The Morning Brief

In a wide-ranging conversation with host Surabhi Agarwal, IBM's chairman, president and CEO Arvind Krishna addresses the questions every technology leader and IT professional in India is wrestling with right now. He pushes back on AI doomsday narratives for software services, makes a compelling case for why hybrid cloud and mainframe architecture remain indispensable, and shares his candid take on job displacement, quantum computing's commercial horizon, and what India's sovereign AI strategy must focus on. He also offers a measured reading of global economic uncertainty, tariffs, and why 2026 could surprise on the upside for technology spending.

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You can follow Surabhi Agarwal on her Linkedin, X profiles 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.

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The US Supreme Court just handed Trump a legal defeat and it barely slowed him down. In a landmark ruling, the court struck down tariffs imposed under emergency economic powers, only for the White House to pivot instantly to alternative legal pathways. For India, caught just before a trade deal that had finally brought some clarity, the timing couldn't be worse. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Bipin Sapra, Partner and Indirect Tax Policy Leader, EY India about an 18% tariff rate that once looked certain is now up in the air. Tax structures, transfer pricing, corporate margins all recalibrating in real time. As one expert puts it bluntly: wait, watch, and don't sign anything just yet.

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.

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In a candid, unscripted exchange, India’s pharma titans peeled back the mythology of overnight success to reveal a harder truth: conviction compounded over decades. What began as two products and a bet on neglected therapy areas evolved into a multibillion-dollar enterprise riding India’s epidemiological shift. Innovation, they argued, is a long game—scarred by failed trials, investor backlash, and capital droughts—yet redeemed by landmark deals and scientific persistence. In this episode, host Vikas Dandekar talks to Dilip Shanghvi, Chairman of Sun Pharma and Glenn Saldanha, Managing Director at Glenmark Pharma about regulatory reforms, AI acceleration, and a renewed policy push, the message was clear: India stands at the cusp of a pharmaceutical inflection point—if it dares to back its pipeline as boldly as its past.

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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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Artificial intelligence is concentrating power, profits and infrastructure in the hands of a few. Mistral AI's co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch stands for dismantling it. In this episode Mensch talks to ET’s tech editor Surabhi Agarwal about why excessive US dominance in AI creates economic and geopolitical imbalance, and how open-weight models, sovereign cloud partnerships and efficient computers can redistribute innovation. He argues that AI must function like public infrastructure, competitive, accessible and locally controlled, not a gated utility.
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You can follow Surabhi Agarwal on her Linkedin and X

Check out other interesting episodes like: AI Impact Summit: Amazon's Bet on India's AI Future, Anthropic’s India Play, India AI Impact Summit: Microsoft’s Brad Smith on Sovereignty, Scale and Skills,  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.

What if every Indian had a personal doctor, a PhD agronomist, and a world-class tutor all free, all AI-powered, available tomorrow? Hosts Surabhi Agarwal and Swathi Moorthy talk to entrepreneur, investor Vinod Khosla on why he doesn't traffic in hypotheticals; he calls this India's most urgent opportunity. In a wide-ranging conversation, Khosla maps the turbulent decade ahead predicting political chaos between 2030 and 2040 as AI-driven job disruption collides with policy while arguing that curiosity and agency matter more than capital. He dismantles MAGA, challenges wealth inequality narratives, and delivers a sharp verdict: India's real constraint isn't talent or technology. It's investors who think too small.

You can follow Swathi Moorthy on her social media: X and Linkedin

You can follow Surabhi Agarwal on her Linkedin and X

Check out other interesting episodes like: AI Impact Summit: Amazon's Bet on India's AI Future, Anthropic’s India Play, India AI Impact Summit: Microsoft’s Brad Smith on Sovereignty, Scale and Skills,  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 AI agents begin to outnumber humans 80 to one, who's truly accountable when things go wrong? In this episode, Host Suraksha P talks to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora about the noise on what securing an agentic future actually demands from mandatory agent registries to real-time breach detection that must outpace an eight-minute attack window. He challenges India to pursue a hybrid sovereign AI strategy, warns that AI companies are racing ahead without reckoning with consequences, and offers entrepreneurs a sharp directive: stop building features, start solving problems. The cybersecurity frontier, Arora argues, belongs to those who own the data.

You can follow Suraksha P on her social media: X and Linkedin

Check out other interesting episodes like: AI Impact Summit: Amazon's Bet on India's AI Future, Anthropic’s India Play, India AI Impact Summit: Microsoft’s Brad Smith on Sovereignty, Scale and Skills,  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.

Can a $17 billion bet prevent India from repeating the Global South's century-long technology lag? In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Surabhi Agarwal speaks with Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith about the company's AI-ambitious vision for India as a "land of digital opportunity." The conversation explores Microsoft's infrastructure and skilling investments, the challenge of bridging the digital divide that mirrors historical electricity gaps between North and South, and how digital sovereignty tensions shape multinational strategy. From navigating India's thoughtful privacy regulations to addressing AI's impact on job dynamics through productivity enhancement, Smith examines whether equitable AI adoption can succeed where past technologies failed. As India's vast developer community positions it uniquely at the intersection of AI infrastructure, platforms, and applications, the episode questions whether collaborative frameworks between nations like India and the US can balance open markets with security—or if digital sovereignty will fragment the very ecosystem needed for India's transformation.

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

You can follow Surabhi Agarwal on her Linkedin, X profiles 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.

Is Anthropic late to India's AI party—or perfectly timed? In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with ET’s Disha Acharya and Puran Choudhary about Anthropic's strategic entry into India's rapidly maturing generative AI market. The conversation explores why the company prioritizes enterprise clients over price-sensitive consumers, how its partnership with Infosys positions it within India's multi-million dollar IT ecosystem, and what makes Claude's focus on Indic language support a genuine differentiator. From hosting developer days and hackathons to building datasets for long-tail languages through nonprofit collaborations, Anthropic’s India stack is significantly large. This episode examines whether India serves as an innovation ground or simply a data mine. As pilots transition to full-scale deployments with governance frameworks solidifying, the episode questions whether widespread IT service integration and public sector adoption will cement Anthropic's leadership.
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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.

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Infrastructure or applications where should India place its AI bets? And does Amazon, with $75 billion committed across data centers, logistics, and cloud, already have the answer? In this special episode of the Morning Brief's from India AI Impact Summit, host Suraksha P speaks to David Zapolsky, Chief Global Affairs & Legal Officer at Amazon, about the company's deepening India strategy.The conversation explores Amazon's data center expansion in Hyderabad and Mumbai, India's pragmatic privacy legislation versus restrictive European frameworks, and how tax certainty until 2047 is reshaping hyperscaler confidence. From navigating India-US geopolitical complexity to the ten-minute quick commerce challenge, Zapolsky examines what building for a billion-plus users genuinely demands.

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

You can follow Suraksha P on her 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.

Can India become the blueprint for the world's clean energy transition?
In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with Woochong Um, CEO of Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet about why India serves as the crucial testing ground for affordable, reliable renewable energy solutions. The conversation explores the groundbreaking Colloquy Battery Storage Project in Delhi which slashed blackouts and attracted global interest from Vietnam to Nigeria and how AI-optimized "Grids of the Future" could cut emissions by 30%. From creating 2.2 million jobs in India by 2030 to navigating land aggregation challenges through digitization, Woochong examines whether radical collaboration among governments, private sectors, and philanthropy can overcome entrenched fossil fuel dependencies. As battery storage advances and stakeholder awareness grows, the episode questions whether India's lessons both successes and failures will inspire similar transformations globally, positioning the nation as a pioneer in sustainable energy infrastructure.

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

Check out other interesting episodes like: The Return to Analog, How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, Why Are Labour Laws Denting Corporate Profits?, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Why are Music Labels Buying Into Film Companies? 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.