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 Edelweiss Asset Management telling us what her company does for its customers, and what she doesn’t want her customers to not do through a great example.

Next up, we have Lalit Keshre of Groww, who is very clear who the target consumer for his company is. Starting off as robo-advisory and then pivoting into the mutual fund sector and now on their way to become a complete financial services platform.

We have another Shark from the Shark Tank panel featured in this episode. Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo Rooms has built Oyo in his own words into a leading global hotel brand. But that’s not all it is as he went on to add further.

Next up, we have Kartik Jayaraman, who founded Waycool, a food and agritech company  at the age of 40. He started off  with the simple explanation: We’re a supply chain company. At our heart that’s what we do. After that he got into the nitty gritty of what Waycool does.

Lastly, we have Niraj Singh of Spinny, who is busy building in a space that has many competitors, old and new, and he explained how he’s servicing the aspirational class of the country by delivering something the competitors couldn’t.

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Welcome to First Principles—the weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.

Let’s get started.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

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 kind of right. You could say the person I’m talking about is very much an influencer. And he’s fit too.

He’s huge on LinkedIn, where he is part of the Top Voice program. On Twitter or X, he has close to a million followers. He’s very popular online.

So, really, if you think about it, he could turn into a fitness influencer if he wanted to.

But, here’s the thing. We're not talking about a young, health obsessed fitness influencer.

This is the routine of a 72-year-old, health obsessed, and I must add restless founder and Chairman of Marico, Harsh Mariwala.

Welcome to First Principles, the weekly leadership podcast from The Ken. I’m your host Rohin Dharmakumar and this is part 2 of my conversation with Harsh Mariwala.

This is episode 45 of First Principles–The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast. Let’s get started. Let’s begin.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

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 fully intentional. Because in a world where REVAs are speeding down the road left and right you’re not gonna see Chetan going out and building a BaaS, battery as a service business. But it was 2001, and India, and most of the world, was not ready for electric cars.

Chetan, however, persevered even under the shadow of the Mahindra Group and made strides in their electric mobility aspirations before leaving in 2015.

He took a break of two years, observed the EV market across the globe and when he saw the opportunity back home, came back with his expertise and took charge to create what we know today as Sun Mobility. The vision is bigger this time around and time is on his side as well. 

The only thing left to see out: Execution.

And they are not pulling any punches on that front either.

Additional reading: this edition of Green Margins published way back in late 2022 to understand how, here.

Welcome to Season 2, episode 44 of First Principles - A weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

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 age, including which school he would go to, which college he’ll enrol in and having a say in most of his major life decisions.

The biggest learning he got out of this: understanding the consequences of your actions and reflecting on them to see the untapped opportunities that lay ahead. And once he got good at that, he became adept at learning so that he could do something about the untapped opportunities.

Girish isn’t just the CEO of a NASDAQ-listed SaaS company, he’s also deeply involved in SaaSBoomi, a community that calls itself The World’s Largest Pay-it-forward Community of SaaS Founders.

As one of SaaSboomi’s founding members, Girish played a big role in shaping its culture of openness and paying it forward. He did it by sharing in detail the methods and tactics that got a young Freshworks to $1M in annual revenue. 

Then, a few years later – as he explained –  he took Freshworks from $1M to $5M.

How often do you see a company explain their growth playbook to a possible future competitor and enable them?

It’s rare.

Girish also doesn’t limit his wish to pay-it-back just within the SaaS universe. He’s also out there  with a mission to build world class champions from the football academy he set up, FC Madras. 

He’s infused 100 crores into his academy for the game he loves because he knows the talent is there and it needs to be nurtured properly and in the future we might have a shot at the world stage.

Welcome to part 2 of our conversation with Girish. This episode too, like the first part, is filled with colorful quotes and examples ranging from Steve Jobs to Rajnikanth movies!

This is episode 43 of First Principles–The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast. Let’s get started.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

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 commoditized and unbranded. For instance, the huge 15 liter tin cans of Parachute coconut oil Bombay Oil sold to shopkeepers were resold in smaller quantities at much higher prices. Harsh rightly wondered, why should someone else capture the margin and premium for my product? 

The company that Harsh founded - Marico - had two powerful brands at its core - Parachute Coconut Oil and Saffola cooking oil. That is true even today, 33 years later. Nearly 1 in 3 Indians use Parachute oil, our research tells us. 

Of course, a lot else has changed since then. 

Marico, which went public just 5 years after being founded in 1991, today boasts a turnover of over 1.2 billion dollars. 

And Harsh is 72, but still learning, exploring, experimenting and unable to take it easy.

Earlier this week, I had the chance to speak to Harsh about his entire (and might I add still evolving) professional journey!

It’s a long time, but Harsh talks about the day Marico was separated from Bombay Oil just like it was yesterday. He talked about how in 1991 they attracted talent by positioning themselves as the disruptive outsiders. Sample one of the headlines from Marico’s ads: 200 employees walk out of Bombay Oil. 

Harsh had a lot of stories for me – from creating differentiation in consumer products even when the market is crowded, to how he fought back and won against the much larger Hindustan Unilever when it wanted to acquire Marico. And then he switched back to the present – and how he’s focussing all his learnings, experience, attention into cultivating innovation in India. 

This is an episode packed with anecdotes and lessons – you’ll hear Harsh talking about a ‘right to win’ in the market, strategizing acquisitions, and making ‘a difference without expectations’ to the shareholders. All in the context of Harsh’s years at Marico, the Mariwala Health Initiative, Ascent foundation and Marico Innovation Foundation! 

Let’s go!

This is episode 42 of First Principles–a weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

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 Girish. He’s a product manager first, and then a CEO. 

Product and People are thus two words to describe Girish. 

One of them - Product - was something he got into accidentally. But both of them are areas where he’s built organisational strengths and culture very intentionally. 

The news headlines when Freshworks went public on NASDAQ was that Girish had created 500 crorepatis within his organization. That is, employees whose Freshworks shares made them worth over 1 crore rupees.

Freshworks was the first Indian SaaS company to become a unicorn. It was also the first Indian SaaS company to be listed on the US markets. Last year it clocked revenues of nearly 600 million dollars. All before its 15th birthday. 

Across this episode, Girish the product manager is front and centre. It was evident in the way that he rattled off sharp and fun analogies to explain how he views Freshworks and his role at the organization as a CEO. It was almost as if Freshworks the company itself were an organically evolving product, with its CEO also its lead product manager. 

And to think that Girish’s entry into product management came over two decades ago when his then manager told him to build a product he had pitched – and essentially become a “product manager.” That day, he went back home and googled what a product manager is. 

He has very sharp and distinct views on leadership and organization building. As a leader, he’s opposed to measuring performance by numbers or execution alone. 

His metric for “winning” – as in, winning as an organization – is shaped by energy and vibes. 

He isn’t just hiring the best talent for a role. He’s giving the right role to the best talent.

In this episode, you’ll understand this curious mix of people and product that keeps the lights on at Freshworks. Girish talks about why a company like Freshworks – which entered and continues to play in a crowded and competitive market – succeeds. Why and how he’s made peace with growing at close to 20% annually, so long as he’s also aiming for around the same percentage in profits. 

And what the best way is to chart a path to entrepreneurship in this day and age. 

And, also – why he loves Chennai so much! 

This is episode 41 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.

*Girish Mathrubootham is an investor in The Ken.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

There is a cliche often associated with hyper growth startups. 

That running one is like learning how to fly a plane while you’re already up in the air. Or perhaps it's like learning to change an engine while you’re driving a car. 

There is another version of this analogy: it's like learning how to build a plane and learning how to fly it and also mastering how to change an engine mid-air, even as you’re hurtling at hundreds of kilometers per hour through the air. 

A great example of such a startup is Udaan, which in 2019 became India’s fastest unicorn within just 3 years of starting up. 

What does it take to build and scale a company in that manner? 

A few weeks ago, you heard Vaibhav Gupta – Udaan’s co-founder and CEO – answer this question in granular detail. 

Right down to how Udaan looked at the trade cycle of a small mobile accessories shopkeeper in Mysore, who got his supply from Bangalore every 15 days. 

Or the exact changes Udaan has made to their warehouses, so that they’re more efficient. 

He even broke down Udaan’s execution playbooks and what makes them reliable and repeatable. 

But…what happens when you zoom out a little?

The more high-level decisions. Which bets to take, which to let go. Which patterns to follow. What the B2B retail space in India will look like, in 10 years. And what is Udaan doing to prepare for it?

This is the episode where Vaibhav zooms out and reflects on some of these questions. 

He’s still very sharp and detail-oriented, of course. In fact, you’ll hear him say “retail is detail” with an unshakable conviction very soon, in the episode. 

But this time, you’ll notice that the larger decisions that Vaibhav makes for his organizations stems from his own strong beliefs and learnings. 

He’s an introvert, but he has learnt to discuss even his half-formed, unbaked ideas with his team. He’s driven by solving big problems, and so is Udaan. 

He’s become comfortable with being wrong, and that’s a feeling that his employees are encouraged to embrace at every stage.

We talk about all the mental models, habits and frameworks that drive Vaibhav – and the culture at Udaan. And, of course – how First Principles thinking is very crucial to all of these!

This is episode 40 of First Principles with Vaibhav Gupta—The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

Welcome back to First Principles. I’m your host, Rohin Dharmakumar.

Thank you for listening to us. We’re thankful that you choose to spend a few hours with us each week!

Today we have a “supercut” episode. Normally our conversations go deep with one specific guest, but every now and then we zoom out and go broad by stitching together a multi-guest conversation. And the invisible thread that connects the conversations with 5 founders we picked for today is company culture.

What’s the best way to empower your talent? What do founders expect from employees? And how do they build their company culture?

This is where it gets interesting. In most cases, our guests have differing opinions on these subjects. But while putting this episode together, we kept encountering one word – or a substitute for it, in some cases. 

And that was, patience. 

Patience in the way that they give feedback to their employees. Patience in investing in your employees. Building this patience not just within themselves, but the entire organization. 

There are some very interesting perspectives in this episode on how these founders approach and practice patience, among other principles of leadership and management. 

Here’s a rundown of our guests in this episode: 

First up, we have Krish Subramanian of Chargebee, who has a simple and powerful dictum, “Move the chairs and get out of the way of good people.” At Chargebee, you wouldn’t fit in if you limit yourself to a strict hierarchy – he sees employees more as his peer group.

Next, we have Varun Dua of Acko Insurance, who spoke about growing in a company from an employee’s point of view. One of the things he told me was that when you find something you love, you should be at it for 10-15 years. Because it is the payoff of years of perseverance that is fruitful – and  not the short term gains you make along the way. 

Yashish Dahiya, the co-founder of PolicyBazaar, was quite candid in our chat. He spoke about why an employee who spent five years at PolicyBazaar is considered a new employee. He  also went on to explain why he distances himself from making hiring decisions.

Next, you’ll hear Archit Gupta of Clear. When talking about employees, Archit was very specific. He told us why investing into the ‘sincere’,‘earnest’ people in the organization is necessary, and why uplifting them is important.

Lastly, MN Srinivasu or Vasu, as he’s often called, spoke to me how he built BillDesk by essentially teaching the first set of employees to be well-versed in the line of business BillDesk was creating. This is a part of BillDesk’s culture. There is a broad belief in patience, at Billdesk. Why does patience matter? What allows his employees to be patient? And how do you find meaning in practicing it? 

This is First Principles—The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast.

The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

Welcome back to Episode 39 of First Principles!

A few weeks ago, you heard the first part of our conversation with Aneesh Reddy, the CEO and Co-Founder of Capillary Tech, a software company offering products and services in the customer experience space.

And you might remember that in that episode, Aneesh took us through the journey of Capillary in instalments – because as he explained, Aneesh dreams in instalments. 

The second instalment was the years 2013 to 2018 – which Aneesh called “Capillary’s confusing years.” 

They were particularly difficult years for them. 

Having raised a massive amount of venture funding at an expensive valuation, Capillary started burning cash as they expanded ambitiously beyond India. The leadership had to justify their valuation, Aneesh said. 

During this time, Aneesh’s co-founder Krishna Mehra, or KK, had moved to San Francisco in the US. Communication between the co-founders started breaking down even as the pressure on Capillary Tech started mounting.

Eventually, both of Aneesh’s co-founders left within months of each other. But before leaving, KK was upfront with Aneesh. 

He told Aneesh that he had become a bully. He wasn’t workable anymore.

Aneesh went to the Capillary board and told them he wanted to quit. 

In this second part, you’ll hear the two things that Aneesh ended up doing to bounce back. 

The first was executive coaching. A difficult process, because Aneesh, in his own words, ‘was a hard nut to crack.’ 

Eventually, the coaching process proved to be so transformative for Aneesh, that Capillary today offers coaching to not just its entire leadership team but also down to first-time managers. 

The second, very interestingly, was Vipassana. And again, as Aneesh explained, it was very difficult at first. 

But it changed him. 

He calls it a process of self-discovery and self-purification that every entrepreneur should experience.

In this episode, Aneesh talks to me about how these two interventions transformed him and Capillary. 

He takes me through both processes – day by day, in the case of Vipassana — and how it made a difference to his temperament, leadership style, and his approach to managing.

We also talk about Aneesh’s fitness journey, finding a purpose in working, and the future of Capillary. 

This is episode 39 of First Principles—The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.

Welcome to Episode 38 of First Principles!

If you're here to sign up for the First Principles Newsletter, here you go!

In this episode, you will hear Vaibhav Gupta, the CEO and co-founder of Udaan, an online trade platform whose mission is to "transform India".

It hopes to achieve that lofty goal by bringing tens of thousands of shopkeepers and grocery store owners closer to their suppliers and offering them competitive pricing, guarantees on quality, and easy deliveries and returns.

Vaibhav and his co-founders—Amod Malaviya and Sujeet Kumar—were all senior Flipkart leaders before starting Udaan. And yet, he insists Udaan isn't merely a "Flipkart for businesses".

Since 2016, when it first began operations, Udaan has raised over a billion dollars in venture capital. It was one of the fastest startups to achieve the coveted "unicorn tag".

It has also gone through its ups and downs in terms of valuations and headcount.

In this episode—Part 1 of our conversation with Vaibhav Gupta, we discuss:

--> Why Udaan evolved from a marketplace to a first-party business

--> Why the firm instituted a formal CEO position after five years of its existence

--> The five pillars of Udaan's culture

--> What daily conversations inside Udaan's leadership team look like

This is episode 38 of First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.

First Principles has been named one of the best shows of 2025 on Apple Podcasts India! 

Every listen and every share is what keeps us going. We get to dive into these conversations because you show up for them. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Check out all other episodes here.