The Morning Brief

What does it take to lead when the stakes are high and everyone's watching? In this episode, Vikas Dandekar sits down with Sanjiv Navangul, MD & CEO of Bharat Serums and Vaccines, and cricketer Ajinkya Rahane — two leaders from opposite ends of the arena, with more in common than you'd expect. One builds companies around purpose and long-term resilience. The other has batted through some of cricket's most unforgiving scrutiny. Together, they make a case that real leadership is about discipline, humility, and the quiet consistency of showing up for others.

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You can follow Vikas Dandekar on his social media: X and Linkedin and read her Newspaper Articles.

Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, Markets May Be Misreading This War: UBS’ Chief Strategist, Who Controls AI in an Age of War?, ​​Banned But Booming: How The  Money Gaming Crackdown Created an Offshore Goldmine and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

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As the electoral bugle sounds across Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, the nation braces itself for a whirlwind of political intrigue and upheaval. In the season opener of our special podcast series Polls on My Pod, host Nidhi Sharma is joined by ET’s CL Manoj to unpack Kerala’s fascinating crossroads. Long defined by its neat alternation between the Left Democratic Front and the United Democratic Front, the state now watches the LDF led by 80-year-old stalwart Pinarayi Vijayan defy history with a rare second consecutive term, only to confront the weight of incumbency.
The conversation probes the gold theft scandal the UDF is capitalising on, Congress’s careful pivot to collective leadership, the BJP’s rising presence through star recruits like Suresh Gopi, and the subtle shifts in Christian-majority areas that could quietly redraw the state’s political map. As polling day nears, what trajectory awaits this historically progressive state?

Don't miss out on this special election series – Polls On My Pod!

You can follow our host Nidhi Sharma on her social media: Twitter & Linkedin

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,  Amazon Music 

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Tanay Kothari has been building at the intersection of voice and AI since he was a teenager. His latest company, Wispr Flow, is a voice dictation tool that works across all your applications — learning your tone, cleaning your speech, and adapting to context. It's grown 30x in revenue over the past year, with Fortune 500 adoption accelerating and a strong India play underway. In this conversation with ET’s Tanishka Dubey, Tanay talks about what separates Wispr Flow from the crowded voice AI space, why Indian users are surprisingly strong paying customers, and his views on whether founders should be building foundational models at all.

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Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As India approaches its self-imposed deadline to end Left Wing Extremism, host Nidhi Sharma speaks with ET’s internal security editor Rahul Tripathi, SHantanu Nandan Sharma, and Vijay Sharma, Deputy Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. Ground reports from Bastar reveal a conflict in transition shrinking, yet not fully extinguished. Security operations have led to mass surrenders, reducing insurgent strongholds to a handful of districts. However, the deeper challenge now lies in rehabilitation and reintegration. Former militants, many still ideologically conflicted, are being trained in state-run camps under tight surveillance. As infrastructure and governance finally reach long-neglected regions, the question remains: can development outpace decades of distrust and radicalization, or is this merely the quiet before another cycle of unrest?

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You can follow hosts Nidhi Sharma on her social media: X & Linkedin

Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, Markets May Be Misreading This War: UBS’ Chief Strategist, Who Controls AI in an Age of War?, ​​Banned But Booming: How The  Money Gaming Crackdown Created an Offshore Goldmine and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the Iran war enters its fourth week, global markets are scrambling to price in shocks. The impact is rapidly deepening for India. Goldman Sachs has already revised its outlook twice, flagging rising oil prices, a widening current account deficit, and slowing growth. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Santanu Sengupta, managing director and chief India economist and warns that Brent could average $85, with spikes worsening inflation and forcing RBI rate hikes. India’s reliance on Middle Eastern crude places it at the epicentre of risk, raising a critical question: how much pain can be absorbed before it reaches consumers?

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You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: X and Linkedin

Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A deepening geopolitical conflict in the Middle East is forcing markets to confront a far more structural shock than recent crises. Host and ET markets editor Nishanth Vasudevan talks to Bhanu Baweja, Chief Strategist at UBS Investment Bank who warns that investors may be underestimating the scale of disruption, particularly in oil, where potential supply losses dwarf the Russia-Ukraine impact. While markets remain anchored to a “short shock” playbook, the risk of prolonged volatility looms large. More critically, he flags a cascading threat where an oil shock morphs into a liquidity crunch and eventually disrupts AI-driven growth. For India, the real vulnerability lies not in foreign flows, but in the resilience of domestic investors.

You can follow our host Nishanth Vasudevan on his social media: Linkedin & Twitter

Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HDFC Bank, long seen as India’s gold standard in banking, is facing rare questions on governance. The sudden exit of chairman Atanu Chakraborty—backed by a cryptic letter citing “values and ethics”—has triggered market jitters and investor unease.

Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to ET’s Saloni Shukla and Sashidhar Jagdishan, CEO, HDFC Bank about what India's banking world is afraid to answer: Was this one man's exit or an entire institution's warning signal?

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G.V. Prasad has spent over thirty years at the helm of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories — long enough to know where the opportunities were missed and where the potential and challenges lie. In a candid conversation with ET’s pharma editor Vikas Dandekar on Corner Office Conversation, the Co-Chairman and Managing Director pulls no punches: India is the generic pharmacy of the world, not the pharmacy of the world, and that distinction matters. He reflects on regulatory crises weathered, acquisitions never made, and an innovation pipeline that remained perpetually underfunded. On AI, he is deliberately unsentimental — helpful at the margins, not yet transformational. What he does believe in, firmly and urgently, is Dr. Reddy's next act: a decisive pivot from incremental generics to innovation-led growth, with a hard target and a ticking clock.

You can follow Vikas Dandekar on his social media: X and Linkedin and read her Newspaper Articles.

Listen to Corner Office Conversation: Corner Office Conversation with Sridhar Vembu, CEO, of Zoho Corporation, Corner Office Conversation with Gunjan Soni, Country Managing Director, Youtube India, Corner Office Conversation with Elizabeth Reid, Head of Search, Google, Corner Office Conversation with Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV & Surge and much more.

Catch the latest episode of “Corner Office Conversation” on: Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts,and wherever you get your podcasts from.

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A billion professionals. Eighteen years of data. And a skills gap that's widening as AI tools multiply. Mohak Shroff has watched LinkedIn evolve from a professional network into what he calls, at its core, an AI matching engine. That vantage point gives Shroff, SVP Engineering at Linkedin, a clear read on what's actually happening inside organisations right now. Not the boardroom narrative, but the messy reality of workers who don't know which skills to build, recruiters who can't find candidates despite better tooling, and companies confusing access to AI with genuine AI readiness.

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India's semaglutide moment has arrived. As Novo Nordisk's patent expires on March 20th, over fifty generic brands are poised to flood the market potentially slashing monthly costs from ₹10,000 to ₹3,500. But this is no ordinary generic wave. Semaglutide is a complex peptide, cold chains are unforgiving, and patient adherence remains fragile. Host and ET’s pharma editor Vikas Dandekar talks to Sheetal Sapale, Vice President, Pharmarack, Dr. Rajiv Kovil, Diabetologist, Saurabh Agarwal, Director at HAB Pharmaceuticals and Research, Dr. Saurabh Jain, Vice President - Global Delivery Centers, Indegene and Vijay Charlu, President of Domestic Business, Corona Remedies to dissect who survives the shakeout, what it means for a slew of weight loss drugs in India, whether it will revolutionise metabolic treatment and whether India is truly ready for its statin moment.

You can follow Vikas Dandekar on his social media: X and Linkedin and read her Newspaper Articles.

Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.