Minding My Business - The CEO Story with Ramesh Menon & Hrishi K

In a departure from the usual format, our hosts Ramesh Menon & Hrishi K put our Ceo guest through a rapid-fire round! But then this spirit is synonymous with the brand that Mohit Khattar represents - Baskin Robbins. The former MD of Godrej Natures Basket & now CEO of Graviss Foods is excited about launching a line of warm desserts & gives us lessons & insights picked up during the launch of ‘The Brooklyn Creamery’ in India.

The former CEO of Tata Cliq & COO of Landmark is now using the digital & technology piece to drive Mahindra First Choice Wheels to higher glory as their Ceo. Hrishi K is excited by the thought of them building technology tools & using AI for vehicle inspection. Ramesh Menon admires the way Ashustosh & his team have acquired & gone on to build many more interesting & profitable layers to carandbike.com. Happy Listening!

A Seattle Grunge listening & Motorcycle riding business leader makes for great listening. Ambareesh talks about how he made a conscious decision to focus solely on the home & furniture business & how they now have an omnichannel model. Pepperfry has also raised the highest amount of capital by an e-commerce furniture & home products company in India. Hrishi K marvels at the journey & unearths some super business lessons as Ramesh Menon takes a one episode break.

Hrishi K finds it fascinating & motivating that Arjun Mohan was a teacher for BYJUS not very long ago & now finds himself as the CEO-India for founder Ronnie Screwvalas Edtech major upGrad. Ramesh Menon feels that as a business leader the way Arjun has championed career transitions is admirable & the acquisitions made by upGrad are very pointed & resourceful. Enjoy this young turk CEO conversing with our two very well read hosts!

Hrishi K loves their “world cities” in Tamil Nadu & Rajasthan & refers to these as great examples of public-private partnership. He asks Arvind what the ‘new-age' homebuyer in India really wants & the trio spends some time on consumer demands and priorities. Ramesh congratulates Subramanian on ensuring that Mahindra Lifespaces becomes the first real estate company in India to enable a truly digitised, end-to-end, ‘zero-touch' launch of a residential project & is keen to understand how the real estate sector, traditionally a laggard in technology adoption, is now at a point of inflexion w.r.t. digitalisation. Our 1st guest from the real estate sector knocks it out of the park!

Ramesh Menon is astonished at Nadir Godrejs prowess in poetry & his poems on Mr Adi Godrej & his French Connection are applauded. Hrishi K explores Nadirs interest in sustainability and research & development in the areas of animal feed, agriculture & chemicals. This podcast episode is the ideal combination of prose, poetry, data & research!

Ramesh Menon wants to understand how Harsh bet on hair oil (Parachute) when everyone advised him against investing or acquiring brands in that category & Hrishi K marvels at how Mr Mariwala has a string of difficult firsts to his credit. Some of them are audacious, like being the 1st to set up a factory in Kerala despite the states reputation for labour unrest at the time & going into Bangladesh in a politically volatile climate to set up a business from scratch & then emerging as the largest Indian Company in that country.

Ramesh Menon is fascinated by how Prabhjeet & his team have built a tech hub for Uber in India & how they feed off it for other emerging markets & Hrishi K lauds our Business Leader of the week on sensing new business opportunities like the parcel delivery & transportation of goods & getting down to execute them pronto. Prabh the IIT & IIM alumnus is ready to plunge into new directions with his brand.

Ramesh Menon wants to know how much the personal mobility space has changed over this past year & Hrishi K is intrigued as to how he decided not to go in for funding at an early stage of his business round. Amit Jain from CarDekho has an approach that is driven partly by instinct & partly by research & data.

Ramesh Menon wants to know how he hires & nurtures talent & Hrishi K wishes to know how he stayed nimble through the pandemic & kept his workforce motivated. The sharp Rohit Kapoor from OYO comes out showering us with insights & life lessons in a fun manner.