“I make peace with the worst possible outcome of every single thing I do”
Welcome to the third episode of ‘Outliers: Season of Resilience’ in these challenging times of Covid-19. Since we started this series of podcasts with Ravi Venkatesan’s “Hobson’s choice of saving lives versus livelihoods,” and followed it up with a bluntly honest conversation with the Printo founder Manish Sharma, who described “A Crisis as a self-discovery […]
“A Crisis is a self-discovery process.”
Welcome to the second episode of Outliers: Season of Resilience. For those of you who started listening to the Outliers podcast early on, Manish Sharma, the founder of Printo, isn’t a new name. We started the Outliers podcast with him as our first guest. But that’s not the only reason why I am going back […]
“Hobson’s choice of saving lives versus livelihoods.”
“Mass extinction of enterprises and jobs.” “Hobson’s choice of saving lives versus livelihoods.” When I asked Ravi Venkatesan to describe what’s going around us today, and what it means for us, this is how he painted the picture. He’s known to never mince his words. This series of Outliers is about resilience, not necessarily false […]
Outliers 100: Life lessons from AR Rahman
So what’s the big deal about the 100th episode of the Outliers podcast? What’s the big deal about the 100th of anything? Not much, if you ask me personally. Milestones can be lifeless. But, milestones can be a big deal, too. It all comes down to the events surrounding any milestones, or an outcome. Sometimes […]
Meet former entrepreneur Raju Reddy, now a startup ecosystem builder
So what makes a startup ecosystem work? Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and perhaps even the regulators. Apart from the above, there are these low profile, faceless ecosystem builders who back the founders not just with monies, but with the emotional energy required in navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurial journeys. After selling his software services […]
CavinKare founder on building a culture that lasts
C.K. Ranganathan quit home and family nearly three decades ago to start CavinKare, a Chennai-based consumer goods startup that once gave the likes of Hindustan Lever sleepless nights. I am not sure how many of you remember the Chik shampoo that came in single-use sachets. The brainchild of Ranganathan’s father, R. Chinnikrishnan, the sachets reimagined […]
Suchita Salwan of LBB on building a discovery platform for Indian millennials
Helping India’s over 500 million internet users find what they are looking for is the Holy Grail for everyone from Facebook and Google to Flipkart and Amazon. Little Black Book (LBB), an online discovery and shopping platform cofounded by Suchita Salwan, a 29-year-old former marketing executive with BBC India, is fast becoming the go-to place […]
Kausshal Dugarr of Teabox on disrupting a legacy biz with a billion cups of tea
Welcome back to the second episode of The PlayBook – a brand new podcast from FactorDaily bringing conversations with the doers and inventors about how they build products of impact in India. In the first episode, we discussed “How Anand Jain used frugality lessons from childhood to build CleverTap.” In this episode, I sat down […]
How Ritesh Arora learned from failures to bootstrap, then turn BrowserStack into a $60m rocket ship
If you’ve been following the mainstream startup movement in India, it’s likely you’ve never heard of BrowserStack, or its low profile founder Ritesh Arora. But if there’s one startup playbook you must learn from, it’s the BrowserStack journey. By the time BrowserStack earned its first million-dollar revenue in the year 2012-13, the founders Arora and […]
William Bissell of Fabindia on building brand, lessons from the journey
“Giving just returns to your investors and shareholders is a restrictive model for business. Business is such a powerful force, it needs to stand for a higher purpose,” Bissell tells me in this episode of Outliers. Bissell, who took over the business in 1999, is now the vice chairman of Fabindia. If you want to […]