Ola Electric's woes just don’t seem to be stopping. From angry customers to its mercurial CEO getting into online spats as pressure mounts, many of its problems stretch seemingly beyond its control today for it to make a quick turnaround and change the narrative. And this is hurting its valuation significantly, both in the private and public markets. Just this week, Ola Electric's price fell below its listing price. Ola Electric can and should take credit for making EV two-wheelers common on Ind...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 16
Happy Deepavali, dear listeners! On account of Deepavali, the Two by Two team is also taking a small break. But don't worry; we'll be back with our regular programming next week. Until then, you can always listen to past episodes of Two by Two that you haven't gotten around to yet. If you're a Premium subscriber listening to this on The Ken’s mobile app or on Apple podcasts, you can just scroll down and listen to any of our episodes in their full, unedited form. On the other hand, if you aren’t ...
Oct 31, 2024•3 min
What happens when the government plays the role of regulator, policymaker, and operator? The government has played a pivotal role in establishing and promoting Digital Public Goods (DPG) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in the past decade and a half, and there have been a few which have been integral in our daily lives in more ways than one. The reason why these solutions exist is plain and simple: There emerged companies which disrupted the landscape of finance, commerce, mobility and a ...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 15
Ola and Uber are in a “late stage duopoly”. After spending billions and billions of dollars, they have finally secured pole positions in ride sharing in India. Both of these companies together control 70% of the market and they have created network effects that make it much harder for anyone to enter and compete with them. However, this particular situation is facing some new challenges and just like how Uber and Ola conquered city after city using a disruptive model and technology, the same thi...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 14
If you are a Product Manager, especially in India, you’re probably going through a crisis of faith and existence. As a career, Product Management in India has gone through multiple eras — in the early days, PMs struggled to explain to people what they actually did. Think about all the people you’d imagine who work at a software company. Marketing. Engineering. Sales. Analytics. Design. You can explain what they do to your grandmother. However, the one exception to the rule is Product Management....
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 13
Ather Energy is the third largest seller of electric two-wheelers in India. Founded in 2013, Ather Energy is known to have kicked off the electric two-wheeler wave in India. They came in with a great product which offered the best of software and hardware on a two-wheeler. And over a decade of its existence Ather has delivered on its promise of a great product which will create a “magical experience” for its customers. Ather spent years building their own electric two-wheelers from the ground up...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 12
Netflix is trying hard to crack the Indian market. Ever since the US streaming giant entered the country, it has been hard at work to make an impact. And over the years, they’ve learnt a thing or two about how the Indian streaming space functions. Netflix is also not shy about expressing how it sees India as its last growth market. Most of the other geographies have saturated their reach to a large extent, but India has always been a pain point for it to get a leg up on. So much so that the then...
Sep 26, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 11
The fastest-growing segment of insurance in India is individual health insurance. It’s growing steadily at a, well, healthy pace of 20% annually. But scratch just a little beneath the surface, and things don’t appear so rosy. Of the 20% annual growth in revenue, nearly 15% comes from medical inflation. This means that existing customers are paying higher premiums each year because the costs of treatments are going up. The growth in the number of customers each year is just around 5-6%. Health in...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 10
It seems like ‘invite only’ is a rite of passage for Stripe. If Stripe entered India with an invite-only step, then it seems reasonable to assume that it’s leaving India on the basis that it’s doing invite-only again. Over seven years, Stripe, the world’s mightiest fintech, currently valued at $70 billion (and at $95 billion at its peak), could not make a dent in India. It had a great product, a massive untapped opportunity in India, and didn’t have much competition. And yet, it failed. Why? The...
Sep 12, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 9
Twelve years of schooling is losing out to private coaching as entry into India’s colleges gets increasingly centralised via entrance exams. School education is a fundamental right in India. An average Indian child spends 10-12 years in school. And for most parents and families, the money they spend on educating their child is one of the largest expenses over time. And yet, school education is slowly becoming (or perhaps being made) irrelevant in the next step that comes after that: college. The...
Sep 05, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 8
Google Pay is India's second-largest UPI app, with a market share of 38% and 500+ crore transactions a month. It’s one of the world’s mightiest companies, and yet, we argue that it’s possibly in a vulnerable, strange position. By this, we don’t mean that it will disappear overnight, but that all kinds of competitors are coming for it. Already, its market share has declined from 44% to 37%. It’s an outpost of an empire that’s fighting a global war. And most importantly, the first wave of UPI is o...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 7
Software engineering careers used to be a ladder. You studied for 4 years, got a job as a fresher, and could virtually take for granted a steady career filled with learning opportunities, salary hikes, and role promotions. In fact being an engineer was so cool that we mocked MBAs and MBA-types – “suits” – for their desperation to find that elusive technical co-founder. The one who would translate an idea (common) into code and products. Except, that’s increasingly not true. An NYT story publishe...
Aug 22, 2024•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 6
The Swiggy of 2024 is a shadow of its former self. Boxed in by younger, nimbler and hungrier competitors from all sides, it has been defending itself for so long that it seems to have forgotten how to play offense. It wasn’t always like this. Swiggy used to define innovation, product chops and “Bengaluru cool”. In many ways, it pioneered food delivery in 2014 after pivoting from a courier service. Zomato, originally a restaurant discovery company, got into food delivery a year after Swiggy. It m...
Aug 15, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 5
The conventional wisdom is that Bengaluru is India’s Silicon Valley. It’s the cradle of India’s tech revolution. First there was Infosys and Wipro on the IT services side. Then when startups become cool and hip, the default location to get it all started was also Bengaluru. Take the leaders across sectors, and you’ll see they belong to Bengaluru — Flipkart, InMobi, Swiggy, PhonePe, Myntra, Ola, Amazon, Unacademy, Byju’s…and much more. But of late, it looks like something has changed. There’s now...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 4
In 2021, as the pandemic still raged on and we washed our vegetables and supplies before consuming them, a young delivery startup promised that you could get all your groceries – everything you need – delivered right to your doorstep in 10 minutes. This was pretty crazy back then. Zepto was written off as an ambitious, overhyped startup run by two founders who had barely outgrown their teenage years, by competitors and experts alike. In 2024, Zepto has now raised $1.2 billion in venture capital,...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 3
Startups used to be the promised land where ambitious, young people spent their time doing exciting, ground-breaking and challenging work. And why not? Back in the day, startups promised to change the way business was done. Ideas became organizations, and pulled in people who threw away cushy jobs for the thrill of building something fun and interesting. They moved cities and changed their lives to fulfil their aspirations of being a part of something big and having real impact – as opposed to a...
Jul 25, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 2
Welcome to the first episode of The Ken’s brand new premium business podcast: Two by Two! In this episode, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar, CEO of The Ken and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, COO of The Ken, sit down with Professor R. Srinivasan and Srikanth Rajagopalan to discuss Flipkart and Phonepe – both owned by the American giant Walmart – are stepping over each other’s toes in an effort to create more avenues. Why? Of course, to bring in revenue and strengthen their bottom lines. Flipkart is trying to mak...
Jul 18, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 1
