Two by Two (Private)

Running a successful restaurant is hard. Scaling one without losing what made it special is even harder.

This week on Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar talk to two people who are deep in that fight: Sameer Seth, founder and CEO of Hunger Inc. Hospitality (The Bombay Canteen, O Pedro, Veronica's, Papa's, Bombay Sweet Shop), and Karan Kapur, Executive Director of K Hospitality Group (Copper Chimney, Bombay Brasserie, The Irish House).

The conversation starts with why restaurants are so difficult to scale. Real estate is expensive and hard to find. Tastes change across cities as India isn't one market, it's several. And unlike other businesses, restaurants have to produce and serve the product at the exact same moment, which makes consistency brutal.

Sameer and Karan walk through the transition every restaurateur has to make: from artist (creating the magic of the first restaurant) to scientist (building systems that let you do it again and again without losing the soul). They talk about diversification and why Sameer kept all his brands in Mumbai while expanding formats. Also why Karan thinks the big inflection point won't come until India's GDP per capita hits $5,000, which he estimates will be around 2032.

They then discuss micro-dining. Pappas serves just 12 people, four times a week, and it works because Veronica's next door serves 300 and pays the rent. They talk about why Bombay Sweet Shop started as a Willy Wonka-style mithai factory. And they tackle the bigger question in the end: in an age where everything comes to your door in 10 minutes, what will keep people going out to restaurants?

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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] or comment below.

2025 is done. Forty-eight episodes. Hundreds of guests. Endless banter between Rohin and Praveen.

This year, Two by Two covered stories from Bengaluru to the world including business, tech, and everything in between. We didn't just stick to the usual. We asked about people, trends, and the things others weren't paying attention to. We brought on guests who didn't rehearse their answers and tried to make sense of things as they happened.

Some episodes turned out to be prescient. Some were messy. Some sparked arguments in our inbox. All of them tried to do what we set out to do: spot hidden connections, ask unasked questions, and figure out what's really going on.

This final episode is Rohin looking back at six moments from the year with clips from conversations that stood out. Between each one, he adds context and some behind-the-scenes perspective on why it mattered.

Here are the episodes featured:

1. Episode 26: Zomato, Swiggy, and the rise of the 10-minute "dark" café
2. Episode 31: Airtel fights spammers. And Truecaller's business model
3. Episode 47: Who broke Bengaluru, and how do we fix our cities?
4. Episode 50: In an AI age, India does not have an open source strategy
5. Episode 51: The invisible whale that capsized India's leaky options boats
6. Episode 66: What will bring ambition back from the dead?

To everyone who listened, argued with us, sent guest suggestions, or just stuck around, thank you. Next year, we're coming back with everything that makes Two by Two what it is, but bigger and better. Maybe even a few surprises. Stay tuned.

There won't be an episode next Thursday. We will return on January 8th, 2026.

See you in the new year.
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. If you have suggestions for guests, episodes or even changes we could make. Please write to us at [email protected] or comment below.

As we try to wind down this year, Rohin and Praveen do something they’ve never done before: go through every single episode they recorded this year. All 48 of them. In 60 minutes.

The rules were simple. Each host had 10 points to build their personal top 10 list for the year. No take-backs, and no pre-discussion. It was a completely live, vibe-based recording where they figured it out as they went.

What follows is a rapid-fire sprint through the year. From Amazon India’s struggles to the electric car slowdown, from B-school placements to the rise of quick commerce dark stores, and from Razorpay versus Juspay to the chaos of concert infrastructure in India. They cover it all—the hits, the misses, the prescient calls, and the episodes they wish had gone differently.

Along the way, they debate whether episodes were too speculative, too early, or just not memorable enough. By the end, they’re locked in a tight race with only five episodes left and one point each remaining.

Because it wouldn't be Two by Two without a matrix, we plotted the results of their debate. Take a look at the graphic to see which episodes they both loved (the green zone) versus their personal favourites.

It is chaotic, nostalgic, and a perfect preview of what 2025 looked like through the lens of Two by Two.

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

With 48 episodes in the books, this is the perfect starting point for anyone looking to catch up on the defining business stories of 2025. If you liked this sprint through the year, please share it with someone who loves a good deep dive. 

Have your own "vibe-based" arguments about our list? We’re all ears. Reach out at [email protected] or leave a comment.

Swiggy just raised a billion dollars in its IPO last year. Now it needs another ₹10,000 crores. That's not a great sign.

On Two by Two this week, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar try to make sense of the chaos in India's quick commerce space. Joining them are Ashwin Mehta, head of research at Ambit Capital, and Anand Kalyanaraman, finance editor at The Ken.

Here's what happened: Zepto suddenly dropped all fees, forcing Swiggy to scramble and match. Blinkit's CEO is out there declaring the bubble could burst any day now, even though his company is comfortably winning. And everyone's burning cash like there's no tomorrow.

The conversation breaks down why this sector is heading for trouble. They argue India can only support around 12,000 dark stores, and we're already at 70% of that. They discuss why Swiggy keeps reacting to what Zepto does instead of leading its own way. And here's a striking stat: the average quick commerce user spends ₹45,000 a year per household. That tells you exactly who this market is really for and why it might be more limited than everyone thinks.

It's a messy race where nobody's backing down and the next 12 months will decide who survives.
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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] or comment below.

That's Kosturi Ghosh, partner at Tri-Legal, explaining why she almost didn't show up for this podcast. It's a revealing admission and one that gets to the heart of why business and tech podcasts have such a lopsided gender problem.

This week on Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar do something uncomfortable: they examine their own track record. Joined by Kosturi and Swapnika Nag, co-founder and CEO of Periscope, they confront the fact that 95% of guests on Two by Two have been men.

A recent USC Annenberg study found that business and tech podcasts have the worst gender split of any genre—92.3% male guests. The conversation explores why this happens, from relying on existing networks and the challenges of cold outreach, to the fact that women are held to different standards when speaking publicly. They also debate whether this is even a problem worth solving, given that the representation issue starts much earlier—in boardrooms, founder circles, and senior leadership positions.

The group discusses what can be done differently: building trust over time and being more intentional about guest planning. They also touch on imposter syndrome and why men seem more comfortable winging it. 

It's a moment of self-reflection with no easy answers, but plenty of ideas on how to do better in 2026.

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Additional readings:

USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (November 2025)

Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility among India’s Professional Elite by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen

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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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] or comment below.

This week on Two by Two, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar dissect Meesho's strategy with Adarsh Menon (partner at Fireside Ventures and former head of Shopsy at Flipkart) and Ganesh Nagasekar (founder of GSN Invest).

Fresh off filing its DRHP, Meesho has gotten here by doing everything differently. Zero commission when competitors charged fees. Optimizing for cost when others raced for speed. Building a logistics arm that slashed delivery costs. All while serving 210 million middle-class customers that Flipkart and Amazon had largely ignored.

The conversation explores what actually sets Meesho apart—is it the data science powering three-quarters of its orders, the seller economics that let merchants triple revenue in a year, or something else? And more importantly, where does it go from here? The group debates whether Meesho should push deeper into logistics, experiment with content commerce, or solve the cash-on-delivery mess that's creating hidden costs across the business.

Sections:
1. What makes Meesho different?
2. The zero commission bet 
3. Valmo: Building a logistics business from scratch
4. Where it goes next
5. Meesho as India's Walmart

This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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] or comment below.

Tenneco Clean Air, the manufacturer of auto components, went public last week. Aside from being an important moment for the company, that instance was an important outlier.

It listed with a premium close to 27% at a time when many Indian firms backed by private equity have had weak debuts. Its anchor book—pre-IPO share allocation to major institutional investors—was oversubscribed by 170X.

The US parent of Tenneco Clean Air is owned by Apollo Global Management, an asset management firm based in New York. 

Other companies with similar PE backing haven’t fared so well in recent times. Sona Comstar, for instance, went public in 2021 with a P/E multiple of 79—far higher than Tenneco’s 29—courtesy of its backer Blackstone. The stock is currently well below its peak, which it hit in six months after going public.

Here’s a fact: private equity has underperformed the S&P 500 index over one, three, and five years, according to McKinsey & Company. This category of investors in India extract value from their portfolio companies before they head to the bourses, leaving little opportunity for public investors.

The Ken editor Seema Singh shines a light on the situation in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng.

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Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/can-a-pe-firm-not-be-greedy-a-us-firms-india-ipo-offers-a-clue/ 

Download our app and subscribe to The Ken to listen to all our podcasts:

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Check out Make India Competitive Again on Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/make-india-competitive-again-premium/id1810672381 

Or Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/5yxzxRmN7idKJen5QdezPl

Join The Ken as a Podcast Producer and work with India's most ambitious storytellers! We’re creating a podcast about India’s biggest companies, with each episode backed by weeks of deep research. You’ll lead the workflows that turn that research into exceptional narratives and bring the show to listeners around the world. Join us to help shape something exceptional. Check out the details and apply here. 

This week, Two by Two debuts a new format: "Reverse engineering the playbook."

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan attempt to crack the math behind this recent wave of AI-telco partnerships in India. Why are companies like Perplexity, Google, and OpenAI racing to bundle their expensive premium subscriptions with Airtel, Jio, and Phonepe? 

To decode the economics, they are joined by two industry experts with firsthand experience managing these exact types of deals: Chandrashekhar Vattikuti (ex-CPO of Inmobi and SVP of their Telco Cloud business) and Prakash Deep Maheshwari (head of product at Grab and former director of growth for Netflix in India and Southeast Asia).

The group explores whether Indian telcos are desperate for differentiation or simply cashing in on a gold rush where the smartest move is to sell shovels–or in this case, subscribers. Prakash argues this is a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma: once one telco bundles an AI service, the others have no choice but to follow.

They also break down the actual structure of these deals, from minimum guarantees to the marketing halo the partnerships create. The conversation gets into why OpenAI likely entered these deals "kicking and screaming" to protect its platform ambitions, while Chandra offers a reality check on whether these massive user numbers will actually stick around once the free periods end.

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Episodes referenced in the conversation:

1. ‘Do we even need product managers?’- Two by Two episode 13 with Chandrashekhar Vattikuti

2. ‘Threat models, using taste to defend margins, ChatGPT’s ‘collab’ with Phonepe’- Zero Shot episode 9

Sections:

00:00 – The ‘Reverse engineering’ experiment

04:36 – Are telcos becoming just dumb pipes? 

13:14 – The gold rush for subscribers 

29:51 – How these deals are actually structured 

47:38 – Why OpenAI resisted these partnerships 

58:09 – Will users actually stick around?
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This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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] or comment below.

The popular narrative often blames Gen Z for a lack of ambition, but is it the millennials who are truly suffering from “ambition fatigue”?

This week on Two by Two, the conversation takes its lead from The Ken’s deputy editor, Arundhati Ramanathan’s recent and concerning article, “Indian Tech Companies are Spawning an Ambitionless Generation”.

Hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan sit down to discuss how to solve this cross-generational problem and bring the “fire back in the belly”, with or without burning the midnight lamp. 

They explore the striking ambition gap between driven founders/CEOs and their often-indifferent employees. Is this growing apathy a fault of the corporate environment and a lack of opportunity, or is the responsibility for finding purpose solely on the individual?

Can the corporate world reignite ambition, and can it truly rise from the dead? Joining the hosts to tackle this multifold issue are three experts:

Gaston Schmitz 

Gaston is a partner/executive and founder coach at the Asian Leadership Institute, guiding senior executives at Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startup founders across 30+ countries. With over 20,000 hours of experience, he employs a personalised approach rooted in mindfulness and neuroscience to help leaders expand their perspective and identify blind spots. 

Vipul Nanda

Vipul is the director of product marketing at Databahn. His professional history includes significant roles at major fintech platforms, including a tenure as director of product marketing at Cashfree Payments and product marketing manager at Razorpay. Additionally, Nanda is the co-founder of the GoPMM community for product marketers in India and holds an advisory position with Antler.

Arundhati Ramanathan

Arundhati is the deputy editor at The Ken. Based in Bengaluru, she is a seasoned journalist who focuses on in-depth, long-form stories about India's startup ecosystem, entrepreneurship, and the fintech industry. Her work often explores the significant trends and challenges impacting the tech landscape, such as venture capital, founder strategies, and shifts in workforce dynamics.

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Additional reading:

‘Indian Tech Companies are Spawning an Ambitionless Generation’ by Arundhati Ramanathan
https://the-ken.com/story/indian-tech-companies-are-spawning-an-ambitionless-generation/?t=251112092335

Last episode Gaston was in- ‘Where AI can and can’t replace human coaching’
https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/where-ai-can-and-cant-replace-human-coaching/

Warren Buffet’s shareholder letters
https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

Marshall Goldsmith’s 6 daily questions
https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/post/six-daily-questions

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers by Patrick Lencioni
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/749937.The_Three_Signs_of_a_Miserable_Job

Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infinite_Games

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This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. 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].

What is the “listing pop” that everyone is chasing, and does it still matter six months later? This simple question is the starting point for a deep look into the current boom in the Indian Initial Public Offering (IPO) market. Despite a massive influx of investor wealth, the standards for companies going public have significantly dropped. 

In this episode of Two by Two, co-hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by their colleagues, The Ken’s finance editor, Anand Kalyanaraman, and deputy editor, Seetharaman G to explore how the initial “IPO event” relates to a company’s long-term performance. They discuss how high valuations from private investors are merely being validated at the public listing. They also examine the rise of “flipping”—the practice of quickly selling IPO shares for a profit—a tactic now accepted by many large institutions as just part of “the game”. 

The episode of Two by Two was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, particularly what IPO companies did we miss out on that you know are living happily ever after, write to us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.