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.
Last refreshed: ⓘ
Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
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 challeng...
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...
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...
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...
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, t...
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, t...
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. - Manish Sabharwal isn’t an easy man to nail down. By that, I don’t...
Manish Sabharwal, co-founder of Teamlease, shares insights from his "portfolio life," spanning economic policy, education, and labor markets. He critiques India's post-independence policy choices, arguing they led to economic handicaps despite democratic success. Sabharwal emphasizes the role of individual choices over luck or skill, the power of compounding, and the costly "sins of omission," particularly India's "regulatory cholesterol." He advocates for deregulation to unlock India's economic destiny and mass prosperity.
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 filled with cashewnut and mango trees before ending up on a dusty highway, dodging traffic next to an...
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 filled with cashewnut and mango trees before ending up on a dusty highway, dodging traffic next to an...
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 and how he approaches life now as a parent. It’s a wonderful 40 minutes where I spent some time talki...
In this episode, Vidit Aatrey, Co-founder and CEO of Meesho, delves into the evolution of his e-commerce giant, highlighting a unique "problem-first mindset" and a relentless focus on serving Bharat's underserved consumers. He shares Meesho's journey from early pivots like Fashionier and the reseller model to becoming India's most downloaded shopping app, driven by insights from deep customer observation and a willingness to completely change business models. Vidit also explains the strategic decisions behind zero-commission for sellers, the creation of Valmo for low-cost logistics, and their pragmatic "be everywhere" approach to reach customers, adapting to trends like the short video revolution.
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 some of the biggest questions from the world of Indian business. But, why's it called Two by Two? Her...
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 and life living. Here are the guests you’ll get listen to in this episode: Krish Subramanian, co-found...
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 specific founder and their approach to entrepreneurship, leadership, and well, life. You’ll listen to Ka...
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 takes the same amount of passion, the joy of building, stress, frustration and the ability to manag...
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 capitalists are facilitators or enablers, not builders or doers. Manav, too, like Alok Mittal earlie...
"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 online lending platform, had to say about startups getting caught up in the founder-worshipping trap. I h...
“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" because Manav started Eka in 2004 and just sold it earlier this year. Since Manav was earning $10K a...
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 perspective, as one does when they go through all those experiences. Now, he’s thankful for all those who re...
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 strong beliefs. In Alok’s mind it’s the mid-management which holds together the organization and not ...
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, didn't have any nice joints for the same. A few years after starting it both of them left it behin...
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 world. He was still involved in setting up and innovating the Formula E division at Mahindra, he still h...
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 more appropriately reinventing the wheel. First up, we have newly inducted Shark, Radhika Gupta of Ede...
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 specific type of person. A really fit, disciplined person – perhaps, a fitness influencer? Well, you ‘re k...
Chetan Maini, the co-founder and Chairman of Sun Mobility has done a whole lot in his life. He’s been forever a tinkerer as you’re bound to find out if you read his father Dr.S.K.Maini’s book REVA: India’s Green Gift to the World. Chetan’s raced solar cars, built his own car company REVA and is now building a pay-as-you-go energy infrastructure for a greener future with Sun Mobility. You’ll see in this a proper evolution of owning the chain of control as well. Well, it has to be said this is not...
Girish Mathrubootham – founder and CEO of Freshworks – feels strongly about having the authority to take one’s own decisions, from a young age. He made a very apt example in our conversation with him earlier this month at his office in Chennai: a kid never gets to make his own decisions, even if it is to just order food of their liking. This in turn translates into their adulthood as an inability to make decisions. Girish has been out there making most of his decisions for himself from a young a...
Sometime in the early 1970s a young Harsh Mariwala joined Bombay Oil Industries, a company set up by his grandfather in 1948, just a year after India’s independence. The company would trade in spices, oils and chemicals. Over the next two decades Harsh learnt the ropes of the family business. Till in 1991 - two decades after he had joined Bombay Oil - he left it to start his own company, Marico. He had already seen the power of quality and brand in a category that was still almost entirely commo...
If you're here to find out more about our brand new early careers podcast, check out The First Two Years and how you can join the TFTY community here ! You can also listen to our trailer on Spotify and Apple. Welcome to Episode 41 of First Principles. When asked, Girish Mathrubootham* – the CEO and Co-Founder of Freshworks, says that there’s one thing most of his direct reports would agree about him – that he leads from the heart. Many Freshworks employees have a different way of describing Giri...
