This episode of Two by Two was first published on 05 June 2025. 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. – B...
Jul 03, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 45
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 29 May 2025. 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. - Sm...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 44
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 22 May 2025. 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. - Re...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 43
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 15 May 2025. 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. - Th...
Jun 12, 2025•1 hr 55 min•Ep. 42
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 08 May 2025. 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. - Th...
Jun 05, 2025•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 41
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 01 May 2025. 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. - Th...
May 29, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 40
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 24th April 2025. 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. ...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 39
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 17th April 2025. 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. ...
May 15, 2025•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 38
This episode of Two by Two was first published on 10th April 2025. 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 . You can also subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts for an easy monthly price (Rs 299 in India). The channel includes ALL our premium podcasts. - US President Donald...
May 08, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 37
You’ve surely heard of the term of the term enshittification? In case you haven’t, it was coined by blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow. He defined it as the pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time. This decline or decay has started to show in Indian Consumer tech products as well, resulting in an experience for customers that is much worse than what was promised. From seemingly unharmful dark patterns to unnecessary cross-selling, the spectrum lies wide sour ...
May 02, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 36
“The future of consultants is intricately linked to the future of consulting” That’s what one of the guests had to say about the future of consultants and the promise of consulting careers. Being a consultant at any of the big three consulting firms—McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group(BCG)—meant one thing: The opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects with big, innovative companies. It allowed the people who worked at these companies to have career opportun...
Apr 25, 2025•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 35
You could, in many ways, picture India’s tech businesses venturing into the global stage in waves. First, there were the services companies. Your Wipros and Infosys and the like. Then, startups such as Zomato, Oyo, and Ola took their shot. The third wave was headlined by SaaS companies like Zoho and Freshworks. What does the fourth wave look like? What does the future hold for companies making the jump? This week’s episode of Two by Two was our attempt to answer some of those questions. Our gues...
Apr 18, 2025•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 34
Free-range eggs and chicken have been gaining popularity for a while. The practices involved in producing and raising them are considered more humane. The market for humane meat has been growing slowly but steadily. Reports suggest that a majority of the country eats eggs, chicken, or meat. Shouldn’t we care about how the animals that reach our plates are raised and killed? It’s not a question with easy answers. Today, consumers are becoming more aware of the conditions in which the eggs and mea...
Apr 11, 2025•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 33
There's a war for succession going on. Who gets to become the new television? There are two challengers. The first challenger is Youtube. According to Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO, TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the "primary device for YouTube viewing in the US". It is, as Mohan writes in his annual letter from the CEO, an indication that YouTube is the new television. It's interactive and includes things like shorts, podcasts, and live streams alongside sports, sitcoms, and talk show...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 32
Everyone’s lives would be better if we were rid of spam calls and messages, but we don’t live in that reality. So, most people rely on caller-ID apps or services to save themselves from the ordeal. In September last year, Bharti Airtel launched a spam-fighting network free of cost to all users who have a Volte-enabled smartphone. Airtel says its AI-powered systems come across a call or message that seems sketchy based on call patterns, frequency, duration and other parameters to flag them as ‘su...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 31
The consumer need for 10-minute deliveries wasn't demanded, but it was created. Multiple startups went into an arms race to deliver products faster and faster to users who never really asked for them. This expanded into category after category, starting from groceries to FMCG products, then to apparel, electronics, PS5s, iPhones, and later food. The 10-minute monster demands to be fed and is eating category after category, forcing consumers to change long-established patterns so they can get stu...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 30
Have you made a trip abroad to attend a live event in 2023 or 2024? Did you have the option of attending the same (or equivalent) event in India? Why did you choose not to attend the same event in India? These were the three main questions we posed to listeners of Two by Two in a recent survey to understand the biggest problems with hosting events—big or small—in India. Then we took all the people who said yes and looked at the events that they said they went outside India to attend, even though...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 29
On January 20th, the online publication The Head and Tale broke the news that two of India's largest payment aggregators and gateways, Razorpay and Cashfree, were severing ties with India's largest payment orchestrator or router, Juspay. Payment gateways are the simplest. They simply facilitate a payment transaction between a merchant's website and a bank. But these days, we have so many ways to pay. Cards, UPI, net banking, wallets, etc. Many payment gateways also aggregate these methods and of...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 28
“This is the first time we are discussing what I'd describe as a wicked problem ”, says host Rohin Dharmakumar at the beginning of this episode. What's a wicked problem ? It's not a bad thing, it's not an evil thing. A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that's difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. They lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 27
Both Zomato and Swiggy have been aggressively focusing on the 10-minute grocery delivery space for a while now. Quick commerce. But what sent both of them into a spiral was when Zepto, the joker in the quick commerce pack, started delivering snacks in 10 minutes through Zepto Cafe, a separate app. Suddenly, quick commerce wasn’t enough. Quick food was up for play too. Swiggy launched Snacc soon after, and Blinkit followed suit with Bistro. Both were also separate apps. However, this move to disr...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 57 min•Ep. 26
Business schools are among the most coveted higher educational institutions. Students go through some of the most competitive exams and pay significant fees because they hope that at the end of their degree, they will get a great job. Yet, the onerous process of finding, soliciting and bringing dozens of companies to campuses each year falls mostly on final-year students, who are part of elected/selected placement committees. For as long as we can remember, these committees have always been accu...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 25
In 2023, two-wheelers and three-wheelers in India experienced growth of around 37% and 66%. Electric four-wheelers also promised to go down the same path because in that same year, there was a significant increase in sales of electric four-wheelers, 113%. Now, of course, this is from a lower base, but the signs were clear. The conventional wisdom or the narrative has been that petrol and diesel cars are going to become a relic of the past. And if you're an automaker and if you're not investing b...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 24
Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early on Yet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunit...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 23
It’s time for us to retire the term “Direct-to-Consumer” or D2C. The phrase is, anyway, a bit long in the tooth, having been used since the days of the dot-com boom. D2C used to mean selling directly to end customers, rather than selling through retailers or other middlemen. In theory, selling directly to consumers would allow a company to offer both lower prices and maintain higher margins (since it didn’t have to pay commissions to middlemen), having better products sustained through a faster ...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 22
Artificial intelligence will affect all facets of modern-day business in some way or another. But it will most definitely go a few layers deeper with the type of companies whose job is to be a record of business’ today – SaaS companies. SaaS as a business model is investment-heavy in the beginning. It’s risky to build, it takes time to build, and it takes skill to build. But if successful, it is a cash cow. Think of the biggest SaaS companies – Salesforce, Microsoft and Adobe. They spent years b...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 21
Fintech lending was supposed to be the bridge that would enable entrepreneurs, small businesses and even individuals across the country to get access to much-needed credit to build businesses. For millions of small and medium businesses, and even individuals seeking a personal loan, who’d otherwise not qualify for them (usually unsecured ones) from banks, these new-age financial institutions were the great hope and sources of credit. Then in October this year, the RBI, like it usually seems to d...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 20
Today’s episode of Two by Two is about how the marketing function has been eating itself from the inside. Historically, in companies, marketing has always been about the long term, while a function like sales was about the near term. Marketing owned the customer—what they wanted, their dreams, their fears, and their vanities. It was supposed to tell stories of customers back to the organisation and, in return, tell stories of the company back to customers. Today, in company after company, the ma...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 19
Welcome to the year-end special edition of Two by Two . We’ve released 22 episodes of Two by Two since our inaugural edition in July. We’ve covered an incredible breadth of counterintuitive topics framed as, well, two by twos. Would Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe became Flipkart? Did Delhi prick Bengaluru’s bubble? Is the golden era of the software engineer over? Why is health insurance broken? How will Ola and Uber avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts’? Why is Zepto behaving like a gold meda...
Dec 26, 2024•56 min
Dmart, the retail group in India, is absolutely number one on vision, execution, and consistency. Dmart opened its first supermarket in Mumbai’s Powai suburb in 2002. Like Walmart in the US, it adopted a deep discounting strategy, offering its customers low prices every day. Today, it has 381 stores. In spite of offering its customers the deepest discounts, Dmart’s net profit numbers beat those of its global peers. Yet analysts and investors have been becoming increasingly bearish about Dmart’s ...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 18
For the last 24 months, the default way in which startups were exposed to venture capital and its effects has been, in many ways, paused. There's a slowdown. Venture capital funding for the first nine months of this year is down 7% over a similar period last year, per Tracxn. There have been news stories about layoffs, company shutdowns, and downrounds at various companies from a time when unicorns were being born every three months or so. Capital is abundant. A lot of dry powder remains uninves...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 17
