First Principles

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...

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...

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...

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 in...

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 in...

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 in...

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 in...

Delhivery, the logistics company, started out in Delhi. It even has Delhi in its name, literally. Yet, a few weeks ago, I flew to Goa to meet its co-founder and CEO, Sahil Barua, because that’s where Delhivery’s headquarters is now. It was a day trip. I took an early morning flight. Spent a few hours at a quaint cafe where I was the only guest. Then, I walked 15 minutes through still back alleys f...

Delhivery, the logistics company, started out in Delhi. It even has Delhi in its name, literally. Yet, a few weeks ago, I flew to Goa to meet its co-founder and CEO, Sahil Barua, because that’s where Delhivery’s headquarters is now. It was a day trip. I took an early morning flight. Spent a few hours at a quaint cafe where I was the only guest. Then, I walked 15 minutes through still back alleys f...

Welcome to First Principles. This is the second part of my conversation with Vidit Aatrey, co-founder and CEO of Meesho, which we had released in full for Premium subscribers of The Ken last week and is also available to subscribers of The Ken Premium channel on Apple Podcasts. Vidit and I discussed a lot of things. From the way his upbringing grounded him, the way he approaches hiring at Meesho a...

I met Vidit Aatrey, Co-founder and CEO of Meesho, on 14th February, exactly two months ago. We met at Spacebot Studios in Indiranagar. Vidit is tall, lean and clean-shaven. He is a careful listener and a measured speaker. When you ask him a question, you get the sense he’s spending time parsing all its meanings, and then playing out a few versions of responses in his head, perhaps doing a little b...

From over here at The Ken's newsroom, we have a very exciting announcement: our first premium podcast – India's first premium business podcast – is now live! It's called Two by Two – and this podcast will be your personal investigative brain. Each week Two by Two will be where hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan will be joined by a few interesting and opinionated guests to discuss s...

Hello, we're back again with part 2 of our final, final supercut where we’ve spliced together one interesting bit of conversation from the last 21 guests I interviewed on First Principles.  And like the last episode where we covered founders 1 to 20, you’ll hear super sharp slices of a few minutes each which are reflections on their approach to organization building, risk taking, decision making a...

I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t the First Principles podcast draw its curtains? Yes we did. But then we decided to do a final super-splice of every single episode we did. There were 41 founders. A bit too many for a single supercut episode, don’t you think? So, here’s the first 20. We went through all the episodes and picked a few minutes from each that we felt captured the essence of the spec...

First Principles is coming to an end. But it's not the end of the road for you as listeners. We still want to hear from you and know what you expect from the podcasts from The Ken. Let us know with your suggestions and critique. We'd love to know your thoughts and you can let us know here . Also, you can always write to us at fp@the-ken.com with your thoughts.

Becoming an entrepreneur is a leap of faith. Regardless of when or even if your business sees the light of day, starting up is still a tremendously hard thing for someone to take up, work on and say out loud to the world. The leap of faith still exists when you're a woman founder, but with a bunch of other variables you didn't ask for also thrown in. But I'll tell you what doesn't change. It still...

In the first part of my conversation with Manav Garg, I introduced him as the founder of Eka Software. This week, I would like to reintroduce Manav as a venture capitalist and the co-founder of Together Fund, a VC firm. Well, you know how I feel about having venture capitalists on First Principles if you've listened to my conversation with Alok Mittal. I had said in that conversation that venture...

"This notion of a startup should be centered around the founder is a mindset. It makes for great stories. It makes for great heroes. And that's the reason why that sustains But, you know, there are great organizations that have been built where founders did not believe in that. And the organizations sustain even after the founder leaves." That's what Alok Mittal, founder and MD of Indifi, an onlin...

“As I said, I am from a middle-class family. I was earning $10,000/month, which is a large sum in those days. And sitting in Singapore, Bangkok, travelling around the world. So my the larger question in my mind is that how do I take the decision?” says Manav Garg. Manav Garg, founder and former CEO of Eka Software, a SaaS company that operates in the global commodities trading space. "Former CEO"...

Jaydeep Barman has settled into his role of being a CEO for quite some time now. He admits he was not always the nicest of people when they restarted or ‘actually started’ Faasos, which later became Rebel Foods, as a QSR chain in 2011. He would be unreasonable and brash with the people he worked with and in his own words “must have rubbed people the wrong way”. But with time he has gained perspect...

Alok Mittal has been on both ends of the startup ecosystem. He’s been a founder and a VC. These days he’s back in the founder’s seat but still enabling businesses but through his lending platform Indifi which lends money to Small and Medium Enterprises or SMEs. He has very strong thoughts about org building even though he admits Indifi is only 9 years old. He speaks from his observations and his s...

Rebel Foods was incorporated in 2015. Before that it was Faasos and Faasos has been around since 2004. But co-founder and CEO Jaydeep Barman says back in 2004 when he and his co-founder Kallol Banerjee started it, they didn’t look at it as a means of living. It existed to some extent, primarily, to fulfil their own craving for good Calcutta rolls as Pune, where both of them were living at the time...

When Chetan Maini – co-founder and chairman of SUN Mobility – stepped down as Mahindra Reva CEO in 2015, he wasn’t thinking what was the next venture to start. In fact even though he stepped down he was still involved in the space. His time was still spent in understanding the possibilities electric mobility could unlock for the world and how these possibilities were being explored around the worl...

What does your company do? There are many ways to answer this question. Most founders have a really good answer, some have a meandering one. Well, let’s just say it’s always a compelling answer. This week we have five founders to answer that question on a broader range. They function in very competitive sectors and are successfully making their mark in their respective sectors by innovating and mo...

Our guest for this episode has a very specific weekly routine.  Pilates - once a week. Strength training - once a week. Aqua therapy - once a week Functional training, swimming, breathing exercises, meditating daily with just a little trouble Golfing three times a week followed up with posture exercises  And very recently, experimenting with intermittent fasting. Maybe you’re imagining a very spec...