First Principles

Epizódok

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  Part 2: Mukesh Bansal on hiring for loyalty to a mission, "no means not now", writing three books, and compounding sideways 17.08.2026 1ó 3p

  Where Part 1 followed the companies, Part 2 is about the person behind them. Picking up from Mukesh Bansal's move from one venture to the next, this half gets into how he finds talent ("work with them for six months"), the mental models he runs his life by, and the beliefs underneath them. He explains why rationally no one should start a company, how he processes every rejection as "no means not now", why he writes three books by simply showing up to a blank page, and how he separated the longevity basics he trusts from the biohacking he no longer does. It ends close to home: loyalty as loyalty to a mission, what he wants for his two children, why parents' expectations matter less than they did, and a life he rates an 8 out of 10.Chapters0:00  Where we left off1:46  Finding talent: "work with them for six months"3:23  The one open-ended question he asks5:57  Winning vs looking good8:00  The compounding argument, revisited9:40  Learning vs winning: drawing the 2x211:17  Three books, and the annual look-back16:18  Making time to think in a full life18:45  What a chief of staff is actually for21:27  "No means not now" and other mental models25:57  How he writes a book28:30  How health became a throughline31:24  From ecosystem to the longevity basics34:29  Why strength training matters after 5038:08  Why he runs SparX, and the deep-tech turn44:05  Loyalty to a mission, and the number two50:35  The Apple teaching model52:52  Three adjectives, and being "scary" to juniors55:30  His kids' worldview57:54  Do parents' expectations still matter?1:00:12  Weekends, food, and reading now1:02:17  Rating his life an 8Quotes[8:44] "I don't know if this rocket thing will work. But if it works, it'll take at least ten years… they said, we are willing to work on it for the rest of our lives."[21:56] "I call this no means not now. That's how I process all the nos in my life."[24:59] "Zomato was started in 2007. They did not pivot into food delivery till 2017."[26:05] "Just show up and stare at a blank page for an hour. Sooner or later you'll start writing."[61:43] "I feel very privileged and very fortunate. So many lucky breaks have worked out for me."Frameworks & mental modelsNo means not now: process every rejection as timing, not a verdict; it protects the ego and the relationship.Long-term patient, short-term aggressive / product is marketing: charge hard daily, give the ten-year game room, and let a product people love do the selling.Horizontal compounding: compound entrepreneurial skill across ventures, not tenure in one sector.Loyalty to a mission: the durable teams are bound to an unfinished job, not to a person; build a number two and give people room.The longevity basics beat biohacking: sleep, eat less, move, strength-train after 50, tend emotional health; the exotic stuff is largely unproven.Credits & sharingThis episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 1: Mukesh Bansal on founder mode in the AI age, the three kinds of professionals in the AI age, and the Haridwar boy who found entrepreneurship in a library 10.08.2026 57p

  Mukesh Bansal has founded and left more companies than most people build in a lifetime, and in Part 1 he explains why. He founded Myntra and sold it to Flipkart; he co-founded Cult.fit and turned fitness into a category; and today he runs the AI company Nurix and the Meraki Labs studio. Asked what he is now, he says "a learner", and admits he gets bored the moment a company starts working. Part 1 traces the thesis and the companies: how he allocates his weeks, why he thinks the AI era rewards the hands-on operator over the people-manager, what Nurix and Fermi are, why Myntra's move into fashion was an "adjustment" not a pivot, and the small-town Haridwar upbringing and library habit that set him off. This is Part 1 of 2; Part 2 turns to the person, the mental models, and how he thinks about health, family and success.Chapters0:00  Welcome and who Mukesh Bansal is3:15  How First Principles is already connected to him4:21  "Do you see yourself as an operator, a founder, an investor?"5:27  Zero-to-one, and where learning stops9:11  Allocating time across companies10:34  Why an hour of his time isn't what it was12:59  The three kinds of professionals in the AI age14:52  His stack: Claude, Warp, agents overnight17:58  Founder mode, reversed by AI20:19  No more waiting for a tech co-founder23:02  How big Nurix is; and what Fermi is25:38  The Socratic tutor that won't answer27:18  Back to Myntra: the fashion category today31:30  Koyu, Lyskraft and the CRED hypothesis33:41  Why a venture studio, one company a year38:18  Rejecting the compounding path42:57  The near-death at Myntra, and raising with a short runway45:03  Haridwar, BHEL, and the books that lit the fire48:15  Pivots as chess "adjustments"50:48  Conviction vs discovery: betting the megatrend53:08  The Bay Area years and the return to IndiaQuotes[4:33] "I see myself as a learner… doing one company over a period of time, I get bored."[7:08] "Crisis always comes wrapped with a massive gift, if you are only willing to unpeel the onion."[17:12] "I'm making an even stronger point. If you're only a people manager, watch out."[18:58] "For the first time you can hire something equivalent to human cognition for cents an hour."[48:50] "I use the word adjustment rather than pivot. You come to work every day, you're playing chess."Frameworks & mental modelsLearner over operator: hand off once a company stops teaching you.Crisis and momentum: cut the bad, double down on the good.The three professionals in the AI age: the hands-on veteran is the one AI turns into a superpower.Adjustment, not pivot: the best move on the board each day; a true "wipe the slate" is just a new company.Bet the megatrend, stay loose on the path.Credits & sharingThis episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Fireside Ventures' Kanwaljit Singh on the decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him consumer, raising half the fund he could have, and keeping a coach in his sixties 27.07.2026 1ó

  1 · SummaryPart 2 of 2. Part 1 laid out the bet: a fund built only for Indian consumer brands, back when the idea sounded absurd, and the anti-power-law machine Kanwal Singh built to make it work. This half is the person. The near-decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him his love of consumer, the Intel years, and the Paper Boat conviction that taught him to back the founder over the idea. Then the man himself: parents who came to India as refugees from Pakistan, a father who kept collecting degrees while feeding the family, the coach he started seeing in his sixties and what separates coaching from therapy, and how he reads a founder by meeting their family. He turned down twice the money he could have raised. He rates his life a 10.2 · Chapters0:00 Part 2 intro 1:22 The Hindustan Lever decade that started it all 2:25 Intel Inside, and bringing the inside out 4:22 The Paper Boat conviction: backing the founder 6:38 What he adds as Fireside's "CEO," and value of good 17:53 Capping the fund: turning down 2x the money 20:24 Hiring: read the person, meet the family 27:01 Refugees, and a father who never stopped studying 30:39 Three words, and a 100%-locked calendar 33:30 Motivating through the down days 34:51 The coach, and coaching vs therapy 43:40 How he learns, and consumer vs tech founders 51:27 Rating his life a 10, and success redefined 52:47 Cotswolds, golf, and the empty nest refilled3 · Pull-quotes[17:56] "I could have raised 2x of this. Genuinely, we could have raised 2x of this."[23:55] "You cannot build to sell. You build for sustenance, you build for good."[27:04] "Both my parents were refugees from Pakistan."[51:34] "A 10." (asked how happy he is with his life)4 · Frameworks & mental modelsFounder assessment through the family: read a founder by their story and support system, often over a meal with their spouse, on the belief that no one survives a decade-long build without one.Build for sustenance, not to sell: the best businesses are bought, not sold; you build for the long run and treat a sale as a business decision along the way.Value of good ("do good to do well"): founder first, planet first, one Fireside, with goodness as the foundation of doing well.Coaching vs therapy: therapy addresses a medical issue; coaching is vulnerability and honesty in a business context, and only works once you have the self-awareness to accept there's a problem.This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Fireside Ventures' Kanwal Singh on the consumer-brands bet nobody believed in, why "for a 5x, nobody will call you legendary," and on refusing the one-100x-outlier game 20.07.2026 1ó 1p

  1 · SummaryPart 1 of 2. Kanwal Singh is the first venture capitalist to appear on First Principles, and the reason is the bet he made with the fund itself. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, when almost nobody believed India had a consumer story worth venture capital. His first backers weren't institutions, they were the consumer families who had built India's brands. This half covers the whole bet: what investors actually said when he pitched a consumer-only fund, why he raised in India rather than abroad, the ownership and follow-on design he corrected fund after fund, his claim that most of his companies succeed rather than one outlier, and his working map of India 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 turns to the person behind it.2 · Chapters0:00 Cold open and Part 1 intro 3:27 What Fireside is, and why it exists 10:04 How the fund makes money 11:23 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments 12:50 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions 17:14 Two years as a solo angel 25:51 Ownership by design, and the follow-on model 34:05 What "success" means, and the anti-power-law 36:56 The centre of excellence 45:40 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3 53:47 Quick commerce is brand-first 57:54 Brand vs performance: Underneat, Truvi3 · Pull-quotes[0:20] "For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary."[34:24] "We can build successful funds, fund after fund... not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers."[40:26] "The answer lies in the question. It is hard."[54:12] "The power of the brand is truly manifest in quick commerce."4 · Frameworks & mental modelsAnti-power-law investing: a portfolio where most companies clear "capital plus," not one built to live or die on a single outlier.The three breaks from the VC default: consumer over tech, Indian consumer-family LPs over global institutions, one shared-credit team over lone-hero dealmakers.India 1, 2, 3: his working map of where consumption grows, with India 2 needing products designed for it and India 3 reached through doorstep models.Quick commerce is brand-first: scarce shelf space and a buy-not-browse shopper mean only brands with genuine pull survive.This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 2: Saahil Goel of Shiprocket on wanting a paisa of every Indian transaction outside the marketplaces, who doesn't survive at Shiprocket, and still playing Pink Floyd on a Fender 13.07.2026 1ó 1p

  Part 2 of 2. In Part 1 we walked the road from 2011 — three companies, an investor ultimatum, and the capital it took to build. Part 2 is the mind. Saahil Goel starts with what, given hindsight, he'd do differently, then the first principles he runs Shiprocket on (distribution beats product), the two or three metrics he genuinely obsesses over, his bet on applied AI, why he believes you can't actually manage people, who does and doesn't survive at the company, the guitar he still plays, his dog, and the question Rohin closes every episode with, which Saahil answers with a single number.Chapters1:02  With hindsight, what he'd do differently2:10  “A paisa of every transaction in India”5:23  First principles: distribution beats product11:32  The metrics he obsesses over17:22  Betting on applied AI29:33  “You can't manage people”31:45  Who doesn't survive at Shiprocket42:05  The guitar, Pink Floyd, and Bruno the CHO58:28  The book he forgets — and how he reflects1:00:50  Rating his life an 8This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 1: Saahil Goel of Shiprocket on rebuilding the same company three times,  the $4 million he was told to take or leave and why in India you sell outcomes, not software 07.07.2026 1ó 5p

  Part 1 of 2. Most people date Shiprocket to 2017; in truth it was born in 2011, and the road there runs through two companies called KartRocket and Craftly. Saahil Goel walks Rohin through the build: Rs 15 lakh of their own money, nearly not being hired by their own first engineers, the hard lesson that in India you sell outcomes not software, an investor ultimatum to take $4 million or nothing, and by the end, just how much capital it's taken to get from that first office to the edge of a public listing. Part 2 gets into how he actually thinks.Chapters0:00  The company that started in 2011, not 20174:01  KartRocket: building an agency to learn the market6:09  Bootstrapped on Rs 15 lakh9:02  Why Indian SMBs wouldn't pay for software17:58  “Take $4 million or nothing”22:38  How Shiprocket was born27:06  What Shiprocket actually is — and how it makes money37:58  The IPO, and the state of the business44:19  Quick commerce without owning a truck48:42  From Delhi to a US career — and back55:59  Lessons from failed fundraises1:04:23  How much they've raisedThis episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 2: Impresario's Riyaaz Amlani on digital landlords, doers & divas, and why delivery will never eat dine-in 22.06.2026 1ó 3p

  Part 2 moves from the journey to the operating philosophy. Riyaaz Amlani unpacks his evolving stance on the aggregators — from resistance to "uneasy truce" — and the hard lesson that restaurateurs who send guests to Zomato and Swiggy have only themselves to blame. He argues delivery and dine-in are two different businesses, lays out his ambition to turn Impresario into a full-service-restaurant platform, and gets personal on hiring, Gen Alpha kids, weekends, and why his life scores 9.9 out of 10. CHAPTERS00:00  Recap and what's ahead: aggregators, the platform, the missing 0.101:48  "Digital landlords": Zomato & Swiggy, then and now02:47  From resistance to cohabitation; how aggregators trained demand05:24  Owning the customer; the cross-sector aggregator tension07:04  The Booking.com / Hotels.com parallel and how hotels fought back09:41  Build your own loyalty — don't blame the aggregator10:09  Delivery vs dine-in: two completely different businesses13:09  Restaurants beat the movies; lessons from raising VC/PE16:34  Growth math: IRR, 20-25% stable growth, the late-stage problem17:45  What motivates him: reading a city and its community18:56  Curiosity over the "5 people"; planning for serendipity24:29  Hiring: "doers and divas" and the largesse of hospitality30:24  Social as social infrastructure: coworking from day one34:25  First principles: people + process, soul, belongingness37:08  Harvesting feedback: NPS, ORM, AI, the guest-experience officer39:18  His kids and the Gen Alpha worldview43:39  Weekends, FIFA, meditation, and protecting solitude48:10  Comfort food and deferring to the chef50:11  The 25-year view; the 10,000 cr platform and the invisible 85%59:03  Anti-loyalty vs frequency: cafes are loyalty, restaurants are experience1:01:44 Final question: 9.9 out of 10, and the missing 0.1KEY COMPANIES & BRANDSImpresario Handmade Restaurants; Social; Zomato; Swiggy; ONDC; Booking.com; Hotels.com; Rebel Foods; Haldiram's; Rameshwaram Cafe; Starbucks; NRAI; PlayStation/FIFA/Minecraft (referenced).KEY CONCEPTSAggregators as "digital landlords"; deep discounting & perceived value; the uneasy truce; owning the customer relationship; the Booking.com hotel-inventory parallel; loyalty programs & direct outreach; delivery vs dine-in as separate businesses; patient capital, IRR & late-stage growth math; "doers and divas"; largesse of hospitality; full-service-restaurant platform; store-level vs corporate EBITDA; the invisible 85% "iceberg" of running a restaurant; anti-loyalty vs frequency; cafes (loyalty/convenience) vs restaurants (experience/variety); NPS/ORM/AI feedback; Gen Alpha.
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  Part 1: Impresario's Riyaaz Amlani on Mocha, "Handmade," four near-deaths and 25 years of building places to be 15.06.2026 1ó 4p

  Part 1 of Rohin Dharmakumar's conversation with Riyaaz Amlani is the origin story: why a returning UCLA grad decided Bombay was missing "places to be," how Mocha became Social, and what it actually takes to keep a restaurant group alive for 25 years in the highest-mortality business there is. The shisha ban, the private-equity money that never arrived, COVID, the marble hustle at age six, and the real engine underneath it all: people.CHAPTERS00:00  Intro: 95% fail by year two — and the man who didn't01:46  Why Mocha in 2001: a city missing "places to be"03:23  Bombay the "coolest cousin"; South Bombay snobbery moves to Bandra05:05  The MTV / Gen X generation and a West-facing India07:47  UCLA, entertainment management, and learning to live culture11:29  What "Handmade" and "Impresario" mean14:13  The business today: 80 restaurants, 900 cr, 5,500 people15:29  Why restaurants die; learning from the community18:02  People vs processes — and why he keeps returning to people19:32  Social: the millennial third space and the shisha ban25:41  The Gen Z puzzle; Saltwater to Bandra Bourn; evolution vs revolution30:46  Real estate: location vs locality and India's "80 pockets"32:32  The metric that matters: AOV x covers x table turnaround35:33  COVID and surviving "mass-extinction events"39:17  The town hall: the team takes 40% pay to save the company40:51  What losing a restaurant feels like; the discipline to quit42:44  Mental model: 4-5 engines to ride economic cycles46:42  The marble business and hustling from age 1251:20  Bowling alleys & Phoenix Mills: people buy time together53:44  Self-rating: 7.5 as a parent, 5 as a CEO55:15  Building a restaurant vs building an organization56:15  The HR crisis: severe attrition, talent going abroad58:44  The one thing he can't delegate: layouts and property selection1:00:49 Becoming a "boardroom warrior" against his will KEY COMPANIES & BRANDSImpresario Handmade Restaurants; Mocha; Social; Saltwater Cafe/Grill; Bandra Born; Cafe Coffee Day; Phoenix Mills "Bowling Company"; Amoeba; UCLA. KEY CONCEPTSThird spaces; "handmade" at scale; West-aspirational MTV-generation culture; people vs processes; AOV x covers x table turnaround; frequency as a metric; location vs locality / "80 pockets"; evolution vs revolution; mass-extinction events & resilience; working-capital-negative business; building a restaurant vs building an organization; restaurant-industry attrition; the layouts/property selection he won't delegate.
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  Part 2: Kuku’s Lal Chand Bisu on the Bathoth-to-Bandra arc, learning from iterations not books, and why nos beat yeses 04.05.2026 1ó 15p

  Part 2 picks up exactly where I left Bisu — on why a 7-year-old audio platform is releasing a theatrical film on May 8. From there, we go everywhere. Bisu's actual journey from a small village in Shekhawati to Bandra. The "full equation" view of metrics. Why saying no requires more work than saying yes. Why most of his learning comes from iterations, not books. And, in his closing answer, a quietly devastating line about the startup ecosystem itself.If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, please go back and start there first.Chapter list01:02 — Indian Institute of Zombies: why theatrical, why in-house, why AI in the pipeline. The decision-making cadence behind it01:08 — "Your vision grows with you." How the original vision changed from "premium storytelling for Bharat" to something larger01:10 — Bathoth → Shekhawati → IIT Jodhpur → Bandra. Studying in Hindi until Class 10, then +2 in Hindi, then English at IIT01:18 — The discipline of saying no. Why nos require more work than yeses, and why nos are usually the better answer01:19 — "The full equation." Why CAC alone is meaningless; why he tracks revenue, CAC, LTV and cohort profit together. The two real metrics: equation health and engagement01:21 — Numbers beyond a limit give you an illusion. "Don't go deeper in the data — keep your life simple."01:21 — Co-founders, span of control, how the four-way role split actually got sorted01:22 — How Bisu learns: most of it from doing and iterations; books help him articulate what the iterations have already taught him01:25 — Pet phrases at work — "build it like a business, not a startup" — and what management style his colleagues would say he has01:28 — Biggest value add as Bisu, not as CEO. The Uber-power-user analogy01:29 — When did he change his mind about managing people? Going from technical-first to people-first01:34 — Hiring: the open-ended questions Bisu actually asks when he meets potential leaders01:36 — What motivates and drives him on a daily basis01:42 — Family, parenting, and the village memory of his grandmother telling stories by oil lamp in the evenings — the original storyteller in his life01:45 — The personal questions: which morning of the week, how he spends weekends, what a productive day looks like, sleep01:46 — On a scale of 1 to 10, how Bisu rates himself as a CEO01:51 — The closing thought. Would the average Kuku FM subscriber actually want to listen to a two-hour interview with the CEO of Kuku FM? "We live in a bubble. The startup ecosystem feels that the world thinks what we think. It doesn't."01:53 — GoodbyeThings mentioned in Part 2People: Vinod Kumar Meena, Vikas Goyal (co-founders); Kunj Sanghvi (Kuku's Content Head, previously on Two by Two and Zero Shot); the Dalal brothers (script of Indian Institute of Zombies — Hussain and Abbas Dalal of Brahmāstra / Farzi); Gaganjeet Singh and Alok Dwivedi (directors); Bisu's grandmotherPlaces: Bathoth (village in Shekhawati, Rajasthan); IIT Jodhpur; BandraConcepts: the full equation — Bisu's name for treating CAC, revenue, LTV and cohort profit as one calculation, not separate metrics; content is the only product; vision grows with you To listen to all of First PrinciplesIf you'd like to listen to all 54 First Principles episodes — that's close to 110 hours of conversations with founders and leaders building India's most interesting companies — please subscribe to The Ken directly, or to our premium channel on Apple Podcasts.
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  Part 1: Kuku's Lal Chand Bisu on killing three products, ditching the free tier and charging Bharat ₹399 a year 27.04.2026 1ó 4p

  Lal Chand Bisu started Kuku in audio in 2018. Almost everyone in the press wrote them off — the louder competitor was getting the headlines, the VCs didn't believe vernacular India would pay, and the assumption was that short-video would flatten audio. None of that aged well. Kuku FM did ₹242 Cr in FY25 at 175% YoY growth, with roughly 10 million paying subscribers. This is the conversation Bisu, who is just not the kind of founder who walks around telling you these numbers, finally agreed to do.In Part 1, we get into the company history, the pivots, the contrarian decision to cut the free tier, and what 40 million Hindi listens to Rich Dad Poor Dad really mean.Chapter list00:00 — How old is Kuku FM, and what Bisu was doing before (Easy Prep, two and a half years at Toppr)00:02 — June birthdays, coincidence, and Bisu's definition of luck — "most things are out of control"00:04 — The three pivots: podcast aggregator → UGC → PUGC. What killed each one and what was kept constant00:09 — Why vernacular audio IP didn't exist, and why Kuku had to become a studio rather than an aggregator00:14 — January 2021: cutting the free tier and charging ₹399 a year. The investor pushback. Why no ads, ever00:23 — Rich Dad Poor Dad in Hindi: 40 million listens. What that number tells you about the listener that English-first publishers have been missing00:27 — How Kuku's content mix has shifted from entertainment to educational and inspirational00:30 — Audio first, then video. Why audio is roughly 50x cheaper to produce and 50x cheaper to stream00:33 — AI in the marketing pipeline: 500 ads/month → 5,000 ads/month, same cost00:42 — The competitor we don't name. What being the also-ran in the press for years cost — in hires, partnerships, and inside Bisu's own head00:45 — The fundraising history: ~$156M raised, the Granite Asia round, and how much of the last cheque is actually still untouched00:50 — Biggest learnings from unsuccessful fundraising. Why nos are usually the harder, better answer00:55 — Kuku TV: from launch to #1 on India's App Store in four months. Microdrama, the ReelShort wave, MS Dhoni01:01 — Cliffhanger: the Indian Institute of Zombies theatrical bet — and why an audio platform wrote, produced and AI-assisted its own film instead of licensing one. Bisu's answer to this is in Part 2.Things mentioned in Part 1People: Vinod Kumar Meena and Vikas Goyal (co-founders, IIT Jodhpur batchmates); Hansa Bisu (Bisu's wife); MS Dhoni (Kuku FM brand ambassador); Nandan Nilekani / FundamentumCompanies & investors: Mebigo Labs, Toppr, Easy Prep, Pocket FM (the unnamed competitor), Granite Asia, Vertex Ventures, Krafton, Bitkraft, IFC, 3one4 Capital, Shunwei, India QuotientContent & references: Rich Dad Poor Dad (Hindi); Ankur Warikoo's Hindi book; ReelShort; Kuku TV To listen to all of First PrinciplesIf you'd like to listen to all 54 First Principles episodes — that's close to 110 hours of conversations with founders and leaders building India's most interesting companies — please subscribe to The Ken directly, or to our premium channel on Apple Podcasts.Correction: During the conversation, Bisu mentions that the total amount of venture capital raised by Kuku is $170 million. The company has subsequently clarified that the correct figure is $120 million.
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  Part 2: Curefoods' Ankit Nagori on why Indians only eat healthy Monday to Thursday, focusing on brand over scale, and what drives him now 30.03.2026 1ó 3p

  Welcome back to First Principles. This is Part 2 of our full conversation with Ankit Nagori, founder and CEO of Curefoods. If you have not listened to Part 1, go back and start there.In this half, the conversation slows down a little and gets even more interesting. Ankit has strong opinions about why healthy food will always lose to biryani on a Friday night, what building a brand people actually love looks like, and what a Unilever of foods means to him. He is also candid about how he hires, how he spends his Sundays with his son, and what drives him beyond the business._________This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 1: Curefoods' Ankit Nagori on cold emailing his way into Flipkart, designing for talent density, and surviving a pandemic on 2 crores a month 23.03.2026 53p

  Welcome to First Principles. This is Part 1 of our full conversation with Ankit Nagori, founder and CEO of Curefoods.Ankit joined Flipkart as the 22nd employee after cold emailing its founders at a book fair with almost no relevant experience and within six years he was Chief Business Officer. He then co-founded Cult with Mukesh Bansal, built it into one of India's most recognised fitness brands, and spun out Curefoods in the middle of a pandemic when the business was down to 2 crores a month.In this half, Rohin and Ankit get into what those Flipkart years really felt like, what talent density means and whether you can actually design for it, and how Curefoods found its footing when everything was falling apart.________This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 2: Captain Fresh's Utham Gowda on seafood as the world's last unorganised trillion-dollar industry, why undervaluation is a founder's superpower and his “reverse career path” 02.03.2026 58p

  Welcome to First Principles! This is part 2 of episode 52, the full conversation.Rohin met Utham Gowda at Spacebot Studio in Indiranagar on a Tuesday afternoon. Utham was compact, measured, and precise in the way he spoke, like someone who has spent years learning when to talk and when to listen. What's striking was how quickly he opened up. Within the first half hour of the conversation, you got the sense that this is someone who has thought very deeply about his own life, his choices, and what drives him. It makes for one of the best examples on this podcast of a guest easing into a conversation and then, almost without noticing, going places you didn't expect.The story itself is hard to believe. A kid from landlocked Mysore, with no connection to the sea, no family background in business, builds a billion-dollar global seafood company. He took salary cuts at every job change, even after getting married. He has never owned a car and the highest tax he paid was in 2015. And his eight-year-old son, unable to get his father's attention any other way, started a fake company called Blackfish and would set up a little boardroom at home, just to have something to talk to his dad about.This episode covers what seafood as an industry actually looks like, why the last 1000 years haven't changed it, what it really means to build a global company from India, and what happens when a founder finally stops chasing money and has to sit with the question of what he actually wants from all of it.**********This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 1: Captain Fresh's Utham Gowda on seafood as the world's last unorganised trillion-dollar industry, why undervaluation is a founder's superpower and his “reverse career path” 23.02.2026 1ó 6p

  Welcome to First Principles! This is part 1 of episode 52, the full conversation.Rohin met Utham Gowda at Spacebot Studio in Indiranagar on a Tuesday afternoon. Utham was compact, measured, and precise in the way he spoke, like someone who has spent years learning when to talk and when to listen. What's striking was how quickly he opened up. Within the first half hour of the conversation, you got the sense that this is someone who has thought very deeply about his own life, his choices, and what drives him. It makes for one of the best examples on this podcast of a guest easing into a conversation and then, almost without noticing, going places you didn't expect.The story itself is hard to believe. A kid from landlocked Mysore, with no connection to the sea, no family background in business, builds a billion-dollar global seafood company. He took salary cuts at every job change, even after getting married. He has never owned a car and the highest tax he paid was in 2015. And his eight-year-old son, unable to get his father's attention any other way, started a fake company called Blackfish and would set up a little boardroom at home, just to have something to talk to his dad about.This episode covers what seafood as an industry actually looks like, why the last 1000 years haven't changed it, what it really means to build a global company from India, and what happens when a founder finally stops chasing money and has to sit with the question of what he actually wants from all of it.**********This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 2: Kalpana Morparia on the culture of dissent, the 90-day NYSE race, and why ambition requires self-redundancy 09.02.2026 57p

  Hello, listeners, and welcome back to part 2 of the 51st episode of First Principles.Ms. Kalpana Morparia reached out to us via email after the bro-ification episode. It was the most pleasant surprise and we immediately knew we had to get her on the podcast.Here's someone who joined ICICI in 1975 as a lawyer, had absolutely no background in finance, and was then asked to run Treasury. She was terrified but her colleagues told her: "You do not say no to Mr. Kamath and live to have a great career in ICICI."So she said yes and built one of the most remarkable careers in Indian banking.She talks about the ICICI culture where contradicting the chairman wasn't just allowed, it was encouraged. A senior JPMorgan executive once said the most impressive thing about ICICI was that "the junior-most person could contradict the chairman and get away with it."She also gets candid about things most leaders don't talk about. Like why she wishes she had done an MBA. Why she has strong opinions about people's physical appearance at work and knows it's a flaw. Why her spiritual guru completely changed her relationship with the one thing she considered her biggest regret in life.She went to a Ferrari racetrack and hit 304 kmph. She believes work-life balance is nonsense and wishes every youngster would realize that life is work and work is life.Listen in for all this and more, including why she thinks India's next 30 years belong to banking, healthcare, and infrastructure. Why retirement at 60 is an outdated concept. And why on a scale of 1 to 10, she rates her happiness at 9 plus.**********This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.v
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  Part 1: Kalpana Morparia on the culture of dissent, the 90-day NYSE race, and why ambition requires self-redundancy 02.02.2026 1ó

  Hello, listeners, and welcome back to part 1 of the 51st episode of First Principles.Ms. Kalpana Morparia reached out to us via email after the bro-ification episode. It was the most pleasant surprise and we immediately knew we had to get her on the podcast.Here's someone who joined ICICI in 1975 as a lawyer, had absolutely no background in finance, and was then asked to run Treasury. She was terrified but her colleagues told her: "You do not say no to Mr. Kamath and live to have a great career in ICICI."So she said yes and built one of the most remarkable careers in Indian banking.She talks about the ICICI culture where contradicting the chairman wasn't just allowed, it was encouraged. A senior JPMorgan executive once said the most impressive thing about ICICI was that "the junior-most person could contradict the chairman and get away with it."She also gets candid about things most leaders don't talk about. Like why she wishes she had done an MBA. Why she has strong opinions about people's physical appearance at work and knows it's a flaw. Why her spiritual guru completely changed her relationship with the one thing she considered her biggest regret in life.She went to a Ferrari racetrack and hit 304 kmph. She believes work-life balance is nonsense and wishes every youngster would realize that life is work and work is life.Listen in for all this and more, including why she thinks India's next 30 years belong to banking, healthcare, and infrastructure. Why retirement at 60 is an outdated concept. And why on a scale of 1 to 10, she rates her happiness at 9 plus.**********This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 2: Darwinbox’s Rohit Chennamaneni on leading without a CEO, the ‘show don’t tell’ product mindset, and why resilience beats intelligence 19.01.2026 1ó 1p

  In the 2nd part of the 50th episode of First Principles, Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founder of Darwinbox, joins the show to talk about what changes after the early chaos of a startup fades.He explains how Darwinbox has operated without a CEO for years, how the 3 founders divide ownership of decisions instead of debating everything together, and why this structure helped them move faster as the company grew.Rohit also gets specific about product building. He talks about designing HR software that does not need training sessions or long explanations, why adoption matters more than feature depth, and how small product decisions can end up shaping behaviour across entire organisations.The conversation also turns inward. Rohit reflects on moments where intelligence stopped being the advantage he thought it was, why staying with uncomfortable problems mattered more, and how his understanding of leadership changed as Darwinbox scaled.This episode looks at company building through real decisions, and what it takes to keep going long after the excitement wears off.********This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  Part 1: Darwinbox’s Rohit Chennamaneni on leading without a CEO, the ‘show don’t tell’ product mindset, and why resilience beats intelligence 12.01.2026 50p

  In part 1 of the 50th episode of First Principles, Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founder of Darwinbox, joins the show to talk about what changes after the early chaos of a startup fades.He explains how Darwinbox has operated without a CEO for years, how the 3 founders divide ownership of decisions instead of debating everything together, and why this structure helped them move faster as the company grew.Rohit also gets specific about product building. He talks about designing HR software that does not need training sessions or long explanations, why adoption matters more than feature depth, and how small product decisions can end up shaping behaviour across entire organisations.The conversation also turns inward. Rohit reflects on moments where intelligence stopped being the advantage he thought it was, why staying with uncomfortable problems mattered more, and how his understanding of leadership changed as Darwinbox scaled.This episode looks at company building through real decisions, and what it takes to keep going long after the excitement wears off.********This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.
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  First Principles, second look: The 2025 wrap 29.12.2025 1ó 38p

  What a year it's been.After a long hiatus and when we thought we'd closed the curtains for good, First Principles came back in April 2025 for Season 3. And what made this comeback so special? Simple: Rohin was genuinely excited to be back in the interviewing chair.That excitement is infectious. It showed up in every conversation and every question. This year, he sat down with eight incredible CEOs and founders who opened up about their journeys, their philosophies, their wins, and their struggles. These were deep, candid conversations about what it really takes to build something meaningful.In this special wrap episode, Rohin looks back at all eight conversations from 2025. He gives you the context about what it was really like sitting across from each guest, the moments that surprised him, the insights that stuck with him and then we play you the clips that mattered most. Think of it as a guided tour through the year's best moments.And here's the thing we're most proud of: First Principles has been named one of Apple's Best Shows of 2025. It's testament to you, our listeners, who make this more than just a podcast. You make it a community.And next year? It's going to be even better. More intriguing guests. More candid discussions. More first principles thinking applied.Here are all eight episodes from 2025: Episode 42: Vidit Aatrey on building a problem-first mindset into Meesho’s cultureEpisode 43: Sahil Barua on why Delhivery is the antithesis of moving fast and breaking thingsEpisode 44: Manish Sabharwal of Teamlease on creating great ancestors, India’s development journey and ‘regulatory cholesterol’Episode 45: Ultraviolette Automotive’s Narayan Subramaniam on tinkering, designing and learning by discardingEpisode 46: Anand Jain of Clevertap on starting with nothing and learning, building and leading as you go alongEpisode 47: Trilegal’s Rahul Matthan on the firm, the partnership, and the principlesEpisode 48: Indiagold’s Deepak Abbot on turning a nation’s ‘dead asset’ into credit scores and working capitalEpisode 49: Ixigo’s Aloke Bajpai on using empathy, customer experience, and resilience to both survive and thrive______Once again, thank you for listening to First Principles. Check out our newsletter and discover more at here. You can email us at [email protected] to share your thoughts, suggestions or anything else.This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our in-house audio engineer.See you next year,Team First Principles
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  Part 2: Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai on using empathy, customer experience, and resilience to both survive and thrive 22.12.2025 1ó 8p

  Hello and welcome back to First Principles. This is the part 2 of the 49th episode since we started, or the 8th episode of season 3.In this episode, I sit down with Aloke Bajpai, Group CEO of Ixigo, one of India's fastest-growing and most downloaded travel platforms. While most Indian OTAs followed the Western template of flights-first followed by hotels, Aloke and his co-founder Rajnish took a radically different path. The one that would take nearly 14 years before Ixigo became a full-blown OTA.Aloke takes us through Ixigo's unconventional journey, starting as a meta-search engine in 2007 that couldn't raise funding for over a year. We explore how the insight that 96% of Indians don't fly, led them to build a train-first platform, spending four years creating utility features without any monetization. He breaks down the technical innovation behind solving India-specific problems. Right from predicting waitlist confirmations using machine learning to creating a crowdsourced running status system using cell tower IDs when GPS and internet failed along railway tracks.A central theme is resilience through empathy. Aloke shares how near-death experiences during the 2008 global financial crisis and COVID-19 shaped Ixigo's culture. We discuss the founder's decision to go to zero salary, the whiteboard moment where the entire team transparently decided on salary cuts, and the contrarian choice to proactively refund customers during COVID even when the company was running out of money. Finally, Aloke argues that peace of mind, not tickets, is what travel companies should really be selling.