Everyone’s lives would be better if we were rid of spam calls and messages, but we don’t live in that reality. So, most people rely on caller-ID apps or services to save themselves from the ordeal. In September last year, Bharti Airtel launched a spam-fighting network free of cost to all users who have a Volte-enabled smartphone.

Airtel says its AI-powered systems come across a call or message that seems sketchy based on call patterns, frequency, duration and other parameters to flag them as ‘suspected scam’.

But like any anti-spam service, it has been showing a few cracks, all of which have consequences for both businesses and customers.

Legitimate calls from businesses are flagged as suspected spam by the system, while calls from similar businesses are not. The other troubling problem is that it’s a one-way system where the customer can’t do anything about it. They cannot opt out of the service either.

If your network operator says it's a suspected spam call when there's a number flashing on your screen, are you going to pick it up?

And then there are businesses like Truecaller, which built their business using the crowdsourcing model and built a two-sided business where they made money from both individuals and businesses trying to reach these individuals. Truecaller helped legitimate businesses which were being marked as spam be validated as verified businesses for a fee.

Something in all of this feels broken. What should ideally be free and reliable to save all customers from being scammed is not fully reliable or free.

What’s at stake? Where are the solutions?

In episode 31 of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan try to find the answers with our guests for the week—Parag Kar, former vice president of government affairs at Qualcomm India and Southeast Asia; Chaitanya Chokkareddy, co-founder and CTO of Ozonetel, a cloud-based communication platform providing call-centre solutions for businesses; and The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan.

– 

Additional reading

Truecaller beat Trai to the punch with spam-call fix

Airtel finds the gap between Truecaller and Trai

– 

Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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 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].

Want to attend The Ken’s next event—How AI is Breaking and Remaking the Way Products are Built?
🎟️ Join us in person or on the livestream—tickets here

“The future of consultants is intricately linked to the future of consulting”

That’s what one of the guests had to say about the future of consultants and the promise of consulting careers.

Being a consultant at any of the big three consulting firms—McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group(BCG)—meant one thing: The opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects with big, innovative companies. It allowed the people who worked at these companies to have career opportunities, which would allow them to be prepared for even more challenging and rewarding roles in the world of startups.

The accelerated learning, prestige, community and great pay packages that these companies offered ensured the best talent lined up to work for them.

The first two years of a career in consulting are gruelling, demanding and difficult and often involve “low-value work”, like making presentations, data analysis and sending requests for proposals to really annoying clients.

However, people still rush and fight to do it with the expectation that the payoffs compound later. It gives them a broader view of how companies work and operate.

It acts as a training ground for building startups and laterally jumping into senior executive roles at fast-growing companies or even going higher up the consulting ladder.

Today, that trade-off equation looks a bit distorted for students because it's never been easier to start a company.

It's also been very easy to find post-MBA roles in companies that are more strategic in nature, and ESOPs look much more real and valuable because companies are going public.

So the question becomes: Will students continue to chase consulting firms as a lucrative and promising career option? And does a career in consulting hold the same promises as it used to?

Joining hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar for the episode are Rahul Chaudhary, co-founder of Treebo, ex-McKinsey & Company and Pragya Batra, co-founder of Quirksmith, ex-Bain & Company.

Welcome to episode 35 of Two by Two.

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Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

-

Additional listening:

If B-schools were invented today, would students run placements? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/if-b-schools-were-invented-today-would-students-run-placements/

AI comes to annihilate India’s SaaS companies - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/ai-comes-to-annihilate-indias-saas-companies/

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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, 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].

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 organised, 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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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.

-

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.

Want to attend The Ken’s next event—How AI is Breaking and Remaking the Way Products are Built?
🎟️ Join us in person or on the livestream—tickets here

Two founders lay down their journey so far of going global.

You could, in many ways, picture India’s tech businesses venturing into the global stage in waves. First, there were the services companies. Your Wipros and Infosys and the like. Then, startups such as Zomato, Oyo, and Ola took their shot. The third wave was headlined by SaaS companies like Zoho and Freshworks. 

What does the fourth wave look like? 

What does the future hold for companies making the jump? 

This week’s episode of Two by Two was our attempt to answer some of those questions. Our guests for the podcast ended up adding quite a bit more. 

Mohit Kumar is founder and CEO of Ultrahuman, best known for its smart rings which compete with the likes of Oura and Samsung, but also offering a wide range of other devices and products for health-conscious buyers.

Lal Chand Bisu is the co-founder and CEO of Kuku FM, a mobile-first premium audio platform hosting content in multiple Indian languages.

Two very different companies, with one bold bet in common: they chose to take their products global. 

Tune in to listen to hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar discuss with Mohit and Bisu what it means to be front-runners in India’s fourth tech export wave. And what success looks like for each. 

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Get your tickets to The Ken's first subscriber event - https://the-ken.com/event/beyond-the-first-order

-

Additional reading:

Kuku FM chooses not to be the hero in its own story

Pocket FM had 10 million listeners in India. Yet it hit pay dirt elsewhere

-

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, 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]

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 who 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 a half-marathon. 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

–

Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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].

Want to attend The Ken’s next event—How AI is Breaking and Remaking the Way Products are Built?
🎟️ Join us in person or on the livestream—tickets here

Free-range eggs and chicken have been gaining popularity for a while. The practices involved in producing and raising them are considered more humane. The market for humane meat has been growing slowly but steadily. Reports suggest that a majority of the country eats eggs, chicken, or meat. Shouldn’t we care about how the animals that reach our plates are raised and killed? It’s not a question with easy answers.

Today, consumers are becoming more aware of the conditions in which the eggs and meat they consume are produced. They are making a conscious choice to seek out spaces that treat these animals well before they become a means of our sustenance.

Should meat and fish eaters be willing to pay a premium to ensure the animals that we consume – or whose products we consume – are treated as ethically and humanely as possible? How big is this market? How fast is it growing? How should we think about it? Or should we take the lazy route and laugh it off as an oxymoron?

Episode 33 of Two by Two, hosted by Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, aimed to find an answer and explain how it makes sense.

And they were joined by four wonderful guests for the discussion.

Our first guest is Dineshkumar Shanmugam, the co-founder and CEO of Earthy Origins, a Tamil Nadu-based farm-to-table startup that grows, raises, and sells organic food products, ethically raised chickens, and free-range eggs.

Our second guest is Sandeep Reddy, the CEO of India Animal Fund, a nonprofit that brings together a diverse mix of leaders from the corporate and animal welfare sectors to take a strategic look at ending all forms of animal harm. They believe that doing the most good means minimising the suffering of the most vulnerable, that is, animals. 

Our third guest is K Vijay, the Bengaluru-based founder of another meat startup, Meatright.

Our final guest is Shan Kadavil, co-founder and CEO of Freshtohome, one of the leading online sellers of meat and fish in India. We’ve interviewed Shan for First Principles, The Ken’s leadership podcast. His clarity of thought around setting up and scaling an online meat business in India was amazing. You should listen to it if you haven’t.

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Additional reading:

Famine, affluence and morality - https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil308/Singer2.pdf

Food, a question of ethics – 5 principles of ethical eating - https://kindredmedia.org/2007/09/food-a-question-of-ethics-5-principles-of-ethical-eating/

Animals and choices - https://the-ken.com/newsletter/first-principles/animals-and-choices/

How many Indians eat meat? - https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-how-many-indians-eat-meat/article65299234.ece

Additional listening:

Shan Kadavil of Freshtohome on selling fish, building moats, encouraging bottom-up “shots on goal”, and being honest with boards - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/shan-kadavil-fresh-to-home/

Peter Singer - The ethics of what we eat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHzwqf_JkrA

-

Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

-

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 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]

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 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 organisations 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, the 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

–

Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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]

Want to attend The Ken’s next event—How AI is Breaking and Remaking the Way Products are Built?
🎟️ Join us in person or on the livestream—tickets here

There's a war for succession going on. Who gets to become the new television?

There are two challengers. The first challenger is Youtube.

According to Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO, TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the quote, primary device for YouTube viewing in the US.

It is, as Mohan writes in his annual letter from the CEO, an indication that YouTube is the new television.

It's interactive and includes things like shorts, podcasts, and live streams alongside sports, sitcoms, and talk shows that people already love.

It is getting there organically by adding things like memberships, monetisation tools, partner programs, and super chats, and it's letting creators play with them to create content that takes eyeballs away from linear television.

On the other hand, there are streaming companies like Netflix and Jiohotstar, who also want to become the successor for new television, and they do it by owning and producing exclusive content and IP such as live sports, Disney, Marvel, HBO, and a whole lot more.

All of this came to a head a couple of days back after Jiohotstar live-streamed its Mahashivratri event. It had a lot of the same elements as Youtube live events.

Viewers could switch between temple feeds, listen to mythological narratives or engage in real-time chanting and live Q&A sessions, transforming passive viewing into active participation.

Jio Hotstar is redefining live streaming by making shared cultural moments more immersive.

To discuss this, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar invited two wonderful guests.

Our first guest is Swati Mohan, the ex-head of marketing at Netflix India. She's also an independent advisor to many consumer tech companies. She’s led large business verticals and has had leadership roles in media companies such as GroupM, Nat Geo, and many others across India and APAC.

And our second guest is Vanita Kohli-Khandekar. She is an India-based media specialist and a contributing editor for Business Standard, where she has written about media and the business of media for over two decades.

She also writes for Singapore-based Content Asia. The Media Room, her podcast on all things media and entertainment, is hosted on The Core. She has also authored the authoritative book on India’s media landscape titled The Indian Media Business.

In this episode, we discuss which of these two contenders will become new television.

What will YouTube do, and how will it get there? What will streaming companies do, and how will they get there?

Welcome to episode 32 of Two by Two.

– – –

Additional reading:

Jiohotstar is not content

The 'linearisation' of streaming: How OTTs are becoming more like TV

Additional listening:

Netflix and its last growth market

– – –

Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

– – –

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, 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].

“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 the centre of today’s discussion is India's air pollution. More specifically, North India's air pollution problem and, as we zoom down further, 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 actually the smallest that are tracked, 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 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, and how even to 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.

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Help us find great women guests for Two by Two by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

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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]

Want to attend The Ken’s next event—How AI is Breaking and Remaking the Way Products are Built?
🎟️ Join us in person or on the livestream—tickets here

Everyone’s lives would be better if we were rid of spam calls and messages, but we don’t live in that reality. So most people rely on caller-ID apps or services to save themselves from the ordeal. In September last year, Bharti Airtel launched a spam fighting network free of cost to all users who have a VoLTE-enabled smartphone.

Airtel says its AI-powered systems come across a call or message that seems sketchy based on call patterns, frequency, duration and other parameters to flag them as ‘suspected scam’.

But like any anti-spam service, it has been showing a few cracks—all of which have consequences for both businesses and customers.

Legitimate calls from businesses are flagged as suspected spam by its system, while calls from similar businesses are not. The other troubling problem is that it’s a one-way system where the customer can’t do anything about it. They cannot opt out of the service either.

If your network operator says it's a suspected spam call when there's a number flashing on your screen, are you going to pick it up?

And then there are businesses like Truecaller, which built their business using the crowdsourcing model and built a two-sided business where they made money from both individuals and businesses trying to reach these individuals. Truecaller helped legitimate businesses which were being marked as spam be validated as verified businesses for a fee.

Something in all of this feels broken. What should ideally be free and reliable to save all customers from being scammed is not fully reliable or free.

What’s at stake? Where are the solutions?

In episode 31 of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan try to find the answers with our guests for the week—Parag Kar, former vice president of government affairs at Qualcomm India and Southeast Asia; Chaitanya Chokkareddy, co-founder and CTO of Ozonetel, a cloud-based communication platform providing call-centre solutions for businesses; and The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan.

– – –

Additional reading -

Truecaller beat Trai to the punch with spam-call fix

Airtel finds the gap between Truecaller and Trai

– – –

Help us find interesting women guests by filling out this survey - https://theken.typeform.com/to/KH0EOLGo

– – –
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, 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]