Network Capital

In this podcast, we cover - 

1. Dr. Prasad’s global career in International Relations and the importance of interdisciplinary thinking. 

2. The Hertie School experience and pedagogy of discussion for a cohort of global students.

3. The art of debate and engaging with diverse ideas

Shubha Kamala Prasad is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Hertie School. Her research examines domestic sources of foreign policy, spanning substate conflict to diaspora mobilization. She was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute (2020-22), Fiesole, Italy. Shubha was awarded her PhD in Political Science in 2020 from the Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA. She completed her MPhil and MA in International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her prior work experience also includes organizing Track II Dialogues between India and Pakistan.

Find out more about the Hertie School here. Do consider applying for their early application deadline on November 30, 2022 to be consider for financial and scholarships.

In this podcast we cover - 

This is the story of a young man who steps out of the precincts of IIT Kanpur in 1974 with a dream in his heart – to become an entrepreneur and contribute to nation-building. Undaunted by the dearth of experience and means to capital in pre-Liberalization India, B.V.R Mohan Reddy’s enterprising spirit takes the long and winding road, never losing sight of his ambition. He gains overseas education on scholarship and dons multiple hats for eighteen long years before embarking on his life’s mission at forty. A mission that propels the company he incorporated, Cyient, to pioneer and excel in outsourced engineering services and introduce the brand ‘Engineered in India’.

Engineered in India takes readers on an entrepreneurial rollercoaster ride, allowing them to see human truths with tools that let them breathe life into their business aspirations and experiments.

In this podcast, we cover -

1. Interpreting Ambedkar for India today and in 2050

2. Understanding Ambedkar on gender, caste and his relationship with Gandhi

3. The intellectual history and multitudes of Ambedkar’s work and writings

Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, MA, MSc, PhD, DSc, DLitt, Bar-at-Law, is today among the most revered of Indians, his statues across the country second only in number to those of Mahatma Gandhi. In this new biography, Tharoor tells Ambedkar’s story with great lucidity, insight, and admiration. He traces the arc of the great man’s life from his birth into a family of Mahars in the Bombay Presidency on 14 April 1891 to his death in Delhi on 6 December 1956. He describes the many humiliations and hurdles Ambedkar had to overcome in a society that stigmatized the community he was born into, and the single-minded determination with which he overcame every obstacle he encountered. We are given insights into the various battles Ambedkar fought to make untouchability illegal, his disputes with the other political and intellectual giants of his era, including Gandhi and Nehru, and his determination to invest India with a visionary Constitution that enshrined within it the inalienable rights of the individual and modern conceptions of social justice. ‘In so doing,’ writes Tharoor, ‘he transformed the lives of millions yet unborn, heaving an ancient civilization into the modern era through the force of his intellect and the power of his pen.’

In this podcast we cover - 

1. The art and science of building no-code products

2. Business models and monetisation strategies for online products and software 

3. Louis' journey of becoming an internet entrepreneur 

Louis in his own words - 

"I live a dual life. During the day, I work with my family to run an offline-first business in my hometown – the coastal state of Goa, located on the west coast of India. At night, I build assets on the internet.

I started my journey as a creator on the internet with a newsletter called Complexity Condensed. It was fun but way too tiring. Writing is difficult work. And no matter how experienced you are, it never gets easier. After realizing this I decided to work on things that could survive without constant effort. I decided to build digital products. But I had a problem – I couldn't code.

I had two options – teach myself how to code, or learn the most cutting-edge no-code tool I could get my hands on (Bubble). I chose the latter. Why? Because I'm impatient. So far, I'm having a blast, and I don't regret it one bit."

Mark-Anthony Falzon is a social anthropologist. He is a professor at the University of Malta and a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. His books include Cosmopolitan Connections (Oxford, 2005), Multi-Sited Ethnography (Ashgate, 2009), The Examined Life (2019), The University of Malta (2020) and Birds of Passage (Berghahn, 2020).

His book examines the social and cultural infrastructure that sustains Sindhi business and its trade networks. It provides a rich historical context to the narrative by tracing the origin of Sindhi trade to the annexation of Sindh in 1843, when it was incorporated into an expanding global economy. The book also locates Sindhi business within the dynamics of the contemporary Indian diaspora and features several success stories both from India and outside. Furthermore, it emphasizes the commercial inventiveness, spatial mobility, and adaptability of Sindhis—-the qualities crucial to building successful cosmopolitan businesses. The book features an arresting introduction by best-selling author and commentator, Gurcharan Das.

In this podcast we cover -

Dr. Ashley Mears in her own words - 

"Working primarily at the intersections of economic and cultural sociology and gender, I study how societies value people and things.  I research value and exchange in the context of labor, beauty, free stuff, elites, consumption, and social media, and I have written on theory and qualitative methods.  My work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, and featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, NPR, the BBC, and Chinese Cosmo, among others.

I received my BA in sociology from the University of Georgia in 2002, and my PhD in sociology at New York University in 2009.  I have held visiting positions at the University of Amsterdam and the Central European University in Budapest.  In 2021-22, I was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. I serve on the editorial boards of American Sociological Review and Qualitative Sociology.

I am a co-founder of the Ethnographic Cafe and BU's Precarity Lab."

In this podcast we cover -

1. Mental models for career pivots

2. The art of thinking like a contrarian 

Sahil Bloom in his own words - 

"Every week, I create content that reaches over 1 million people around the world across Twitter (@SahilBloom), a newsletter (The Curiosity Chronicle), a podcast (Where It Happens), and more.

Prateek Jain, is our friendly Network Capital Rocket Scientist. He designed Business jets for years before, two tech startups and an MBA at Columbia Business School led him to Product Management. He now lives in San Francisco, and does Product Management at the Hypergrowth company - Twilio. Prateek is passionate about building technology, writing, and simplifying complex ideas to make an impact.

Catherine Yeo is a creator, entrepreneur, and investor studying Computer Science and English at Harvard University. By the age of fifteen, she accumulated a following of hundreds of thousands for her online content and turned content creation into a business. Over the years, her writing has spanned fiction, technical blog posts, personal essays and, now, The Creator Revolution: How Today’s Creative Talents Are Shaping Our Tomorrow. Her work has previously been featured in Teen Vogue, Los Angeles Times, NBC, and other publications.

Though she spends much of her days coding and nights writing, Catherine always makes time to read, swim, and cheer her heart out watching her hometown NBA team, the Golden State Warriors.

Manjari Jaruhar is one of the first five women police officers in India and the first from the state of Bihar. Manjari Jaruhar was selected for the Indian Police Service (IPS), the elite crime prevention and law enforcement cadre of the Indian Civil Service, in 1976 and has held positions in the State Governments of Bihar and Jharkhand, the National Police Academy (NPA), the CISF and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). From fighting crime to administering a massive organization, Manjari Jaruhar has shown exemplary leadership in a domain traditionally dominated by men. She is the recipient of the Government of India's Police Medal for Meritorious Service and the President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service. She retired as Special Director General of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and is presently an Advisor to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) based out of New Delhi.