Two by Two (Private)

Software engineering careers used to be a ladder. You studied for 4 years, got a job as a fresher, and could virtually take for granted a steady career filled with learning opportunities, salary hikes, and role promotions.  

In fact being an engineer was so cool that we mocked MBAs and MBA-types – “suits” – for their desperation to find that elusive technical co-founder. The one who would translate an idea (common) into code and products.

Except, that’s increasingly not true.

An NYT story published earlier this week put it best.

“I have a pretty good sense how fast the progress that students should make in a semester should be,” he said. “In 14 years, I’ve never seen students make the kind of progress that they made this year.”
And he knew exactly why that was the case. For the first time, Mr. Ammirati had encouraged his students to use generative artificial intelligence as part of their process — “think of generative A.I as your co-founder,” he recalled telling them.

Many AI chatbots are fully capable of writing code now. So your technical co-founder could be an AI?

Where does that leave engineers? Are we staring at the end of the golden era for engineers?

Welcome to episode six of Two by Two, The Ken’s weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!

Earlier this week, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, my co-host, and I met with Amod Malviya, co-founder of Udaan and the former CTO at Flipkart, and Kailash Nadh, CTO at Zerodha*.

Both Amod and Kailash have been programmers and engineers for over two decades now. They are also both deeply in love with their craft. Naturally, they are passionate about engineering and have strong views on its future.

Additional Reading:

Computational Thinking by Jeannette M. Wing

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming

This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.

Please rate, share and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. It helps more like-minded people like you to find out by Two by Two.

*Zerodha’s perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken.

The Swiggy of 2024 is a shadow of its former self. 

Boxed in by younger, nimbler and hungrier competitors from all sides, it has been defending itself for so long that it seems to have forgotten how to play offense. 

It wasn’t always like this. Swiggy used to define innovation, product chops and “Bengaluru cool”. 

In many ways it pioneered food delivery in 2014 after pivoting from a courier service.
 
Zomato, originally a restaurant discovery company, got into food delivery a year after Swiggy. It may have started as a late follower, but today Zomato’s market share in the food delivery space is estimated at 56-57% by Goldman Sachs, with Swiggy in second place.

Then there’s quick commerce. In 2020 Swiggy was the first to launch a quick commerce grocery business, which we now know as Instamart. Zomato meanwhile bought Blinkit and rapidly integrated and scaled it across India. Once again, it would go on to beat Swiggy in market share. Blinkit is estimated to have a 46% market share, followed by Swiggy at number 2. 

Underpinning all of Swiggy’s business were its apps and products, long considered the gold standard of user experience and design. They were slick, intuitive, fast, and fun. 
 
But Swiggy’s apps today are a haphazard and constantly changing collection of sub-products, menu items, offers and distinct sections. 
 
How did it come to this?
 
This week on Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss Swiggy with Arnav Gupta, the Director of Engineering at Jio Cinema, and Deepak Shenoy – the co-founder and CEO of Capitalmind*. 
 
Arnav, who used to lead product and engineering for Zomato's consumer apps, explains how product and teams work within a food delivery company. Deepak runs a company handling 2000 crores worth of investments and is a great expert on how the public markets work. He breaks down exactly what the market wants and needs from Swiggy, and what it needs to do to succeed once it goes public.

Additional Reading:

Swiggy is at the mercy of Zomato for its IPO

Swiggy and Timidity 

1,500 stories about India’s complex relationships with Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, Zepto, and Bigbasket

* Both Rohin and Praveen are minor investors with Capitalmind.

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P.S. We're hiring! Our podcast team is looking for an audio journalist and a podcast producer. Apply here.

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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is our lead writer and researcher and our resident sound engineer Rajiv C N is our audio producer.
 
 What did you think of the episode? Write to us at [email protected] with your opinions and suggestions.

The conventional wisdom is that Bengaluru is India’s Silicon Valley. It’s the cradle of India’s tech revolution. First there was Infosys and Wipro on the IT services side. Then when startups become cool and hip, the default location to get it all started was also Bengaluru. 

Take the leaders across sectors, and you’ll see they belong to Bengaluru — Flipkart, InMobi, Swiggy, PhonePe, Myntra, Ola, Amazon, Unacademy, Byju’s…and much more. 

But of late, it looks like something has changed. There’s now a sentiment that Bangalore is for people who “want to” build startups, but Delhi is for people who build businesses. 

Delhi companies are the ones who seem to be gutsier, more resilient, and stronger. The list of tech companies that have gone public — Zomato, Paytm, Mamaearth, Infoedge, Delhivery, have one thing in common i.e Delhi. 

Why is this distance so wide? Do cities really influence businesses that much?

Our guests for this episode have stories that might make you agree. 

Our first guest is Prashant Singh, who’s the Head of Product at JAR, in Bangalore. He’s spent 20 years in Delhi, where he set up his own startup and sold it to Paytm. He’s now in Bangalore, and he’s not convinced that a city can affect a company’s future…but he remembers the early building days of Delhi – a city with a get-thing-done attitude and massive “ops chops.”

Our second guest is Arnav Gupta, the Director of Engineering at JioCinema. He has also founded and sold his own edtech startup, as well as led the engineering and product for the Zomato app. Arnav worked in Delhi before VCs pulled him to Bangalore – and now that he’s spent a few years here, he knows what sort of companies only Bangalore can give birth to, and why. 

Joined by hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, our guests discuss the unique cultural context each city adds to a business, why it’s causing a rivalry, and what this means for the Indian startups ecosystem, going forward. 

Welcome to another episode of Two by Two, a premium business podcast from The Ken. If you’re a premium subscriber, you can now listen to the full, uncut episode on your app – just click on the player right below the title!

In 2021, as the pandemic still raged on and we washed our vegetables and supplies before consuming them, a young delivery startup promised that you can get all your groceries – everything you need – delivered right to your doorstep. In 10 minutes. 

This was pretty crazy, back then. 

Zepto was written off as an ambitious, overhyped startup run by two founders who had barely outgrown their teenage – by competitors and experts alike. 

In 2024, Zepto has now raised $1.2 billion in venture capital, with a valuation on $3.6 billion. Everyone was wrong about this little startup, which seems to have achieved something that retail brands only dream to: changing consumer habits. 10-minute delivery is now the norm – so much so that the likes of the good old retail giants Dmart and Reliance Retail are scratching their heads. Even Flipkart and Amazon are scuttling about, trying to crack the hyperlocal delivery space. 

Who would’ve thought Zepto would be the company to set the cat among the pigeons? 

It’s not random, though. Zepto has tapped into specific advantages – categories, space, speed. And it certainly has timing to thank. All of these aspects have come together serendipitously for Zepto, but the real question is: does it pose a real threat to India’s largest retail brands?

And if it does, what will they do to stop Zepto?

In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar, CEO of The Ken and Praveen Gopal Krishnan (PGK), COO of The Ken speak with guests Seetharaman G and Arcind Singhal to break down how exactly Zepto managed to surprise everyone, and what this means for the e-commerce space, going forward.

About the guests:

Arvind Singhal is the founder of Technopak Advisors, a 30 year old management consulting firm best known for its insights on retail and consumer goods. Arvind is an absolute expert on all things retail, with 30 years of hands-on experience advising the most prominent retail companies in India and abroad.

Seetharaman G is The Ken’s deputy editor and lead writer on all things retail, FMCG and e-commerce. He’s reported on quick commerce as well as large retail brands in India week after week in Trade Tricks, the Ken’s paid newsletter on retail. 

Welcome to the first episode of The Ken’s brand new premium business podcast: Two by Two!

In this episode, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar, CEO of The Ken and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, COO of The Ken, sit down with Professor R. Srinivasan and Srikanth Rajagopalan to discuss Flipkart and Phonepe – both owned by the American giant Walmart – are stepping over each other’s toes in an effort to create more avenues. Why? Of course, to bring in revenue and strengthen their bottom lines. Flipkart is trying to make its mark with its payments app Supermoney and PhonePe is trying to have a crack at hyperlocal delivery with Pincode. 

But why wade into unfamiliar waters?

Both Flipkart and PhonePe and Flipkart have their reasons. For Flipkart, their market isn’t growing as fast as it used to and PhonePe – even with its billions of transactions – isn’t able to make money off of it. Because UPI is a public good and should not be monetised. So, naturally, they are looking at places where opportunities lie. And both want what the other has.

And therein lies the conflict.

And what better way to plot this conflict but on a 2x2 – which represents the purest form of a conflict. 

In fact, each episode of the Two by Two podcast will feature an important story investigated and discussed and visualized as a 2x2 matrix.

You can think of Two by Two as your personal investigative business brain!

In our very first episode, you’ll hear the speakers discuss how Flipkart and PhonePe are gradually moving in each other’s directions too. When the overall market is only so big, niceties like staying out of your siblings turf is, well, impossible.

So, the question we wanted to ask is, where do these two giants, advancing into each others turf, meet? Where do the sparks fly?

And might they collide?

About the guests:

Prof. R Srinivasan teaches Strategy at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B). He has been teaching strategy for over a quarter of a century, and for the last decade focused on studying platform business models. He also leads IIM-B’s Centre for Digital Public Goods (CDPG).

Srikanth Rajagopalan is the CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation and runs Anumati - one of the earliest startups in the Account Aggregator space. In a career spanning nearly 30 years Srikanth has worked at FMCG companies, tech startups, global credit card giants, telecom and cloud computing.

And don’t miss out on the puzzle, here it is: The X-axis goes from full WFH on one side to full WFO on the other. What should the Y-axis be? You tell us.

Write to us at [email protected] to let us know what you thought of the episode and of course, your answer to the puzzle.