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Summary I have hosted First Principles for four years and 58 episodes, and I have never once stopped to look at it. This episode is me doing that. There is no guest. It runs about fourteen minutes, and it ends with something I need from you. Season 3 started with Vidit Aatrey of Meesho in April 2025 and ended with Mukesh Bansal in August 2026. A lawyer, a banker, a restaurateur and a venture capitalist were guests on a show I had built for founders. The businesses were trucks, fish, kitchens and bikes. And my questions moved away from fundraising and towards where a person came from and how they decide. Then I go back to seasons 1 and 2, from Kabeer Biswas in August 2022 to Manav Garg in May 2024, and show how the exceptions of season 2 became the categories of season 3. Season 4 widens the guest list on purpose: musicians, athletes, actors, writers and scientists, alongside the founders you come for. The founders were easy for me to find because they live in my world. The people I want next mostly don't. So I am asking you for help to find them. The survey below is how. The survey https://theken.typeform.com/fp-season-4 · five minutes if you tap, eight if you write I ask nine things, in this order. Describe First Principles to me in your own words. Pick the season 3 conversations you found most interesting (all seventeen are listed, so you don't have to remember). Tell me what you think the bar is for getting invited onto this show today, before I change it. Name who you want as a guest in season 4, and what you would want me to ask them. Tell me whether you would join a small closed group of listeners I can ask for feedback more often. How and where you listen. How much of the archive you have heard, and whether you go back. A question I should start asking every guest. And anything else that would make the show better. I read every answer. The season 4 guest list is being built from what you send, and I will share the names you mention most in a newsletter edition before the season starts. Chapters Not a regular episode: no guest, and a look back Season 3, April 2025 to August 2026: seventeen conversations, Vidit Aatrey to Mukesh Bansal The guests: a lawyer, a banker, a restaurateur, a VC Trucks, fish, kitchens and bikes: what the businesses were made of I had it backwards: the warm-up questions were the real interview The thing I have to own: one woman guest in season 3, and she invited herself Season 1, August 2022 to July 2023: twenty-two episodes, never missed a fortnight Season 2, August 2023 to May 2024: the exceptions that became season 3 The eleven-month gap, and the two-hour format Season 4: what stays, and who else gets invited Why I can't find these people alone: the survey Thank you, and the archive is open The seventeen conversations of season 3 Ep 42 Vidit Aatrey, Meesho · Ep 43 Sahil Barua, Delhivery · Ep 44 Manish Sabharwal, Teamlease · Ep 45 Narayan Subramaniam, Ultraviolette · Ep 46 Anand Jain, CleverTap · Ep 47 Rahul Matthan, Trilegal · Ep 48 Deepak Abbot, Indiagold · Ep 49 Aloke Bajpai, Ixigo · Ep 50 Rohit Chennamaneni, Darwinbox · Ep 51 Kalpana Morparia · Ep 52 Utham Gowda, Captain Fresh · Ep 53 Ankit Nagori, Curefoods · Ep 54 Lal Chand Bisu, Kuku FM · Ep 55 Riyaaz Amlani, Impresario · Ep 56 Saahil Goel, Shiprocket · Ep 57 Kanwal Singh, Fireside Ventures · Ep 58 Mukesh Bansal All seventeen are in the archive.  This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Where Part 1 followed the companies, Part 2 is about the person behind them. Picking up from Mukesh Bansal's move from one venture to the next, this half gets into how he finds talent ("work with them for six months"), the mental models he runs his life by, and the beliefs underneath them. He explains why rationally no one should start a company, how he processes every rejection as "no means not now", why he writes three books by simply showing up to a blank page, and how he separated the longevity basics he trusts from the biohacking he no longer does. It ends close to home: loyalty as loyalty to a mission, what he wants for his two children, why parents' expectations matter less than they did, and a life he rates an 8 out of 10. Chapters0:00  Where we left off1:46  Finding talent: "work with them for six months"3:23  The one open-ended question he asks5:57  Winning vs looking good8:00  The compounding argument, revisited9:40  Learning vs winning: drawing the 2x211:17  Three books, and the annual look-back16:18  Making time to think in a full life18:45  What a chief of staff is actually for21:27  "No means not now" and other mental models25:57  How he writes a book28:30  How health became a throughline31:24  From ecosystem to the longevity basics34:29  Why strength training matters after 5038:08  Why he runs SparX, and the deep-tech turn44:05  Loyalty to a mission, and the number two50:35  The Apple teaching model52:52  Three adjectives, and being "scary" to juniors55:30  His kids' worldview57:54  Do parents' expectations still matter?1:00:12  Weekends, food, and reading now1:02:17  Rating his life an 8 Quotes[8:44] "I don't know if this rocket thing will work. But if it works, it'll take at least ten years… they said, we are willing to work on it for the rest of our lives."[21:56] "I call this no means not now. That's how I process all the nos in my life."[24:59] "Zomato was started in 2007. They did not pivot into food delivery till 2017."[26:05] "Just show up and stare at a blank page for an hour. Sooner or later you'll start writing."[61:43] "I feel very privileged and very fortunate. So many lucky breaks have worked out for me." Frameworks & mental models No means not now: process every rejection as timing, not a verdict; it protects the ego and the relationship. Long-term patient, short-term aggressive / product is marketing: charge hard daily, give the ten-year game room, and let a product people love do the selling. Horizontal compounding: compound entrepreneurial skill across ventures, not tenure in one sector. Loyalty to a mission: the durable teams are bound to an unfinished job, not to a person; build a number two and give people room. The longevity basics beat biohacking: sleep, eat less, move, strength-train after 50, tend emotional health; the exotic stuff is largely unproven. Credits & sharingThis episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Mukesh Bansal has founded and left more companies than most people build in a lifetime, and in Part 1 he explains why. He founded Myntra and sold it to Flipkart; he co-founded Cult.fit and turned fitness into a category; and today he runs the AI company Nurix and the Meraki Labs studio. Asked what he is now, he says "a learner", and admits he gets bored the moment a company starts working. Part 1 traces the thesis and the companies: how he allocates his weeks, why he thinks the AI era rewards the hands-on operator over the people-manager, what Nurix and Fermi are, why Myntra's move into fashion was an "adjustment" not a pivot, and the small-town Haridwar upbringing and library habit that set him off. This is Part 1 of 2; Part 2 turns to the person, the mental models, and how he thinks about health, family and success. Chapters0:00  Welcome and who Mukesh Bansal is3:15  How First Principles is already connected to him4:21  "Do you see yourself as an operator, a founder, an investor?"5:27  Zero-to-one, and where learning stops9:11  Allocating time across companies10:34  Why an hour of his time isn't what it was12:59  The three kinds of professionals in the AI age14:52  His stack: Claude, Warp, agents overnight17:58  Founder mode, reversed by AI20:19  No more waiting for a tech co-founder23:02  How big Nurix is; and what Fermi is25:38  The Socratic tutor that won't answer27:18  Back to Myntra: the fashion category today31:30  Koyu, Lyskraft and the CRED hypothesis33:41  Why a venture studio, one company a year38:18  Rejecting the compounding path42:57  The near-death at Myntra, and raising with a short runway45:03  Haridwar, BHEL, and the books that lit the fire48:15  Pivots as chess "adjustments"50:48  Conviction vs discovery: betting the megatrend53:08  The Bay Area years and the return to India Quotes[4:33] "I see myself as a learner… doing one company over a period of time, I get bored."[7:08] "Crisis always comes wrapped with a massive gift, if you are only willing to unpeel the onion."[17:12] "I'm making an even stronger point. If you're only a people manager, watch out."[18:58] "For the first time you can hire something equivalent to human cognition for cents an hour."[48:50] "I use the word adjustment rather than pivot. You come to work every day, you're playing chess." Frameworks & mental models Learner over operator: hand off once a company stops teaching you. Crisis and momentum: cut the bad, double down on the good. The three professionals in the AI age: the hands-on veteran is the one AI turns into a superpower. Adjustment, not pivot: the best move on the board each day; a true "wipe the slate" is just a new company. Bet the megatrend, stay loose on the path.Credits & sharingThis episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

1 · Summary Part 2 of 2. Part 1 laid out the bet: a fund built only for Indian consumer brands, back when the idea sounded absurd, and the anti-power-law machine Kanwal Singh built to make it work. This half is the person. The near-decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him his love of consumer, the Intel years, and the Paper Boat conviction that taught him to back the founder over the idea. Then the man himself: parents who came to India as refugees from Pakistan, a father who kept collecting degrees while feeding the family, the coach he started seeing in his sixties and what separates coaching from therapy, and how he reads a founder by meeting their family. He turned down twice the money he could have raised. He rates his life a 10. 2 · Chapters 0:00 Part 2 intro 1:22 The Hindustan Lever decade that started it all 2:25 Intel Inside, and bringing the inside out 4:22 The Paper Boat conviction: backing the founder 6:38 What he adds as Fireside's "CEO," and value of good 17:53 Capping the fund: turning down 2x the money 20:24 Hiring: read the person, meet the family 27:01 Refugees, and a father who never stopped studying 30:39 Three words, and a 100%-locked calendar 33:30 Motivating through the down days 34:51 The coach, and coaching vs therapy 43:40 How he learns, and consumer vs tech founders 51:27 Rating his life a 10, and success redefined 52:47 Cotswolds, golf, and the empty nest refilled3 · Pull-quotes [17:56] "I could have raised 2x of this. Genuinely, we could have raised 2x of this." [23:55] "You cannot build to sell. You build for sustenance, you build for good." [27:04] "Both my parents were refugees from Pakistan." [51:34] "A 10." (asked how happy he is with his life) 4 · Frameworks & mental models Founder assessment through the family: read a founder by their story and support system, often over a meal with their spouse, on the belief that no one survives a decade-long build without one. Build for sustenance, not to sell: the best businesses are bought, not sold; you build for the long run and treat a sale as a business decision along the way. Value of good ("do good to do well"): founder first, planet first, one Fireside, with goodness as the foundation of doing well. Coaching vs therapy: therapy addresses a medical issue; coaching is vulnerability and honesty in a business context, and only works once you have the self-awareness to accept there's a problem. This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

1 · Summary Part 1 of 2. Kanwal Singh is the first venture capitalist to appear on First Principles, and the reason is the bet he made with the fund itself. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, when almost nobody believed India had a consumer story worth venture capital. His first backers weren't institutions, they were the consumer families who had built India's brands. This half covers the whole bet: what investors actually said when he pitched a consumer-only fund, why he raised in India rather than abroad, the ownership and follow-on design he corrected fund after fund, his claim that most of his companies succeed rather than one outlier, and his working map of India 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 turns to the person behind it. 2 · Chapters 0:00 Cold open and Part 1 intro 3:27 What Fireside is, and why it exists 10:04 How the fund makes money 11:23 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments 12:50 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions 17:14 Two years as a solo angel 25:51 Ownership by design, and the follow-on model 34:05 What "success" means, and the anti-power-law 36:56 The centre of excellence 45:40 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3 53:47 Quick commerce is brand-first 57:54 Brand vs performance: Underneat, Truvi3 · Pull-quotes [0:20] "For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary." [34:24] "We can build successful funds, fund after fund... not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers." [40:26] "The answer lies in the question. It is hard." [54:12] "The power of the brand is truly manifest in quick commerce." 4 · Frameworks & mental models Anti-power-law investing: a portfolio where most companies clear "capital plus," not one built to live or die on a single outlier. The three breaks from the VC default: consumer over tech, Indian consumer-family LPs over global institutions, one shared-credit team over lone-hero dealmakers. India 1, 2, 3: his working map of where consumption grows, with India 2 needing products designed for it and India 3 reached through doorstep models. Quick commerce is brand-first: scarce shelf space and a buy-not-browse shopper mean only brands with genuine pull survive. This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN.Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles.If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

For fifty-odd episodes, First Principles kept venture capitalists off the show, because the conversation tends to drift to the portfolio rather than the person. Kanwal Singh is the exception. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, an idea investors could not place. His first cheques came not from institutions but from the families who had built India's consumer businesses. Nearly a decade on, Fireside is close to sixty brands and around 650 million dollars across four funds. What makes the conversation worth two hours is that Kanwal built the fund to reject the two instincts that define his industry: the power law, and the pull to get big. He would rather a portfolio where most companies win than one 100x outlier, and he turned down twice the money he could have raised to protect it. The episode covers all of it, and then the man himself. Chapters 0:00 Cold open and intro 4:13 What Fireside is, and why it exists 10:48 How the fund actually makes money 12:07 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments 13:34 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions 17:58 Two years as a solo angel: Licious, Mamaearth, Paper Boat 26:35 Ownership by design: 10% to 20%, and the follow-on model 34:49 What "success" means, and the anti-power-law 37:40 The centre of excellence: why hands-on is hard to copy 42:31 A single-founder fund with no prima donnas 46:24 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3 51:28 India 3: selling to villages with no address 54:31 Quick commerce is brand-first 1:01:40 The Hindustan Lever decade that started it all 1:07:07 What he adds as Fireside's "CEO," and value of good 1:17:37 Capping the fund: turning down 2x the money 1:20:55 Hiring: read the person, meet the family 1:27:30 Refugees, and a father who never stopped studying 1:35:19 The coach, and coaching vs therapy 1:51:56 Rating his life a 10 Quotes [0:03] "I could have raised 2x of this. Genuinely, we could have raised 2x of this." [35:08] "We can build successful funds, fund after fund, by creating portfolios which are successful as a very high percentage, and not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers." [37:09] "For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary." [41:10] "The answer lies in the question. It is hard." [1:52:03] "A 10." (asked how happy he is with his life) Frameworks & mental models Anti-power-law investing: build a portfolio where a high percentage of companies clear "capital plus," rather than staking the fund on one or two outliers. The three breaks from the VC default: consumer not tech; Indian consumer-family LPs not global institutions; one team with shared credit, not lone-hero dealmakers. India 1, 2, 3: the market mapped across cohort, sector, channel and geography, where India 2 needs products designed for it and India 3 is reached through doorstep models with no marketing spend. Quick commerce is brand-first: scarce dark-store shelf space plus a shopper who arrives to buy, not browse, means only brands with real consumer pull survive. Founder assessment through the family: read a founder by their story and support system, often over a meal with their spouse. Value of good ("do good to do well"): founder first, planet first, one Fireside, on the belief that goodness is the foundation of doing well, not a trade-off against it. This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Part 2 of 2. In Part 1 we walked the road from 2011 — three companies, an investor ultimatum, and the capital it took to build. Part 2 is the mind. Saahil Goel starts with what, given hindsight, he'd do differently, then the first principles he runs Shiprocket on (distribution beats product), the two or three metrics he genuinely obsesses over, his bet on applied AI, why he believes you can't actually manage people, who does and doesn't survive at the company, the guitar he still plays, his dog, and the question Rohin closes every episode with, which Saahil answers with a single number. Chapters 1:02  With hindsight, what he'd do differently 2:10  “A paisa of every transaction in India” 5:23  First principles: distribution beats product 11:32  The metrics he obsesses over 17:22  Betting on applied AI 29:33  “You can't manage people” 31:45  Who doesn't survive at Shiprocket 42:05  The guitar, Pink Floyd, and Bruno the CHO 58:28  The book he forgets — and how he reflects 1:00:50  Rating his life an 8 This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Everyone thinks Shiprocket began in 2017. But the company Saahil Goel and his co-founder Gautam Kapoor started was born in 2011, and it was rebuilt three times before it worked: a “Shopify for India” called KartRocket, a marketplace called Craftly, and finally the shipping-and-enablement layer now behind a quarter of a million Indian sellers, on its way to a public listing. In this ~2-hour conversation, Saahil takes Rohin through the whole arc: bootstrapping on Rs 15 lakh, why Indian SMBs wouldn't pay for software, an investor ultimatum to take $4 million or nothing, and how he came to believe you sell outcomes, not software. Then it turns reflective: the first principles he runs the company on, the single metric he obsesses over, his bet on applied AI, why he thinks you can't actually manage people, who does and doesn't survive at Shiprocket, the guitar he still plays, and a closing self-assessment delivered in a single number. Chapters 0:00 The company that started in 2011, not 2017 4:53 KartRocket: building an agency to learn the market 7:02 Bootstrapped on Rs 15 lakh 9:55 Why Indian SMBs wouldn't pay for software 18:51 “Take $4 million or nothing” 23:31 How Shiprocket was born 27:59 What Shiprocket actually is — and how it makes money 38:50 The IPO, and the state of the business 45:12 Quick commerce without owning a truck 49:33 From Delhi to a US career — and back 56:52 Lessons from failed fundraises 1:05:16 How much they've raised 1:05:27 With hindsight, what he'd do differently 1:06:34 “A paisa of every transaction in India” 1:09:47 First principles: distribution beats product 1:15:56 The metrics he obsesses over 1:21:46 Betting on applied AI 1:33:57 “You can't manage people” 1:36:10 Who doesn't survive at Shiprocket 1:46:29 The guitar, Pink Floyd, and Bruno the CHO 2:02:52 The book he forgets — and how he reflects 2:05:15 Rating his life an 8 This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

Part 1 of 2. Most people date Shiprocket to 2017; in truth it was born in 2011, and the road there runs through two companies called KartRocket and Craftly. Saahil Goel walks Rohin through the build: Rs 15 lakh of their own money, nearly not being hired by their own first engineers, the hard lesson that in India you sell outcomes not software, an investor ultimatum to take $4 million or nothing, and by the end, just how much capital it's taken to get from that first office to the edge of a public listing. Part 2 gets into how he actually thinks. Chapters 0:00  The company that started in 2011, not 2017 4:01  KartRocket: building an agency to learn the market 6:09  Bootstrapped on Rs 15 lakh 9:02  Why Indian SMBs wouldn't pay for software 17:58  “Take $4 million or nothing” 22:38  How Shiprocket was born 27:06  What Shiprocket actually is — and how it makes money 37:58  The IPO, and the state of the business 44:19  Quick commerce without owning a truck 48:42  From Delhi to a US career — and back 55:59  Lessons from failed fundraises 1:04:23  How much they've raised This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at [email protected] with your feedback, suggestions, and guests you would want to see on First Principles. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us spread the word by sharing and gifting it to your friends and family.

In a business with the highest mortality rate of any, Riyaaz Amlani has spent 25 years building Impresario into 80+ restaurants across 20 cities — Social, Smoke House Deli, Antisocial, Bandra Born, Mocha — serving 8 million guests a year. He sits down with Rohin Dharmakumar for the full two hours: the philosophy of "handmade" at scale, the economics that actually decide a restaurant's life or death, the generational taste shifts from Gen X to Gen Alpha, his fights and truces with the aggregators, and the personal operating system behind it all. CHAPTERS 00:00 Cold open: 25 years, one craft, an 8-million-guest business 02:25 Why Mocha in 2001: Bombay's missing "places to be" 06:24 The MTV generation and a West-aspirational India 08:18 UCLA, entertainment management, and learning to "live" culture 12:08 What "Handmade" and "Impresario" actually mean 14:51 The business today: 80 restaurants, 900 cr, 5,500 people, 20 cities 15:31 Why restaurants die — and the people-vs-process debate 20:05 Social, the millennial third space, and the shisha ban 26:21 Decoding Gen Z; Saltwater to Bandra Born; evolution vs revolution 31:10 Real estate is the game: location vs locality, India's "80 pockets" 32:53 The only metric that matters: AOV x covers x table turnaround 35:57 Mass-extinction events: shisha ban, vanishing PE money, COVID 39:55 The COVID town hall: how the team carried the company 41:25 What losing a restaurant feels like; the discipline to quit 43:22 A resilient restaurant group needs 4-5 engines for every cycle 47:21 Childhood hustle: the fake-Chinese-marble business 53:28 Bowling alleys & Phoenix Mills: people buy time together 54:11 Self-rating: 7.5 as a parent, 5 as a CEO 55:46 Building a restaurant vs building an organization 56:43 The HR crisis: replacing half the staff in a year 59:21 The one thing he can't delegate: layouts and property 1:04:11 Zomato & Swiggy: the "digital landlords," then and now 1:08:52 The Booking.com parallel: stop sending guests to the aggregator 1:12:34 Delivery vs dine-in: two completely different businesses 1:15:32 Lessons from VC/PE; why restaurants need patient capital 1:20:05 What motivates him: reading a city and its community 1:21:18 Curiosity, echo chambers, and planning for serendipity 1:26:51 Hiring "doers and divas" and the largesse of hospitality 1:32:46 Social as social infrastructure: coworking from day one 1:36:47 First principles: people + process, soul, belongingness 1:39:30 Harvesting feedback: ORM, AI, and the guest-experience officer 1:41:40 His kids and the Gen Alpha worldview 1:45:26 Weekends, FIFA, meditation, and protecting solitude 1:52:09 The 25-year view and "no plan beyond 3 weeks" 1:53:17 The 10,000 cr ambition: Impresario as a platform (the invisible 85%) 2:01:21 Anti-loyalty vs frequency: cafes are loyalty, restaurants are experience 2:03:50 Final question: 9.9 out of 10, and the missing 0.1

Part 2 moves from the journey to the operating philosophy. Riyaaz Amlani unpacks his evolving stance on the aggregators — from resistance to "uneasy truce" — and the hard lesson that restaurateurs who send guests to Zomato and Swiggy have only themselves to blame. He argues delivery and dine-in are two different businesses, lays out his ambition to turn Impresario into a full-service-restaurant platform, and gets personal on hiring, Gen Alpha kids, weekends, and why his life scores 9.9 out of 10.   CHAPTERS 00:00  Recap and what's ahead: aggregators, the platform, the missing 0.101:48  "Digital landlords": Zomato & Swiggy, then and now02:47  From resistance to cohabitation; how aggregators trained demand05:24  Owning the customer; the cross-sector aggregator tension07:04  The Booking.com / Hotels.com parallel and how hotels fought back09:41  Build your own loyalty — don't blame the aggregator10:09  Delivery vs dine-in: two completely different businesses13:09  Restaurants beat the movies; lessons from raising VC/PE16:34  Growth math: IRR, 20-25% stable growth, the late-stage problem17:45  What motivates him: reading a city and its community18:56  Curiosity over the "5 people"; planning for serendipity24:29  Hiring: "doers and divas" and the largesse of hospitality30:24  Social as social infrastructure: coworking from day one34:25  First principles: people + process, soul, belongingness37:08  Harvesting feedback: NPS, ORM, AI, the guest-experience officer39:18  His kids and the Gen Alpha worldview43:39  Weekends, FIFA, meditation, and protecting solitude48:10  Comfort food and deferring to the chef50:11  The 25-year view; the 10,000 cr platform and the invisible 85%59:03  Anti-loyalty vs frequency: cafes are loyalty, restaurants are experience1:01:44 Final question: 9.9 out of 10, and the missing 0.1KEY COMPANIES & BRANDS Impresario Handmade Restaurants; Social; Zomato; Swiggy; ONDC; Booking.com; Hotels.com; Rebel Foods; Haldiram's; Rameshwaram Cafe; Starbucks; NRAI; PlayStation/FIFA/Minecraft (referenced). KEY CONCEPTS Aggregators as "digital landlords"; deep discounting & perceived value; the uneasy truce; owning the customer relationship; the Booking.com hotel-inventory parallel; loyalty programs & direct outreach; delivery vs dine-in as separate businesses; patient capital, IRR & late-stage growth math; "doers and divas"; largesse of hospitality; full-service-restaurant platform; store-level vs corporate EBITDA; the invisible 85% "iceberg" of running a restaurant; anti-loyalty vs frequency; cafes (loyalty/convenience) vs restaurants (experience/variety); NPS/ORM/AI feedback; Gen Alpha.

Part 1 of Rohin Dharmakumar's conversation with Riyaaz Amlani is the origin story: why a returning UCLA grad decided Bombay was missing "places to be," how Mocha became Social, and what it actually takes to keep a restaurant group alive for 25 years in the highest-mortality business there is. The shisha ban, the private-equity money that never arrived, COVID, the marble hustle at age six, and the real engine underneath it all: people. CHAPTERS 00:00  Intro: 95% fail by year two — and the man who didn't01:46  Why Mocha in 2001: a city missing "places to be"03:23  Bombay the "coolest cousin"; South Bombay snobbery moves to Bandra05:05  The MTV / Gen X generation and a West-facing India07:47  UCLA, entertainment management, and learning to live culture11:29  What "Handmade" and "Impresario" mean14:13  The business today: 80 restaurants, 900 cr, 5,500 people15:29  Why restaurants die; learning from the community18:02  People vs processes — and why he keeps returning to people19:32  Social: the millennial third space and the shisha ban25:41  The Gen Z puzzle; Saltwater to Bandra Bourn; evolution vs revolution30:46  Real estate: location vs locality and India's "80 pockets"32:32  The metric that matters: AOV x covers x table turnaround35:33  COVID and surviving "mass-extinction events"39:17  The town hall: the team takes 40% pay to save the company40:51  What losing a restaurant feels like; the discipline to quit42:44  Mental model: 4-5 engines to ride economic cycles46:42  The marble business and hustling from age 1251:20  Bowling alleys & Phoenix Mills: people buy time together53:44  Self-rating: 7.5 as a parent, 5 as a CEO55:15  Building a restaurant vs building an organization56:15  The HR crisis: severe attrition, talent going abroad58:44  The one thing he can't delegate: layouts and property selection1:00:49 Becoming a "boardroom warrior" against his will KEY COMPANIES & BRANDS Impresario Handmade Restaurants; Mocha; Social; Saltwater Cafe/Grill; Bandra Born; Cafe Coffee Day; Phoenix Mills "Bowling Company"; Amoeba; UCLA.   KEY CONCEPTS Third spaces; "handmade" at scale; West-aspirational MTV-generation culture; people vs processes; AOV x covers x table turnaround; frequency as a metric; location vs locality / "80 pockets"; evolution vs revolution; mass-extinction events & resilience; working-capital-negative business; building a restaurant vs building an organization; restaurant-industry attrition; the layouts/property selection he won't delegate.

Part 2 picks up exactly where I left Bisu — on why a 7-year-old audio platform is releasing a theatrical film on May 8. From there, we go everywhere. Bisu's actual journey from a small village in Shekhawati to Bandra. The "full equation" view of metrics. Why saying no requires more work than saying yes. Why most of his learning comes from iterations, not books. And, in his closing answer, a quietly devastating line about the startup ecosystem itself. If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, please go back and start there first. Chapter list 01:02 — Indian Institute of Zombies: why theatrical, why in-house, why AI in the pipeline. The decision-making cadence behind it01:08 — "Your vision grows with you." How the original vision changed from "premium storytelling for Bharat" to something larger01:10 — Bathoth → Shekhawati → IIT Jodhpur → Bandra. Studying in Hindi until Class 10, then +2 in Hindi, then English at IIT01:18 — The discipline of saying no. Why nos require more work than yeses, and why nos are usually the better answer01:19 — "The full equation." Why CAC alone is meaningless; why he tracks revenue, CAC, LTV and cohort profit together. The two real metrics: equation health and engagement01:21 — Numbers beyond a limit give you an illusion. "Don't go deeper in the data — keep your life simple."01:21 — Co-founders, span of control, how the four-way role split actually got sorted01:22 — How Bisu learns: most of it from doing and iterations; books help him articulate what the iterations have already taught him01:25 — Pet phrases at work — "build it like a business, not a startup" — and what management style his colleagues would say he has01:28 — Biggest value add as Bisu, not as CEO. The Uber-power-user analogy01:29 — When did he change his mind about managing people? Going from technical-first to people-first01:34 — Hiring: the open-ended questions Bisu actually asks when he meets potential leaders01:36 — What motivates and drives him on a daily basis01:42 — Family, parenting, and the village memory of his grandmother telling stories by oil lamp in the evenings — the original storyteller in his life01:45 — The personal questions: which morning of the week, how he spends weekends, what a productive day looks like, sleep01:46 — On a scale of 1 to 10, how Bisu rates himself as a CEO01:51 — The closing thought. Would the average Kuku FM subscriber actually want to listen to a two-hour interview with the CEO of Kuku FM? "We live in a bubble. The startup ecosystem feels that the world thinks what we think. It doesn't."01:53 — GoodbyeThings mentioned in Part 2 People: Vinod Kumar Meena, Vikas Goyal (co-founders); Kunj Sanghvi (Kuku's Content Head, previously on Two by Two and Zero Shot); the Dalal brothers (script of Indian Institute of Zombies — Hussain and Abbas Dalal of Brahmāstra / Farzi); Gaganjeet Singh and Alok Dwivedi (directors); Bisu's grandmotherPlaces: Bathoth (village in Shekhawati, Rajasthan); IIT Jodhpur; BandraConcepts: the full equation — Bisu's name for treating CAC, revenue, LTV and cohort profit as one calculation, not separate metrics; content is the only product; vision grows with you  To listen to all of First Principles If you'd like to listen to all 54 First Principles episodes — that's close to 110 hours of conversations with founders and leaders building India's most interesting companies — please subscribe to The Ken directly, or to our premium channel on Apple Podcasts.

Lal Chand Bisu started Kuku in audio in 2018. Almost everyone in the press wrote them off — the louder competitor was getting the headlines, the VCs didn't believe vernacular India would pay, and the assumption was that short-video would flatten audio. None of that aged well. Kuku FM did ₹242 Cr in FY25 at 175% YoY growth, with roughly 10 million paying subscribers. This is the conversation Bisu, who is just not the kind of founder who walks around telling you these numbers, finally agreed to do. In Part 1, we get into the company history, the pivots, the contrarian decision to cut the free tier, and what 40 million Hindi listens to Rich Dad Poor Dad really mean. Chapter list 00:00 — How old is Kuku FM, and what Bisu was doing before (Easy Prep, two and a half years at Toppr)00:02 — June birthdays, coincidence, and Bisu's definition of luck — "most things are out of control"00:04 — The three pivots: podcast aggregator → UGC → PUGC. What killed each one and what was kept constant00:09 — Why vernacular audio IP didn't exist, and why Kuku had to become a studio rather than an aggregator00:14 — January 2021: cutting the free tier and charging ₹399 a year. The investor pushback. Why no ads, ever00:23 — Rich Dad Poor Dad in Hindi: 40 million listens. What that number tells you about the listener that English-first publishers have been missing00:27 — How Kuku's content mix has shifted from entertainment to educational and inspirational00:30 — Audio first, then video. Why audio is roughly 50x cheaper to produce and 50x cheaper to stream00:33 — AI in the marketing pipeline: 500 ads/month → 5,000 ads/month, same cost00:42 — The competitor we don't name. What being the also-ran in the press for years cost — in hires, partnerships, and inside Bisu's own head00:45 — The fundraising history: ~$156M raised, the Granite Asia round, and how much of the last cheque is actually still untouched00:50 — Biggest learnings from unsuccessful fundraising. Why nos are usually the harder, better answer00:55 — Kuku TV: from launch to #1 on India's App Store in four months. Microdrama, the ReelShort wave, MS Dhoni01:01 — Cliffhanger: the Indian Institute of Zombies theatrical bet — and why an audio platform wrote, produced and AI-assisted its own film instead of licensing one. Bisu's answer to this is in Part 2.Things mentioned in Part 1 People: Vinod Kumar Meena and Vikas Goyal (co-founders, IIT Jodhpur batchmates); Hansa Bisu (Bisu's wife); MS Dhoni (Kuku FM brand ambassador); Nandan Nilekani / FundamentumCompanies & investors: Mebigo Labs, Toppr, Easy Prep, Pocket FM (the unnamed competitor), Granite Asia, Vertex Ventures, Krafton, Bitkraft, IFC, 3one4 Capital, Shunwei, India QuotientContent & references: Rich Dad Poor Dad (Hindi); Ankur Warikoo's Hindi book; ReelShort; Kuku TV  To listen to all of First Principles If you'd like to listen to all 54 First Principles episodes — that's close to 110 hours of conversations with founders and leaders building India's most interesting companies — please subscribe to The Ken directly, or to our premium channel on Apple Podcasts. Correction: During the conversation, Bisu mentions that the total amount of venture capital raised by Kuku is $170 million. The company has subsequently clarified that the correct figure is $120 million.

Lal Chand Bisu and three batchmates from IIT Jodhpur started Kuku FM in audio in June 2018. Almost everyone wrote them off — the louder competitor was getting the press, the VCs didn't believe vernacular India would pay for content, and the assumption was that short-video would flatten audio. None of that aged well. Kuku FM did ₹242 Cr in FY25 at 175% YoY growth, with roughly 10 million paying subscribers. Kuku TV — its microdrama app — was the #1 app on India's App Store for 30 straight days. And on May 8, Kuku is releasing its first theatrical film, Indian Institute of Zombies. MS Dhoni is the brand ambassador. Bisu is also just not the kind of founder who walks around telling you any of this. He grew up in Bathoth, a village in Rajasthan; studied in Shekhawati until Class 10; did his +2 in Hindi; only switched to English at IIT. He thinks in Hindi. He's deeply uncomfortable performing. This is the full, uncut conversation. Two hours, no edits, no breaks. Concepts that come up more than once • the full equation — Bisu's name for treating CAC, revenue, LTV and cohort profit as one calculation, not separate metrics • build it like a business, not a startup — the operating principle that shows up in almost every chapter • content is the only product • vision grows with you • most of my learning comes from iterations, not books Correction: During the conversation, Bisu mentions that the total amount of venture capital raised by Kuku is $170 million. The company has subsequently clarified that the correct figure is $120 million.