First Principles

Епизоди

• 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 1ч 15мин

  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.
• Part 1: Kuku's Lal Chand Bisu on killing three products, ditching the free tier and charging Bharat ₹399 a year 27.04.2026 1ч 3мин

  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.
• 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 1ч 3мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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.
• 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 53мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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.
• 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 58мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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.
• 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 1ч 6мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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.
• Part 2: Kalpana Morparia on the culture of dissent, the 90-day NYSE race, and why ambition requires self-redundancy 09.02.2026 57мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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
• Part 1: Kalpana Morparia on the culture of dissent, the 90-day NYSE race, and why ambition requires self-redundancy 02.02.2026 1ч

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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.
• 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 1ч 1мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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.
• 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 49мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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.
• First Principles, second look: The 2025 wrap 29.12.2025 1ч 38мин

  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 fp@the-ken.com 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
• Part 2: Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai on using empathy, customer experience, and resilience to both survive and thrive 22.12.2025 1ч 8мин

  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.
• Part 1: Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai on using empathy, customer experience, and resilience to both survive and thrive 15.12.2025 1ч 1мин

  Hello and welcome back to First Principles. This is the part 1 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.
• Part 2: Indiagold's Deepak Abbot on turning a nation's 'dead asset' into credit scores and working capital 17.11.2025 55мин

  Hello, listeners, and welcome back to First Principles, Episode 48, or the 7th episode of season 3. This is part 2 of the conversation.The host, Rohin Dharmakumar, first crossed paths with Deepak Abbot back in April 2015, even before The Ken had been founded. Rohin was chasing down an insightful breakdown of the tech ecosystem's huge user numbers during the Free Basics debate, and Deepak, a veteran operator and former product head at Paytm, was the go-to source for his data-filled, analytical posts.That same data-driven curiosity is what led Deepak to walk away from corporate life in 2019. He was clear: he didn't want to just manage; he had years left to actively "build products, you know, with my own hands". What he built was Indiagold, targeting the massive opportunity of gold in a market VCs often dismissed as an 'old economy product'.In this episode, Rohin sat down with Deepak Abbot, co-founder of Indiagold, to discuss how they are transforming India's massive $1.5 trillion gold reserve—an asset often locked away and doing nothing—into a productive force. Deepak calls this gold a "dead asset" and explains that Indiagold’s mission is to change the mindset around it. They are not just giving gold loans; they are monetising a secured asset for the 250 million Indians who are excluded from formal credit due to thin or non-existent credit scores. By enabling customers to safely leverage their gold reserve, the company helps jumpstart a formal credit history and provides essential working capital.Listen in as Deepak charts his operator-to-founder journey, shares how he navigated initial VC skepticism, and details the strategy behind turning a seemingly archaic commodity into a modern fintech solution for one of India’s most fundamental credit problems. Plus, a fascinating look inside a unique company culture, including why Indiagold operates without a CEO.*****This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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.*****
• Part 1: Indiagold's Deepak Abbot on turning a nation's 'dead asset' into credit scores and working capital 10.11.2025 1ч 6мин

  Hello, listeners, and welcome back to First Principles, Episode 48, or the 7th episode of season 3. This is part 1 of the conversation.The host, Rohin Dharmakumar, first crossed paths with Deepak Abbot back in April 2015, even before The Ken had been founded. Rohin was chasing down an insightful breakdown of the tech ecosystem's huge user numbers during the Free Basics debate, and Deepak, a veteran operator and former product head at Paytm, was the go-to source for his data-filled, analytical posts.That same data-driven curiosity is what led Deepak to walk away from corporate life in 2019. He was clear: he didn't want to just manage; he had years left to actively "build products, you know, with my own hands". What he built was Indiagold, targeting the massive opportunity of gold in a market VCs often dismissed as an 'old economy product'.In this episode, Rohin sat down with Deepak Abbot, co-founder of Indiagold, to discuss how they are transforming India's massive $1.5 trillion gold reserve—an asset often locked away and doing nothing—into a productive force. Deepak calls this gold a "dead asset" and explains that Indiagold’s mission is to change the mindset around it. They are not just giving gold loans; they are monetising a secured asset for the 250 million Indians who are excluded from formal credit due to thin or non-existent credit scores. By enabling customers to safely leverage their gold reserve, the company helps jumpstart a formal credit history and provides essential working capital.Listen in as Deepak charts his operator-to-founder journey, shares how he navigated initial VC skepticism, and details the strategy behind turning a seemingly archaic commodity into a modern fintech solution for one of India’s most fundamental credit problems. Plus, a fascinating look inside a unique company culture, including why Indiagold operates without a CEO.*****This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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.*****
• Part 2: Trilegal's Rahul Matthan on the firm, the partnership, and the principles 22.09.2025 1ч 2мин

  Hello and welcome back to First Principles. This is the 47th episode since we started, or the 6th episode of season 3.In this episode, I sit down with Rahul Matthan, a co-founder of Trilegal, one of India’s largest and most successful full-service law firms. While Rahul starts by questioning if a lawyer can be an entrepreneur, the conversation unfolds into a masterclass on the patient, principled art of building a lasting institution.Rahul provides a rare, inside look into the unique challenges of building a professional services firm—a business where the people are the product. He breaks down the counterintuitive models Trilegal adopted to foster a culture of collaboration over individual stardom. We explore their radical “all-equity partnership” and the “lockstep” compensation model, designed to de-risk the firm from becoming dependent on individual “rainmakers” and to align everyone’s incentives towards collective success.A key theme is the power of compounding principles. Rahul explains how foundational decisions made 25 years ago, such as not naming the firm after its founders and instilling a “firm before self” ethos, were critical for long-term, sustainable growth. He also shares the story behind Trilegal’s exponential 3X growth during the COVID period, attributing it not just to market demand but to a crucial, planned transition from a founder-led management to a new leadership team built for scale.Finally, Rahul offers a nuanced and critical perspective on the impact of AI on the legal profession. He argues that the real disruption won’t be in replacing senior experts, but in hollowing out the training ground for junior associates, posing a fundamental challenge to the apprenticeship model that professions rely on.*****This is the 2nd part of my conversation with him.*****This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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.
• Part 1: Trilegal's Rahul Matthan on the firm, the partnership, and the principles 15.09.2025 1ч 8мин

  In this episode, Rohin Dharmakumar sits down with Rahul Matthan, a co-founder of Trilegal, one of India’s largest and most successful full-service law firms. While Rahul starts by questioning if a lawyer can be an entrepreneur, the conversation unfolds into a masterclass on the patient, principled art of building a lasting institution.Rahul provides a rare, inside look into the unique challenges of building a professional services firm—a business where the people are the product. He breaks down the counterintuitive models Trilegal adopted to foster a culture of collaboration over individual stardom. We explore their radical “all-equity partnership” and the “lockstep” compensation model, designed to de-risk the firm from becoming dependent on individual “rainmakers” and to align everyone’s incentives towards collective success.A key theme is the power of compounding principles. Rahul explains how foundational decisions made 25 years ago, such as not naming the firm after its founders and instilling a “firm before self” ethos, were critical for long-term, sustainable growth. He also shares the story behind Trilegal’s exponential 3X growth during the COVID period, attributing it not just to market demand but to a crucial, planned transition from a founder-led management to a new leadership team built for scale.Finally, Rahul offers a nuanced and critical perspective on the impact of AI on the legal profession. He argues that the real disruption won’t be in replacing senior experts, but in hollowing out the training ground for junior associates, posing a fundamental challenge to the apprenticeship model that professions rely on.This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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.
• Part 2: Anand Jain of Clevertap on starting with nothing and learning, building and leading as you go along 18.08.2025 1ч 11мин

  Hello and welcome back to First Principles. I’m thrilled to bring you episode 46, my conversation with Anand Jain, the co-founder of Mumbai-headquartered customer engagement platform CleverTap.Anand and I were once colleagues at the media conglomerate Network 18. He got out before I did.In 2013 he and two of his colleagues, Sunil Thomas and Kondamudi, left Network 18 and decided to fire up their respective laptops and code a new customer engagement platform. In just a few months, WizRocket, as it was then called, found its first – albeit non-paying customer. Then, in fairly short order, word-of-mouth driven inbound Seed and Series A investments.Over time it became Clevertap, raising over $180M in VC funding and becoming a globally used and respected product.As it turns out though, one of Clevertap’s operating philosophies is, well, First Principles. A strong reason is because Anand himself is a strong believer in it.At the age of 12 he lost his dad. Thus, at an age when kids are taught to focus only on studies, Anand started tinkering, repairing and learning computer programming to earn money to put food on the table.His first business was a scheduling system for lawyers in Ahmedabad, written in FoxPro. That was in 1994.His friends in college called him “khurpechi” in Hindi. Literally, that’s a person who uses a khurpi – a gardening tool – to turn soil over to weed crops or plants. Colloquially though, that’s a person who is curious, restless and is always meddling around with things that don’t concern them directly.Along the way, Anand co-founded Burrp, one of India’s first restaurant review portals, which got acquired by Network 18. While he was building and running Burrp, he also started manufacturing and selling pigeon spikes to shops, because he noticed there was no one doing that in India!“I shouldn’t be here,” he told me. Why, I asked. He is not very smart, he replied. He doesn’t have good educational pedigree. He did not even study computer science formally. But, he said, he is extremely hard working and believes that anything can be learnt through hard work and perseverance.You can see why First Principles is a concept that is dear to Anand.I asked him how happy he was on a scale of 10. He said 10.I asked him if he’d ever thought of retiring. He said never. Life is too short to not have fun, he said.Indeed, it is. So let’s dive into episode 46, with Anand Jain, co-founder of Clevertap.This is part 2 of my conversation with him-This episode was produced by Hari Krishna, with mixing and mastering by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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.
• Part 1: Anand Jain of Clevertap on starting with nothing and learning, building and leading as you go along 11.08.2025 1ч 4мин

  Hello and welcome back to First Principles. I’m thrilled to bring you episode 46, my conversation with Anand Jain, the co-founder of Mumbai-headquartered customer engagement platform CleverTap.Anand and I were once colleagues at the media conglomerate Network 18. He got out before I did.In 2013 he and two of his colleagues, Sunil Thomas and Kondamudi, left Network 18 and decided to fire up their respective laptops and code a new customer engagement platform. In just a few months, WizRocket, as it was then called, found its first – albeit non-paying customer. Then, in fairly short order, word-of-mouth driven inbound Seed and Series A investments.Over time it became Clevertap, raising over $180M in VC funding and becoming a globally used and respected product.As it turns out though, one of Clevertap’s operating philosophies is, well, First Principles. A strong reason is because Anand himself is a strong believer in it.At the age of 12 he lost his dad. Thus, at an age when kids are taught to focus only on studies, Anand started tinkering, repairing and learning computer programming to earn money to put food on the table.His first business was a scheduling system for lawyers in Ahmedabad, written in FoxPro. That was in 1994.His friends in college called him “khurpechi” in Hindi. Literally, that’s a person who uses a khurpi – a gardening tool – to turn soil over to weed crops or plants. Colloquially though, that’s a person who is curious, restless and is always meddling around with things that don’t concern them directly.Along the way, Anand co-founded Burrp, one of India’s first restaurant review portals, which got acquired by Network 18. While he was building and running Burrp, he also started manufacturing and selling pigeon spikes to shops, because he noticed there was no one doing that in India!“I shouldn’t be here,” he told me. Why, I asked. He is not very smart, he replied. He doesn’t have good educational pedigree. He did not even study computer science formally. But, he said, he is extremely hard working and believes that anything can be learnt through hard work and perseverance.You can see why First Principles is a concept that is dear to Anand.I asked him how happy he was on a scale of 10. He said 10.I asked him if he’d ever thought of retiring. He said never. Life is too short to not have fun, he said.Indeed, it is. So let’s dive into episode 46, with Anand Jain, co-founder of Clevertap.This is part 1 of my conversation with him-This episode was produced by Hari Krishna, with mixing and mastering by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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.
• Part 2: Ultraviolette Automotive's Narayan Subramaniam on tinkering, designing and learning by discarding 28.07.2025 1ч 1мин

  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.-My first introduction, and indeed my ongoing and recurring one, to Ultraviolette has been personal. For years, driving by the Inner Koramangala Inner Ring Road from where I stay to Indiranagar, the Ultraviolette showroom would always catch my eye on the left. I used to constantly wonder about those really cool bikes hanging from cables in the double-ceiling office, intrigued by what kind of bikes they were.Coincidentally, Ultraviolette was founded in the same year that The Ken also started. We've both been in Bangalore, both in a similar part of town, for most of that time. And yet, this was our first time meeting in the ninth year of our respective journeys. As Narayan himself beautifully put it, when you're chasing larger goals, time truly goes by incredibly quickly. We'll delve into what that means for a founder and how they perceive the passage of time when building an organisation from the ground up, because, as Narayan notes, time is the biggest limiting factor for a startup, encompassing money and talent, as founders are always trying to "buy time".We explored Ultraviolette's foundational vision, how his engineering education laid a strong foundation, and how it fostered a passion to build things from an early age, even tinkering with electronics and DIY systems, their early funding challenges when VCs deemed their ambition "a little too risky" in the early stages, as they were trying to compete with entrenched players.Narayan is also the head of design at Ultraviolette, so naturally, the conversation went in the direction of him defining the Ultraviolette brand's core pillars as design, technology, and performance, with the promise of "bringing you the future faster than the competition".He shared Ultraviolette’s ambition to expand to Europe this year and address a significant market gap for compelling electric mid-segment motorcycles at price parity with internal combustion engines.Narayan also revealed that his colleagues often describe him and his co-founder and childhood friend, Niraj, as "paranoid," driven by a deep attention to detail. He constantly pushes his team to ask, "Have we found the optimal solution after discarding all other possibilities?"The journey of Ultraviolette is one that defies conventional wisdom.Welcome to First Principles. -This episode was produced by Hari Krishna, with mixing and mastering by Rajiv CN.Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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.