First Principles The Ken

When Chetan Maini – co-founder and chairman of SUN Mobility – stepped down as Mahindra Reva CEO in 2015, he wasn’t thinking what was the next venture to start. In fact even though he stepped down he was still involved in the space.
His time was still spent in understanding the possibilities electric mobility could unlock for the world and how these possibilities were being explored around the world. He was still involved in setting up and innovating the Formula E division at Mahindra, he still helped Anand Mahindra every now and then on strategic matters in Mahindra’s electric division, he was working with the government, he also helped the BMTC take a part of its fleet electric and the list goes on.

One could say he stepped down to get a better view of the possibilities in electric mobility. He was not looking for opportunities actively during this period, he was merely synthesising what possibilities were feasible.
He did travel across the world during this break but even during that time he was looking at the electric mobility solutions and innovations that were present in the places he visited.
He realised the possibilities in battery swapping as an alternative to charging and filed patents long before he became part of what is SUN Mobility today.
In the first part of our conversation with Chetan we discussed broadly how the sector has evolved, what SUN Mobility has set out to achieve, how their BaaS or Battery as a Service model is an alternative to charging your vehicle and a whole lot more.
In this episode we discuss how Chetan figured out what was next for him, the mental models he applies at SUN Mobility, how he’s built a team that speaks its mind and a lot more.
Welcome to First Principles – The weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.

Let’s get started.

What does your company do?

There are many ways to answer this question.

Most founders have a really good answer, some have a meandering one.

Well, let’s just say it’s always a compelling answer.

This week we have five founders to answer that question on a broader range. They function in very competitive sectors and are successfully making their mark in their respective sectors by innovating and more appropriately reinventing the wheel.

First up, we have newly inducted Shark, Radhika Gupta of Edelweiss Asset Management telling us what her company does for its customers, and what she doesn’t want her customers to not do through a great example.

Next up, we have Lalit Keshre of Groww, who is very clear who the target consumer for his company is. Starting off as robo-advisory and then pivoting into the mutual fund sector and now on their way to become a complete financial services platform.

We have another Shark from the Shark Tank panel featured in this episode. Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo Rooms has built Oyo in his own words into a leading global hotel brand. But that’s not all it is as he went on to add further.

Next up, we have Kartik Jayaraman, who founded Waycool, a food and agritech company  at the age of 40. He started off  with the simple explanation: We’re a supply chain company. At our heart that’s what we do. After that he got into the nitty gritty of what Waycool does.
Lastly, we have Niraj Singh of Spinny, who is busy building in a space that has many competitors, old and new, and he explained how he’s servicing the aspirational class of the country by delivering something the competitors couldn’t.
If you want to read more about our Narrative Workshops – here is who are our trainers, what we do and how we do it. This year, we have a few slots open for companies. Sign up here!
Welcome to First Principles—the weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.
Let’s get started.

Our guest for this episode has a very specific weekly routine. 
Pilates - once a week.
Strength training - once a week.
Aqua therapy - once a week
Functional training, swimming, breathing exercises, meditating daily with just a little trouble
Golfing three times a week followed up with posture exercises 
And very recently, experimenting with intermittent fasting.
Maybe you’re imagining a very specific type of person. A really fit, disciplined person – perhaps, a fitness influencer?
Well, you ‘re kind of right. You could say the person I’m talking about is very much an influencer. And he’s fit too.
He’s huge on LinkedIn, where he is part of the Top Voice program. On Twitter or X, he has close to a million followers. He’s very popular online.
So, really, if you think about it, he could turn into a fitness influencer if he wanted to.
But, here’s the thing. We're not talking about a young, health obsessed fitness influencer.
This is the routine of a 72-year-old, health obsessed, and I must add restless founder and Chairman of Marico, Harsh Mariwala.
Welcome to First Principles, the weekly leadership podcast from The Ken. I’m your host Rohin Dharmakumar and this is part 2 of my conversation with Harsh Mariwala.
This is episode 45 of First Principles–The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast. Let’s get started. Let’s begin.
 

Chetan Maini, the co-founder and Chairman of Sun Mobility has done a whole lot in his life. He’s been forever a tinkerer as you’re bound to find out if you read his father Dr.S.K.Maini’s book REVA: India’s Green Gift to the World.
Chetan’s raced solar cars, built his own car company REVA and is now building a pay-as-you-go energy infrastructure for a greener future with Sun Mobility. You’ll see in this a proper evolution of owning the chain of control as well.
Well, it has to be said this is not fully intentional. Because in a world where REVAs are speeding down the road left and right you’re not gonna see Chetan going out and building a BaaS, battery as a service business. But it was 2001, and India, and most of the world, was not ready for electric cars.
Chetan, however, persevered even under the shadow of the Mahindra Group and made strides in their electric mobility aspirations before leaving in 2015.
He took a break of two years, observed the EV market across the globe and when he saw the opportunity back home, came back with his expertise and took charge to create what we know today as Sun Mobility. The vision is bigger this time around and time is on his side as well. 
The only thing left to see out: Execution.
And they are not pulling any punches on that front either.
Additional reading: this edition of Green Margins published way back in late 2022 to understand how, here.
Welcome to Season 2, episode 44 of First Principles - A weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.

Girish Mathrubootham – founder and CEO of Freshworks – feels strongly about having the authority to take one’s own decisions, from a young age.
He made a very apt example in our conversation with him earlier this month at his office in Chennai: a kid never gets to make his own decisions, even if it is to just order food of their liking. This in turn translates into their adulthood as an inability to make decisions.
Girish has been out there making most of his decisions for himself from a young age, including which school he would go to, which college he’ll enrol in and having a say in most of his major life decisions.
The biggest learning he got out of this: understanding the consequences of your actions and reflecting on them to see the untapped opportunities that lay ahead. And once he got good at that, he became adept at learning so that he could do something about the untapped opportunities.
Girish isn’t just the CEO of a NASDAQ-listed SaaS company, he’s also deeply involved in SaaSBoomi, a community that calls itself The World’s Largest Pay-it-forward Community of SaaS Founders.
As one of SaaSboomi’s founding members, Girish played a big role in shaping its culture of openness and paying it forward. He did it by sharing in detail the methods and tactics that got a young Freshworks to $1M in annual revenue. 
Then, a few years later – as he explained –  he took Freshworks from $1M to $5M.
How often do you see a company explain their growth playbook to a possible future competitor and enable them?
It’s rare.
Girish also doesn’t limit his wish to pay-it-back just within the SaaS universe. He’s also out there  with a mission to build world class champions from the football academy he set up, FC Madras. 
He’s infused 100 crores into his academy for the game he loves because he knows the talent is there and it needs to be nurtured properly and in the future we might have a shot at the world stage.
Welcome to part 2 of our conversation with Girish. This episode too, like the first part, is filled with colorful quotes and examples ranging from Steve Jobs to Rajnikanth movies!
This is episode 43 of First Principles–The Ken’s weekly leadership podcast. Let’s get started.

Sometime in the early 1970s a young Harsh Mariwala joined Bombay Oil Industries, a company set up by his grandfather in 1948, just a year after India’s independence. The company would trade in spices, oils and chemicals.

Over the next two decades Harsh learnt the ropes of the family business. Till in 1991 - two decades after he had joined Bombay Oil - he left it to start his own company, Marico.

He had already seen the power of quality and brand in a category that was still almost entirely commoditized and unbranded. For instance, the huge 15 liter tin cans of Parachute coconut oil Bombay Oil sold to shopkeepers were resold in smaller quantities at much higher prices. Harsh rightly wondered, why should someone else capture the margin and premium for my product? 

The company that Harsh founded - Marico - had two powerful brands at its core - Parachute Coconut Oil and Saffola cooking oil. That is true even today, 33 years later. Nearly 1 in 3 Indians use Parachute oil, our research tells us. 

Of course, a lot else has changed since then. 

Marico, which went public just 5 years after being founded in 1991, today boasts a turnover of over 1.2 billion dollars. 

And Harsh is 72, but still learning, exploring, experimenting and unable to take it easy.

Earlier this week, I had the chance to speak to Harsh about his entire (and might I add still evolving) professional journey!

It’s a long time, but Harsh talks about the day Marico was separated from Bombay Oil just like it was yesterday. He talked about how in 1991 they attracted talent by positioning themselves as the disruptive outsiders. Sample one of the headlines from Marico’s ads: 200 employees walk out of Bombay Oil. 

Harsh had a lot of stories for me – from creating differentiation in consumer products even when the market is crowded, to how he fought back and won against the much larger Hindustan Unilever when it wanted to acquire Marico. And then he switched back to the present – and how he’s focussing all his learnings, experience, attention into cultivating innovation in India. 

This is an episode packed with anecdotes and lessons – you’ll hear Harsh talking about a ‘right to win’ in the market, strategizing acquisitions, and making ‘a difference without expectations’ to the shareholders. All in the context of Harsh’s years at Marico, the Mariwala Health Initiative, Ascent foundation and Marico Innovation Foundation! 

Let’s go!
This is episode 42 of First Principles–a weekly leadership podcast from The Ken.