the episode trailer available on all podcast streaming platorms:  Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | Youtube

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Additional reading:

Enshittification is coming for absolutely everything – https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Phonepe 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/

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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.

“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.

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Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey – https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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/

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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 could, in many ways, picture India’s tech businesses venturing into the global stage in waves. First, there were the services companies. Your Wipros and Infosys and the like. Then, startups such as Zomato, Oyo, and Ola took their shot. The third wave was headlined by SaaS companies like Zoho and Freshworks. 

What does the fourth wave look like? 

What does the future hold for companies making the jump? 

This week’s episode of Two by Two was our attempt to answer some of those questions. Our guests for the podcast ended up adding quite a bit more. 

Mohit Kumar is founder and CEO of Ultrahuman, best known for its smart rings which compete with the likes of Oura and Samsung, but also offering a wide range of other devices and products for health-conscious buyers.

Lal Chand Bisu is the co-founder and CEO of Kuku FM, a mobile-first premium audio platform hosting content in multiple Indian languages.

Two very different companies, with one bold bet in common: they chose to take their products global. 

Welcome to episode 34 of Two by Two.

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Book your tickets for The Ken’s first subscriber event – https://the-ken.com/event/beyond-the-first-order/

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Additional reading:

Kuku FM chooses not to be the hero in its own story

Pocket FM had 10 million listeners in India. Yet it hit pay dirt elsewhere

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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.

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 and 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.

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Additional reading:

Famine, affluence and morality – https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil308/Singer2.pdf

Food, 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.ece

Additional 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

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Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey – https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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.

Between Youtube and streaming companies, who do you think will become the new television?

That was the question Two by Two hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar posed to our guests this week.

Youtube TV has surpassed mobile as the primary device for Youtube viewing in the US. The company wants to press this advantage further and bring more attention to itself from linear television and streaming companies. How is the bigger picture shaping up in India? 

To discuss, we invited as guests Swati Mohan, the ex-head of marketing at Netflix India and an independent advisor to many consumer tech companies, and Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, an India-based media specialist and a contributing editor at The Business Standard writing about media and the business of media.

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 the 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.

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Additional reading

Truecaller beat Trai to the punch with spam-call fix

Airtel finds the gap between Truecaller and Trai

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Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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 organised, 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.

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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.

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Listen to One Billion in 10 Minutes on The Ken app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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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.

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 who 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 a half-marathon. 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.

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Additional reading:

The Nutgraf: Going out of India is easier than going out in India

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Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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.

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 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 organisations 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, the 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.

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Additional reading:

Razorpay and Cashfree woke up and chose violence

Additional listening:

Why Stripe could not become the Stripe of India

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Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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

“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 the centre of today’s discussion is India's air pollution. More specifically, North India's air pollution problem and, as we zoom down further, 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 actually the smallest that are tracked, 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 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, and how even to 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.

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Help us find great women guests for Two by Two by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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.

However, 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 into 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 that 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.

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Additional reading:

The Zomato-Swiggy cartel: Bistro and Snacc further threaten the restaurant business

Zomato, Swiggy gave up on selling their own food. Then came along Zepto Cafe

“There’s an app for that”–Swiggy, Zepto, and Blinkit

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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

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 power play 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.

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Additional reading:

Bias, lack of transparency trips job hunts in premier schools

Why are IIT placements failing to deliver jobs? Former IIT Director explains

Shiv Shivakumar's LinkedIn post

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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

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 that 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 the 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 for all of these months. By the end of the year, it sort of increased a little bit, which was helped by the 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.

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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

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 on

Yet, 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.

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Additional reading:

Amazon is not yet in quick commerce. But it’s already different from the pack

Amazon got rid of its largest seller only to replace it with other ‘preferred sellers’

Amazon’s Leadership Principles (recommended by Srikanth)
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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN mixed and mastered 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.

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.

There is also a free Two by Two newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

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Additional reading:

Boat, Noise unleashed cheap smartwatches on India. Rivals hurt them with dirt-cheap ones

Mamaearth sold investors on its FMCG dreams. Consumers had other plans

Brands once desperate for quick commerce now have a tiger by the tail

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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.

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.

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.

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Additional reading:

The AI apocalypse is coming: Are SaaS companies ready?

BarbAIrians at the Gate: The Financial Opportunity of AI

The End of the SaaS Era: Rethinking software’s role in business

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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.

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 market

For fintechs, RBI is the boy who cries wolf

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.

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.

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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 those of its global peers.

Yet analysts and investors have been becoming increasingly bearish about Dmart’s future strategy. They argue that what got it from 2002 to 2024 might not necessarily take it to, say, 2034.