The consumer need for 10-minute deliveries wasn't demanded, but it was created.

Multiple startups went into an arms race to deliver products faster and faster to users who never really asked for them.

This expanded into category after category, starting from groceries to FMCG products, then to apparel, electronics, PS5s, iPhones, and later food. The 10-minute monster demands to be fed and is eating category after category, forcing consumers to change long-established patterns so they can get stuff delivered to their homes at a turnaround time they never imagined possible.

The next big frontier for all of these start-ups is now alcohol and liquor.

Finally, we have a category where most consumers want organized, regulated, and legitimate home deliveries. They're probably even willing to pay for it.

For quick commerce start-ups, too, home delivery of alcohol is a huge opportunity.

High margins, high stickiness, great repeat, massive market, negligible customer acquisition costs, hundreds of millions of consumers want it.

Startups with hundreds of millions in capital are desperate to offer it.

So, what is stopping 10-minute alcohol delivery?

In the latest episode of Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Prasanna Natarajan, founder of Sipping Spirits and Hipbar, India's first home-delivery liquor startup, which was later acquired by Cred, and Debashish Shyam, co-founder and director of Ardent Alcobev. He's had nearly 20 years of experience in alcohol marketing and sales at organisations as diverse as United Spirits and IBTC in Myanmar.

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To help us find interesting guests, you can fill out this simple survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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This is a free ‘10-minute trailer’  streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected].

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Listen to One Billion in 10 Minutes on The Ken app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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Disclaimer:

Alcohol consumption is injurious to health. No participants in this episode promote alcohol consumption and strongly discourage underage, binge, and careless drinking. All panelists in this show express their own personal views, which do not necessarily reflect the views of the producers or promoters. Please drink responsibly.

Business schools are among the most coveted higher educational institutions. Students go through some of the most competitive exams and pay significant fees because they hope that at the end of their degree, they will get a great job.

Yet, the onerous process of finding, soliciting and bringing dozens of companies to campuses each year falls mostly on final-year students, who are part of elected/selected placement committees.

For as long as we can remember, these committees have always been accused of bias, arrogance and powerplay by other students.

Yet, the fact also remains that those on the placement committees sacrifice a significant part of their education and grades in order to run a great job-matching process for their entire batch.

Should they, though?

In the US, for instance, most leading B-schools have their professional teams that run the entire campus hiring process instead of students. Finding quality jobs for hundreds of students each year is a full-time job.

In India, too, many colleges are gradually coming around to the same POV.

IIM Kozhikode has transitioned the process from students to faculty. This model aims to instil transparency and professionalism in what vice-chancellor V Ramgopal Rao calls “a crucial rite of passage marking the end of academic life.”

BITS Pilani has adopted a system where HR professionals employed by the institute handle placements.

IIT Bombay set up a committee under a senior computer science faculty professor Uday Khedkar, with one of its aims being “setting up a clean and transparent placement process system”. Sources at IIT-B said the panel was set up after students brought to light instances of the biases some faced and how this had hampered their careers.

Our guest for the episode is Professor Varun Nagaraj, Dean and Professor of Information Management & Analytics at S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai. He holds a Ph.D. in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. He also holds an MBA from Boston University, an MS in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay. His career spanning over three decades in digital products reflects his passion for product management, development, and innovation.

Over the course of the discussion, the professor and hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss how placements have evolved since their MBA days, their misgivings about the current system, and what institutes have to get better at.

Perhaps the larger question is, how should we think about matching employers and graduates? Is a compressed “placements” process the best way?

Welcome to episode 25 of Two by Two.

—

Additional reading:

Bias, lack of transparency trips job hunts in premier schools

Why are IIT placements failing to deliver jobs? Former IIT Director explains

Shiv Shivakumar's LinkedIn post

 —

This is an edited 30-minute version of the discussion hosted by Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar with the guest. To listen to the full episode, consider getting a Premium subscription to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will get you access to all our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and the rest of the podcasts we produce.

But if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts at a great monthly price.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]

Have you made a trip abroad to attend a live event in 2023 or 2024?

Did you have the option of attending the same (or equivalent) event in India?

Why did you choose not to attend the same event in India?

These were the three main questions we posed to listeners of Two by Two in a recent survey to understand the biggest problems with hosting events—big or small—in India.

Then we took all the people who said yes and looked at the events that they said they went outside India to attend even though options for it existed inside India. It had a lot of concerts comprising a long list of musicians. Dua Lipa in Singapore, Ed Sheeran in Malaysia and a sea of Coldplay because it's Coldplay season, Coldplay's concert in Singapore, Coldplay in Dubai, Coldplay in Barcelona, Coldplay in Thailand, Coldplay in Bangkok, Ben Böhmer who had performed in India in late December last year but people chose to attend his shows outside India instead. Then we had Indian performers whom people refused to attend in India and went abroad, Diljit in Bombay. There was a list of cricket matches in that list as well. Stand-up acts from Vir Das, which people chose to attend in the U.S. instead of attending in India. The most interesting entry we saw was half marathons. People are choosing to attend half marathons outside India instead of attending them in India.

In this week’s episode, we get to the reasons why this is the ultimate form of Indians paying for convenience over availability.

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down with Shreyas Srinivasan, former Chief Product Officer at Paytm* and founder of Paytm Insider, which has now been acquired by Zomato and rebranded as District, and Sudhir Syal, former CEO of Bookmyshow Indonesia and Bookmyshow Middle East, to understand where India falls short in hosting events at scale.

Welcome to episode 29 of Two by Two.

*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.

–

Additional reading:

The Nutgraf: Going out of India is easier than going out in India

–
This is a free ‘10-minute trailer’  streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected].

In 2023, two-wheelers and three-wheelers in India experienced growth of around 37% and 66%. Electric four-wheelers also promised to go down the same path because in that same year, there was a significant increase in sales of electric four-wheelers, 113%.

Now, of course, this is from a lower base, but the signs were clear.

The conventional wisdom or the narrative has been petrol and diesel cars are going to become a relic of the past. And if you're an automaker and if you're not investing billions of dollars in developing battery technology or newer models with all of this stuff, you are seen as out of touch with reality.

Essentially, electric cars were inevitable.

In 2024, something changed. Demand and sales for electric cars have fallen all over the world. For the first time in almost 12 years, Tesla's sales dropped by 1.1%. And India is also no exception.

If you look at 2024 numbers, in fact, until October 2024, sales of electric four-wheeler cars in India were actually declining. They had gone down if you compare year-on-year numbers all of these months. By the end of the year, it sort of increased a little bit which was helped by a sale of one specific model called MG Windsor and some price cuts.

But in this episode, we're going to pose two questions: Number one, why did electric cars become less attractive? And two, what will make electric cars inevitable again and by when?

Our first guest is Dr Amitabh Saran, founder and CEO of Altigreen Propulsion Labs. Saran used to work at companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Philips, NASA, and Hewlett Packard before turning to entrepreneurship.

Our second guest is Awadhesh Jha, executive director of Glida India, formerly known as Fortum Charge and Drive India, which is a leading charging solution provider in India. In fact, if you live in Delhi, you will see Glida charging points all over Delhi.

Jha has a long history in power. He used to be a deputy director at the Central Water Commission. Also, he was the vice president of Hindustan Powerprojects Limited, where he administered hydropower development in one of the remotest parts of the country, the Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh.

Welcome to episode 24 of Two by Two.

–

This is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation.

If you’d like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with people who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we'd love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]

On January 20th, the online publication The Head and Tale broke the news that two of India's largest payment aggregators and gateways, Razorpay and Cashfree, were severing ties with India's largest payment orchestrator or router, Juspay.

Payment gateways are the simplest. They simply facilitate a payment transaction between a merchant's website and a bank. But because these days, we have so many ways to pay. Cards, UPI, net banking, wallets, etc. Many payment gateways also aggregate these methods and offer customers and merchants a choice.

Hence, they're payment aggregators.

Now most leading gateways are also aggregators. This includes Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU, Paytm*, etc.

The most important layer right now, and the topic of today's discussion, is orchestration or routing.

Like a conductor in an orchestra, orchestrators sit above payment gateways and payment aggregators and determine who gets to play.

What that means is when a customer is trying to do a transaction on a merchant's site, the orchestrator or router assigns it to a particular payment gateway or aggregator depending on various things like where success rates are high, who's offering competitive rates, etc.

That's what happens with large organizations like Flipkart, BigBasket, Swiggy, etc.

For instance, you must have seen when you're trying to make a transaction on any of those sites after you enter your card details; you must have seen the Juspay modal, or briefly, website appear when you're trying to enter your OTP, or it's fetching that.

That's what Juspay does.

It sits above payment aggregators and gateways, and it kind of plays this conductor role, assigning transactions to where they are most likely to succeed or where they are most competitively priced for the merchant that Juspay is operating with.

That’s the topic of today's discussion because Razorpay and Cashfree decided to stop working with Juspay.

Now that's very interesting, and it's essentially the trigger to what we’d like to think of as sort of like a much larger war which is going to break out with one set of payment aggregators on one side and the other side another set of payment aggregators, and of course, Juspay.

Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar for the discussion are Vimal Kumar, founder of Juspay; Anand Balaji, co-founder of Xflow and former India head for Stripe; and Abhishek Madan, who used to be vice president of Product at Paytm*.

Welcome to episode 28 of Two by Two.

*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.

–

Additional reading:

Razorpay and Cashfree woke up and chose violence

Additional listening:

Why Stripe could not become the Stripe of India

–

This is a free ‘10-minute trailer’  streaming on all podcast streaming platforms. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can do so by becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken or by subscribing to Two by Two on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, do share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]

Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early on

Yet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunities because they were slow to react to changing consumer behaviour.

And this losing advantage in some of their verticals makes you think, what are the other businesses where Amazon has a right to win. Is it AWS, streaming or something else? Or will they push forward to make up for the lost opportunities by pouring more money and change their fate.

What does the future hold for Amazon India? And how will the company, famed for its execution, turn things around in India? 

Of course, there have been other regulatory pressures as well, which have halted them from realising their full potential in India and forced them to think outside the business model in which they usually function.

In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan bring back one of our first guests, Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services and a former ‘Amazonian’, to discuss whether Amazon has lost the e-commerce race in India. Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a breadth of subjects at the Indian School of Business, including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies, is our second guest.

And they try to uncover over the hour-and-a-half-long discussion where the next big opportunity lies for Amazon India.

Welcome to episode 23 of Two by Two.

This is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation. There’s a lot more that we got into in the discussion, including Amazon, the enterprise company, and how Prime and streaming might be moats it might want to rely on.

If you’d like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.

Further reading:

Amazon is not yet in quick commerce. But it’s already different from the pack

Amazon got rid of its largest seller only to replace it with other ‘preferred sellers’

Amazon’s Leadership Principles (recommended by Srikanth)
—

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.

Write to us at [email protected] and tell us what you thought of the episode and rate the show on your favourite podcast streaming platform.

“This is the first time we are discussing what I'd describe as a 'wicked problem'” says host Rohin Dharmakumar at the beginning of this episode.

What's a “wicked problem”?

It's not a bad thing, it's not an evil thing.

A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that's difficult or impossible to solve because of its complex and interconnected nature. They lack clarity in both their aims and solutions and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.

This definition comes from the space of systems thinking.

And the “wicked problem” at center of today’s discussion is India's air pollution. More specifically, North India's air pollution problem and as we zoom down further on it, Delhi's air pollution problem.

India ranks second globally as the most polluted country.

Our particulate pollution increased by 67.7% from 1998 to 2021.

Because of the PM2.5 pollution particles, which are the smallest actually, which we track, an average Indian's life is cut short by 5.3 years.

And if you live in the north of India, the reduction is close to 12 years.

Now these aren't statistics that most of you people would not have heard about.

Depending on where you are in India, you think it's either a problem that you have to live with or a problem someone else has to live with.

In this episode of Two by Two, we want to really discuss how to think about this problem, how to solve this problem, how to even begin to define this problem.

Joining hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan for the discussion are guests Alok Mittal, co-founder of Indifi; Roshan Shankar, founder and CEO of Saroja Earth; and Mohit Beotra, co-founder of Air Pollution Action Group (A-PAG)

Welcome to episode 27 of Two by Two.

—

What you just listened to is a short part of a 90-minute-long conversation. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.

You can sign up for The Two by Two newsletter here—it's free!

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]

Both Zomato and Swiggy have been aggressively focusing on the 10-minute grocery delivery space for a while now. Quick commerce. 

But what sent both of them into a spiral was when Zepto, the joker in the quick commerce pack, started delivering snacks in 10-minutes through Zepto Cafe, a separate app. Suddenly, quick commerce wasn’t enough. Quick food was up for play too.

Swiggy launched Snacc soon after, and Blinkit followed suit with Bistro. Both were also separate apps.

But this move to disrupt themselves to avoid getting disrupted has drawn a lot of flak from the restaurant partners listed on their platforms. Because a marketplace can only be neutral when it does not participate in it.

And it is not like Zomato and Swiggy haven’t tried a hand at this before. Both platforms previously ran their cloud kitchen verticals, Zomato Infrastructure Services and Swiggy Access, respectively, which they had to close down or sell.

They then turned their attention to delivering food and building up efficiencies to deliver it faster. But when Zepto Cafe came in the picture in December with their pitch as a separate app, both Zomato and Swiggy jumped back and opened that chapter again. Only this time, they added that they would deliver it in 10 minutes and said they were not trying to build a private label to compete with the restaurants listed on their platforms. They made it clear both Bistro and SNACC are separate apps which don’t use any of the data collected by Zomato and Swiggy to date.

But what do the restaurants listed on the platform have to say about this?

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan got into what all of this means for restaurants in one of the most uninhibited, probing and also the longest episodes of Two by Two we’ve recorded to date.

To capture the restaurateurs’ perspective, we have three guests who have experience working with both of the companies.

Joining the hosts for the discussion are Gaurav Saria, founder of Infinitea, India’s first exclusive chain of tearooms and stores; Thomas Fenn, co-founder of Mahabelly and joint secretary at NRAI; and Ramchander Raman, former President of Cafe Coffee Day and co-founder and COO of Nucleus Kitchens.

Welcome to episode 26 of Two by Two. Tune in to listen to an exciting discussion.

–

Additional reading:

The Zomato-Swiggy cartel: Bistro and Snacc further threaten the restaurant business

Zomato, Swiggy gave up on selling their own food. Then came along Zepto Cafe

“There’s an app for that”–Swiggy, Zepto, and Blinkit

–

What you just listened to is a short part of a 2-hour long conversation. If you want to listen and get early access to the full episode, consider becoming a Premium subscriber to The Ken, which in addition to Two by Two, will also give you access to our long-form stories, Premiums newsletters and visual stories. Or if you just want to listen to Two by Two for now, for iOS users, we have enabled Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts.

This episode of Two by Two was researched and produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends and family who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]

It’s time for us to retire the term “Direct-to-Consumer” or D2C. The phrase is, anyway, a bit long in the tooth, having been used since the days of the dot-com boom.

D2C used to mean selling directly to end customers, rather than selling through retailers or other middlemen. In theory, selling directly to consumers would allow a company to offer both lower prices and maintain higher margins (since it didn’t have to pay commissions to middlemen), having better products sustained through a faster innovation cycle and the ability to sell products through evolving brand stories instead of merely price.

In reality though, few brands are even remotely D2C. For instance, 82% of Boat’s sales come via Amazon and Flipkart, with only 2% selling directly to consumers. The dependence on kiranas, distributors and modern retail has merely been replaced with a dependence on Amazon, Flipkart or Quick Commerce companies.

Large and “traditional” FMCG companies, which were once acquirers of D2C startups, have sobered up. Their acquisitions haven’t really scaled up well, even as they’ve figured out how to compete with D2Cs. As a result, the acquisition premium for D2C startups has plummeted from the peak during the post-pandemic days. In some cases even a 50% discount from the peak isn’t leading to deals.

In terms of categories, electronics has scale, but profits have plummeted. In skincare, there is also a downward spiral of competition and price pressure. A good example is Mamaearth, which is now paying the price on the stock markets.

In terms of competition, the likes of Meesho, Fire-Boltt, Boult, Noise etc., are pushing prices dramatically lower. What is a differentiating factor? It’s hard to say right now. The entire category looks like a turnstile with a 2-3 year cycle.

What is the way out? What should modern brands do to build lasting and sustainable brands? How should they cultivate consumer loyalty and connections? What should they even be called?

Welcome to episode 22 of Two by Two.

In this episode, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by Deepak Shahdadpuri, managing director and founder of DSG Consumer Partners–India and Southeast Asia’s first consumer-focused venture capital fund. We also had Ajai Thandi, co-founder of Sleepy Owl Coffee, and Seetharaman G, deputy editor at The Ken and resident expert on all things retail, joining the discussion.

The full episode, which we released on 19 December 2024, is exclusively available on The Ken app with a Premium subscription and on Apple Podcasts via a separate standalone subscription.

There is also a free Two by Two newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

——

Additional reading:

Boat, Noise unleashed cheap smartwatches on India. Rivals hurt them with dirt-cheap ones

Mamaearth sold investors on its FMCG dreams. Consumers had other plans

Brands once desperate for quick commerce now have a tiger by the tail

——

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.

Write to us at [email protected] and tell us what you thought of the episode.

Business schools are among the most coveted higher educational institutions. Students go through some of the most competitive exams and pay significant fees because they hope that at the end of their degree, they will get a great job.

Yet, the onerous process of finding, soliciting and bringing dozens of companies to campuses each year falls mostly on final-year students, who are part of elected/selected placement committees.

For as long as we can remember, these committees have always been accused of bias, arrogance and powerplay by other students.

Yet, the fact also remains that those on the placement committees sacrifice a significant part of their education and grades in order to run a great job-matching process for their entire batch.

Should they, though?

In the US, for instance, most leading B-schools have their professional teams that run the entire campus hiring process instead of students. Finding quality jobs for hundreds of students each year is a full-time job.

In India, too, many colleges are gradually coming around to the same POV.

IIM Kozhikode has transitioned the process from students to faculty. This model aims to instil transparency and professionalism in what vice-chancellor V Ramgopal Rao calls “a crucial rite of passage marking the end of academic life.”

BITS Pilani has adopted a system where HR professionals employed by the institute handle placements.

IIT Bombay set up a committee under a senior computer science faculty professor Uday Khedkar, with one of its aims being “setting up a clean and transparent placement process system”. Sources at IIT-B said the panel was set up after students brought to light instances of the biases some faced and how this had hampered their careers.

Our guest for the episode is Professor Varun Nagaraj, Dean and Professor of Information Management & Analytics at S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai. He holds a Ph.D. in Management: Designing Sustainable Systems from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. He also holds an MBA from Boston University, an MS in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay. His career spanning over three decades in digital products reflects his passion for product management, development, and innovation.

Over the course of the discussion, the professor and hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss how placements have evolved since their MBA days, their misgivings about the current system, and what institutes have to get better at.

Perhaps the larger question is, how should we think about matching employers and graduates? Is a compressed “placements” process the best way?

Welcome to episode 25 of Two by Two.

—

Additional reading:

Bias, lack of transparency trips job hunts in premier schools

Why are IIT placements failing to deliver jobs? Former IIT Director explains

Shiv Shivakumar's LinkedIn post

 —

This is a shorter '10-minute trailer' cut from the hour-long discussion hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar had with the guests. If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription to The Ken, which, in addition to Two by Two, will get you access to all our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and the rest of the podcasts we produce.

But if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two, you can do that by getting a Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts at a great monthly price.

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer, mixed and mastered this episode.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with like-minded individuals who would be interested in listening to the episode. And if you have more thoughts on the discussion, we’d love to hear your arguments as well. You can write to us at [email protected]