First Principles

The Ken
The Ken
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First Principles is a weekly interview podcast comprising authentic, candid, and insightful conversations between some of India’s most accomplished founders and business leaders, and Rohin Dharmakumar, The Ken’s CEO & co-founder. From personal philosophies, mental models and decision making frameworks, to reading habits, parenting styles or personal interests, each episode will delve into what makes each of these leaders unique.

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  1. 2 days ago

    Fireside Ventures' Kanwaljit Singh on the decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him consumer, raising half the fund he could have, and keeping a coach in his sixties

    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 fp@the-ken.com 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.

    Fireside Ventures' Kanwaljit Singh on the decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him consumer, raising half the fund he could have, and keeping a coach in his sixties

  2. 20 Jul

    Fireside Ventures' Kanwal Singh on the consumer-brands bet nobody believed in, why "for a 5x, nobody will call you legendary," and on refusing the one-100x-outlier game

    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 fp@the-ken.com 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.

    Fireside Ventures' Kanwal Singh on the consumer-brands bet nobody believed in, why "for a 5x, nobody will call you legendary," and on refusing the one-100x-outlier game

  3. 12 Jul • The Ken Premium Only

    Shiprocket's Saahil Goel on rebuilding the same company three times and wanting one paisa of every Indian transaction outside the marketplaces

    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 fp@the-ken.com 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.

    Shiprocket's Saahil Goel on rebuilding the same company three times and wanting one paisa of every Indian transaction outside the marketplaces

  4. 22 Jun • The Ken Premium Only

    Impresario's Riyaaz Amlani on 25 years of selling time, not food, and surviving four near-deaths

    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

    Impresario's Riyaaz Amlani on 25 years of selling time, not food, and surviving four near-deaths

  5. 4 May

    Part 2: Kuku’s Lal Chand Bisu on the Bathoth-to-Bandra arc, learning from iterations not books, and why nos beat yeses

    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.

    Part 2: Kuku’s Lal Chand Bisu on the Bathoth-to-Bandra arc, learning from iterations not books, and why nos beat yeses

  6. 27 Apr

    Part 1: Kuku's Lal Chand Bisu on killing three products, ditching the free tier and charging Bharat ₹399 a year

    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.

    Part 1: Kuku's Lal Chand Bisu on killing three products, ditching the free tier and charging Bharat ₹399 a year

  7. 26 Apr • The Ken Premium Only

    Kuku's Lal Chand Bisu on charging Bharat ₹399 a year, the Bathoth-to-Bandra arc, and why nos beat yeses

    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.

    Kuku's Lal Chand Bisu on charging Bharat ₹399 a year, the Bathoth-to-Bandra arc, and why nos beat yeses

  8. 30 Mar

    Part 2: Curefoods' Ankit Nagori on why Indians only eat healthy Monday to Thursday, focusing on brand over scale, and what drives him now

    Welcome back to First Principles. This is Part 2 of our full conversation with Ankit Nagori, founder and CEO of Curefoods. If you have not listened to Part 1, go back and start there. In this half, the conversation slows down a little and gets even more interesting. Ankit has strong opinions about why healthy food will always lose to biryani on a Friday night, what building a brand people actually love looks like, and what a Unilever of foods means to him. He is also candid about how he hires, how he spends his Sundays with his son, and what drives him beyond the business._________ This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN. Write to us at fp@the-ken.com 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: Curefoods' Ankit Nagori on why Indians only eat healthy Monday to Thursday, focusing on brand over scale, and what drives him now
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First Principles is a weekly interview podcast comprising authentic, candid, and insightful conversations between some of India’s most accomplished founders and business leaders, and Rohin Dharmakumar, The Ken’s CEO & co-founder. From personal philosophies, mental models and decision making frameworks, to reading habits, parenting styles or personal interests, each episode will delve into what makes each of these leaders unique.

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