First Principles

Jul 17 2024 64 ep. 80 mins 124

First Principles Podcast artwork

First Principles is a weekly interview podcast comprising authentic, candid, and insightful conversations between some of India’s most accomplished founders and business leaders, and Rohin Dharmakumar, The Ken’s CEO & co-founder. From personal philosophies, mental models and decision making frameworks, to reading habits, parenting styles or personal interests, each episode will delve into what makes each of these leaders unique.

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Introducing Two by Two, a new premium business podcast from The Ken

Jul 17 2024 8 mins

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 opinionate

The Final Supercut Part 2: Founders 21-41

Jul 10 2024 88 mins

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

The Final Supercut Part 1: Founders 1-20

Jul 03 2024 84 mins

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 th

Last Principles

Jun 19 2024 6 mins

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 [email protected] with your thoughts.

Five women founders speak about leading with empathy, ambition, and not being apologetic and just focusing on building

Jun 12 2024 85 mins

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 ch

Manav Garg sold his business and started TogetherFund with Girish Mathrubootham. Naturally, the $150M fund has a founder-operator bias. What does that mean?

Jun 05 2024 66 mins

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 conversatio

Part 2: Alok Mittal—teacher, angel investor, former VC—asserts Indifi is not a disruptive business. He also emphasises organisations should not fall into the trap of founder-worshipping

May 29 2024 50 mins

"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 I

Manav Garg started and ran Eka Software for 20 years before selling it. His #1 advise to founders? Budget 6 months to "manufacture" your co-founders

May 22 2024 63 mins

“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 s

Postcard Hotels' Kapil Chopra wants to build an iconic luxury hotel group in a hurry and from scratch, but without risking it all

May 15 2024 109 mins

Kapil Chopra, the founder and CEO of Postcard Hotels told me the following statistics.Of the 10 million foreign tourists who visit India each year, roughly 10% - one million - are classified as luxury. “So we've kind of made entire Rajasthan and Kerala as two big sectors for one million tourists,” he said.In comparison domestic trips made by Indians was around 2.3 billion a yea

Part 2: Jaydeep Barman explains how internet restaurant Rebel Foods and luxury good giant LVMH have more in common than one can imagine

May 08 2024 47 mins

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