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.
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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.

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.

Welcome to First Principles. This is Part 1 of our full conversation with Ankit Nagori, founder and CEO of Curefoods.

Ankit joined Flipkart as the 22nd employee after cold emailing its founders at a book fair with almost no relevant experience and within six years he was Chief Business Officer. He then co-founded Cult with Mukesh Bansal, built it into one of India's most recognised fitness brands, and spun out Curefoods in the middle of a pandemic when the business was down to 2 crores a month.

In this half, Rohin and Ankit get into what those Flipkart years really felt like, what talent density means and whether you can actually design for it, and how Curefoods found its footing when everything was falling apart.
________

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.

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.

Welcome to First Principles! This is part 2 of episode 52, the full conversation.

Rohin met Utham Gowda at Spacebot Studio in Indiranagar on a Tuesday afternoon. Utham was compact, measured, and precise in the way he spoke, like someone who has spent years learning when to talk and when to listen. What's striking was how quickly he opened up. Within the first half hour of the conversation, you got the sense that this is someone who has thought very deeply about his own life, his choices, and what drives him. It makes for one of the best examples on this podcast of a guest easing into a conversation and then, almost without noticing, going places you didn't expect.

The story itself is hard to believe. A kid from landlocked Mysore, with no connection to the sea, no family background in business, builds a billion-dollar global seafood company. He took salary cuts at every job change, even after getting married. He has never owned a car and the highest tax he paid was in 2015. And his eight-year-old son, unable to get his father's attention any other way, started a fake company called Blackfish and would set up a little boardroom at home, just to have something to talk to his dad about.

This episode covers what seafood as an industry actually looks like, why the last 1000 years haven't changed it, what it really means to build a global company from India, and what happens when a founder finally stops chasing money and has to sit with the question of what he actually wants from all of it.

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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.

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.

Welcome to First Principles! This is part 1 of episode 52, the full conversation.

Rohin met Utham Gowda at Spacebot Studio in Indiranagar on a Tuesday afternoon. Utham was compact, measured, and precise in the way he spoke, like someone who has spent years learning when to talk and when to listen. What's striking was how quickly he opened up. Within the first half hour of the conversation, you got the sense that this is someone who has thought very deeply about his own life, his choices, and what drives him. It makes for one of the best examples on this podcast of a guest easing into a conversation and then, almost without noticing, going places you didn't expect.

The story itself is hard to believe. A kid from landlocked Mysore, with no connection to the sea, no family background in business, builds a billion-dollar global seafood company. He took salary cuts at every job change, even after getting married. He has never owned a car and the highest tax he paid was in 2015. And his eight-year-old son, unable to get his father's attention any other way, started a fake company called Blackfish and would set up a little boardroom at home, just to have something to talk to his dad about.

This episode covers what seafood as an industry actually looks like, why the last 1000 years haven't changed it, what it really means to build a global company from India, and what happens when a founder finally stops chasing money and has to sit with the question of what he actually wants from all of it.

**********

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.

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.

Hello, listeners, and welcome back to part 2 of the 51st episode of First Principles.

Ms. Kalpana Morparia reached out to us via email after the bro-ification episode. It was the most pleasant surprise and we immediately knew we had to get her on the podcast.

Here's someone who joined ICICI in 1975 as a lawyer, had absolutely no background in finance, and was then asked to run Treasury. She was terrified but her colleagues told her: "You do not say no to Mr. Kamath and live to have a great career in ICICI."

So she said yes and built one of the most remarkable careers in Indian banking.

She talks about the ICICI culture where contradicting the chairman wasn't just allowed, it was encouraged. A senior JPMorgan executive once said the most impressive thing about ICICI was that "the junior-most person could contradict the chairman and get away with it."

She also gets candid about things most leaders don't talk about. Like why she wishes she had done an MBA. Why she has strong opinions about people's physical appearance at work and knows it's a flaw. Why her spiritual guru completely changed her relationship with the one thing she considered her biggest regret in life.

She went to a Ferrari racetrack and hit 304 kmph. She believes work-life balance is nonsense and wishes every youngster would realize that life is work and work is life.

Listen in for all this and more, including why she thinks India's next 30 years belong to banking, healthcare, and infrastructure. Why retirement at 60 is an outdated concept. And why on a scale of 1 to 10, she rates her happiness at 9 plus.

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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.v

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.

Hello, listeners, and welcome back to part 1 of the 51st episode of First Principles.

Ms. Kalpana Morparia reached out to us via email after the bro-ification episode. It was the most pleasant surprise and we immediately knew we had to get her on the podcast.

Here's someone who joined ICICI in 1975 as a lawyer, had absolutely no background in finance, and was then asked to run Treasury. She was terrified but her colleagues told her: "You do not say no to Mr. Kamath and live to have a great career in ICICI."

So she said yes and built one of the most remarkable careers in Indian banking.

She talks about the ICICI culture where contradicting the chairman wasn't just allowed, it was encouraged. A senior JPMorgan executive once said the most impressive thing about ICICI was that "the junior-most person could contradict the chairman and get away with it."

She also gets candid about things most leaders don't talk about. Like why she wishes she had done an MBA. Why she has strong opinions about people's physical appearance at work and knows it's a flaw. Why her spiritual guru completely changed her relationship with the one thing she considered her biggest regret in life.

She went to a Ferrari racetrack and hit 304 kmph. She believes work-life balance is nonsense and wishes every youngster would realize that life is work and work is life.

Listen in for all this and more, including why she thinks India's next 30 years belong to banking, healthcare, and infrastructure. Why retirement at 60 is an outdated concept. And why on a scale of 1 to 10, she rates her happiness at 9 plus.

**********

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.

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.

In the 2nd part of the 50th episode of First Principles, Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founder of Darwinbox, joins the show to talk about what changes after the early chaos of a startup fades.

He explains how Darwinbox has operated without a CEO for years, how the 3 founders divide ownership of decisions instead of debating everything together, and why this structure helped them move faster as the company grew.

Rohit also gets specific about product building. He talks about designing HR software that does not need training sessions or long explanations, why adoption matters more than feature depth, and how small product decisions can end up shaping behaviour across entire organisations.

The conversation also turns inward. Rohit reflects on moments where intelligence stopped being the advantage he thought it was, why staying with uncomfortable problems mattered more, and how his understanding of leadership changed as Darwinbox scaled.

This episode looks at company building through real decisions, and what it takes to keep going long after the excitement wears off.

********

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.

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.

In part 1 of the 50th episode of First Principles, Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founder of Darwinbox, joins the show to talk about what changes after the early chaos of a startup fades.

He explains how Darwinbox has operated without a CEO for years, how the 3 founders divide ownership of decisions instead of debating everything together, and why this structure helped them move faster as the company grew.

Rohit also gets specific about product building. He talks about designing HR software that does not need training sessions or long explanations, why adoption matters more than feature depth, and how small product decisions can end up shaping behaviour across entire organisations.

The conversation also turns inward. Rohit reflects on moments where intelligence stopped being the advantage he thought it was, why staying with uncomfortable problems mattered more, and how his understanding of leadership changed as Darwinbox scaled.

This episode looks at company building through real decisions, and what it takes to keep going long after the excitement wears off.

********

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.

🚨 The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details.