Capital Ideas

Arokiaswamy Velumani, chairman and managing director of Thyrocare, talks about India’s failure in handling Covid-19 and traces his journey and struggles along the way, in setting up one of India’s largest diagnostic chains. Born to landless farmers, Velumani studied on subsidised education, before working with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre as a scientific assistant, and starting Thyrocare. The 61-year-old talks to Manu Balachandran about running a business without borrowing, and managing with low resources, in addition to preserving cash

On this week's episode, directors of the Netflix documentary 'Kiss the Ground', Josh Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, join us to turn the spotlight on soil regeneration, which may hold the key to solving the climate crisis

Popular investor pitch show Shark Tank's 'shark' Matthew or 'Matt' Higgins is an investor and the founder & CEO of of RSE Ventures. He talks about his journey from growing up in poverty and dropping out of school to being a successful investor. He also shares why he loves talking to Indians, impact of the lockdown on his diverse sports-to-media portfolio companies, bringing drone gaming to India, and the importance of pivot

A total of $13 billion was raised in 2019 by Indian startups, the highest ever. With the pandemic throwing everyone off guard, Kashyap Chanchani, managing partner of The RainMaker Group, explains how to navigate through these times, busting myths about early stage fund raising, and hard truths that the founders have to live with

Over the past two decades, Avendus Capital has branched out from being just an investment bank to a full stack financial services firm with wealth management, credit, hedge funds and other products offering their clients. Co-founder and  Executive Vice Chairperson Ranu Vohra joins us on this episode to talk about the latest rejig of the firm’s founders, scaling up businesses and the firm’s future—and whether you should trust the capital markets currently

Shobana Kamineni, executive vice-chairperson of Apollo Hospitals, was in college when she was helping her father build the chain. Now, she is busy building the pharmacy and telemedicine business and finding new growth wheels for the company to herald into the future

For someone who never enjoyed math in his early days, Stephen A Schwarzman, who comes from a middle-class family that owned a small retail store, went on to co-create Blackstone Group with assets under management of $560 billion. On this first episode of Capital Ideas, Schwarzman talks about his early days, why he likes hiring IITians, life during Covid-19, Blackstone’s India business and more