Episódios
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In 2017, four ex-Flipkart engineers made a bet to build a company that let anyone buy mutual funds directly, with no commissions or hidden fees.
Nine years later, Groww is India’s largest stockbroker by active clients, its most profitable consumer fintech, and the first major Y Combinator portfolio company in India to go public.
Rs 1,824 crore net profit in FY25. 83% organic customer acquisition. It even paid Rs 1,340 crore in taxes to move its holding company back from Delaware to India, then listed on Indian public markets at an IPO subscribed 17 times over.
Every decision looked risky at the time and obvious in retrospect.
But Groww in 2026 is not Groww in 2017. The company that built trust by doing one thing exceptionally well is now building lending, wealth management, insurance, and its own AMC.
Praveen sits down with Anand Kalyanaraman, finance editor of The Ken, who has tracked Groww since its earliest days, and Avinash Luthria, founder of Fiduciaries and one of eight SEBI-registered investment advisors who charges only an hourly fee. Praveen comes in with a strong prior—that Groww is one of the most consequential Indian companies of the last decade. His guests are here to disagree and add context to his claim. Anand comes in with the perspective of whether the valuation is justified, and Avinash on whether the business models and incentives that brokerage companies have so far can help them go ahead.
And the question everyone discusses: can the company that won by being simple stay trusted as it becomes everything?
Additional reading:
https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/lalit-keshre-groww/
https://the-ken.com/story/growws-ipo-pitch-we-are-more-than-a-discount-broker-investors-really-show-us/
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The old way to grow as a product designer meant doing the grunt work (button variants, banner sizes, edges cases) until your instincts calibrated.
In the new world, AI does the grunt work, faster and cheaper than any junior designer ever could.
And the numbers reveal this crisis : UX job postings fell 73% between 2022 and 2023. Less than 5% of tech companies hire entry-level design talent.
Rapid changes are afoot and we need some reorientation
So, Praveen met Jay Datta—founder of Designup, Southeast Asia’s largest design conference, and 25 years in design at Deutsche Bank, Adobe, Flipkart, and Makemytrip—and Shreyas Satish, founder of Ownpath, who has spent years trying to rebuild the apprenticeship model from outside the system to discuss that question to answer a big question: how does a 22-year-old build judgement now?
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Eighteen months ago, Hyrox did not exist in India. Last month, 8,200 people paid Rs 9,000 each to do a sled push at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre. Attendees described the event as a “carnival”, and for several weeks, everyone was talking and proudly sharing their Hyrox timings.
If you’re wondering what on earth is going on, well, this episode is for you.
Fitness as an event isn’t new in India. Every wave of participative fitness in India solved something the previous one couldn’t. Marathons gave the urban professional class a finish line and an identity. Crossfit gave them a tribe and a daily ritual. Both peaked, both retreated, both ended up circling the same thin, affluent cohort in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Now Hyrox has arrived, and in one season blown past anything either of those formats built in India. The question is whether Hyrox is the next iteration of the same product, or something fundamentally different.
Then there’s the business side of it. Hyrox is a premium commercial format, with revenue lines through event tickets, a global licensing model, a PUMA deal, and a middleman at every layer between the participant and the finish line. That commercial stack sits on top of a culture that markets itself on community and participation. Does that accelerate the fitness ecosystem or does it extract from it?
And to find out that answer, Praveen Gopal Krishnan sits with two guests:
Prasanna Akela is the cofounder of Belong, a personal training studio in Bengaluru. Before Belong, Prasanna was an early growth leader at companies like CRED, Apple, and Uber India. He’s also competed at the national level in ultimate frisbee and has trained extensively in endurance and strength. He brings the operator’s view: what does someone building a fitness business in India actually see when a global format like Hyrox walks in?
“I’ve not seen this culture of people at scale wanting to get better. Everybody does their first Hyrox. Nobody’s like, how do I do my second Hyrox better than my first one.”
Dilip Kumar leads investments at Rainmatter*, Zerodha’s health and fitness fund, which has deployed over Rs 250 crore across dozens of investments in health and fitness—including Hyrox India, Ironman, and Devil Circuit. He’s also a serious endurance athlete with a 2:55 marathon personal best and a finisher at the Boston Marathon. He has publicly called Hyrox as India’s “2008 IPL moment” for fitness. He came to this conversation with a declared interest and a clear conviction.
“99% of the people are not intrinsically motivated. The invention of all these events kind of expanded that category — and that’s where we started investing.”
Prasanna is building inside the wave and Dilip is investing and betting on it. Both of them are also participants. They competed in last month’s Hyrox event at Bengaluru. The episode tries to find out how long the wave is going to last—and what might happen after that.
*Zerodha’s perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken.
This episode was hosted and produced by Praveen Gopal Krishnan. Rajiv C N, our resident technical producer did the audio production. -
“There is no pride in this. Kya karoon (what can I do), I’m just a delivery boy.”
Every time someone raises the topic of gig economy in India, the conversation follows the same script. Side A: this is exploitation. Side B: but employment. And then everyone moves on, nothing changes, and 12 million people keep showing up every morning to deliver your groceries.
This episode tries to push past that script. Sid Pai, co-founder of Bengaluru-based consulting firm UK & Co., joins Praveen and Rahel to go through a new report—India’s Gig Economy: The Promise and the Paradox—based on conversations with 1,355 gig workers across Karnataka. The numbers are granular in ways you don’t usually see: working hours, screen time, savings rates, and one metric borrowed from product management that turns out to be damning. You can guess which one.
The question they start with i.e. “what breaks first if things continue this way?” doesn’t have a clean answer. The more unsettling finding might be that 95% of gig workers report being satisfied with their income even when 52% of them have zero savings. Understanding why that contradiction exists, and what it’s actually holding together, is what this episode is really about.
You can see the report here.
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This episode was mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.If you liked this episode, share it with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at [email protected].
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2025 is done. Forty-eight episodes. Hundreds of guests. Endless banter between Rohin and Praveen.This year, Two by Two covered stories from Bengaluru to the world including business, tech, and everything in between. We didn't just stick to the usual. We asked about people, trends, and the things others weren't paying attention to. We brought on guests who didn't rehearse their answers and tried to make sense of things as they happened.
Some episodes turned out to be prescient. Some were messy. Some sparked arguments in our inbox. All of them tried to do what we set out to do: spot hidden connections, ask unasked questions, and figure out what's really going on.
This final episode is Rohin looking back at six moments from the year with clips from conversations that stood out. Between each one, he adds context and some behind-the-scenes perspective on why it mattered.
Here are the episodes featured:
Episode 26: Zomato, Swiggy, and the rise of the 10-minute "dark" caféEpisode 31: Airtel fights spammers. And Truecaller's business modelEpisode 47: Who broke Bengaluru, and how do we fix our cities?Episode 50: In an AI age, India does not have an open source strategyEpisode 51: The invisible whale that capsized India's leaky options boatsEpisode 66: What will bring ambition back from the dead?To everyone who listened, argued with us, sent guest suggestions, or just stuck around, thank you. Next year, we're coming back with everything that makes Two by Two what it is, but bigger and better. Maybe even a few surprises. Stay tuned.
There won't be an episode next Thursday. We will return on January 8th, 2026.
See you in the new year.
________This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.
If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in listening. If you have suggestions for guests, episodes or even changes we could make. Please write to us at [email protected] or comment below.
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As we try to wind down this year, Rohin and Praveen do something they’ve never done before: go through every single episode they recorded this year. All 48 of them. In 60 minutes.
The rules were simple. Each host had 10 points to build their personal top 10 list for the year. No take-backs, and no pre-discussion. It was a completely live, vibe-based recording where they figured it out as they went.
What follows is a rapid-fire sprint through the year. From Amazon India’s struggles to the electric car slowdown, from B-school placements to the rise of quick commerce dark stores, and from Razorpay versus Juspay to the chaos of concert infrastructure in India. They cover it all—the hits, the misses, the prescient calls, and the episodes they wish had gone differently.
Along the way, they debate whether episodes were too speculative, too early, or just not memorable enough. By the end, they’re locked in a tight race with only five episodes left and one point each remaining.
Because it wouldn't be Two by Two without a matrix, we plotted the results of their debate. Take a look at the graphic to see which episodes they both loved (the green zone) versus their personal favourites.
It is chaotic, nostalgic, and a perfect preview of what 2025 looked like through the lens of Two by Two.
______
This episode was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.
With 48 episodes in the books, this is the perfect starting point for anyone looking to catch up on the defining business stories of 2025. If you liked this sprint through the year, please share it with someone who loves a good deep dive.
Have your own "vibe-based" arguments about our list? We’re all ears. Reach out at [email protected] or leave a comment.
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Join Rohin and Praveen as they celebrate the one-year anniversary of the 2x2 podcast, reflecting on 52 episodes of business and strategy discussions. This special ‘vibes’ episode looks back at their journey creating Two by Two, the evolution of the show, and future plans, deviating from their usual topic-focused format.
Praveen shares key meta-narratives he picked from the past year, including a "desperation-driven convergence" where companies like Flipkart and Phonepe try to become each other. He also highlights themes such as the government shaping markets as a "competitor" or through "artificial constraints", and a "great career existential crisis" impacting roles from engineers to marketers. Other themes include the "destruction and retreat of big tech in India", the podcast's contrarian framing of topics, and a focus on India's "livability crisis", addressing issues like urban infrastructure and air pollution.
We’d love to hear what you think about Two by Two as well. You can write to us at [email protected].
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Welcome to the year-end special edition of Two by Two.
We’ve released 22 episodes of Two by Two since our inaugural edition in July.
We’ve covered an incredible breadth of counterintuitive topics framed as, well, two by twos.
Would Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe became Flipkart? Did Delhi prick Bengaluru’s bubble? Is the golden era of the software engineer over? Why is health insurance broken? How will Ola and Uber avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts’? Why is Zepto behaving like a gold medallist? Can venture capitalists do no wrong? Dmart versus the challengers at the gates. AI and the impending disruption of Indian SaaS.
We’ve had incredible fun exploring these ideas with a bunch of really sharp, experienced and opinionated guests.
Finding guests who don’t hesitate to speak their minds and state unpopular truths has been one of the hardest things. Far, far tougher than finding interesting topics. We owe all our guests a huge thanks for trusting us. Far too many professionals and leaders prefer to stick to rehearsed and predictable talking points in public these days.
We’d started Two by Two with the ambition to operate at the intersection of curiosity and synthesis. Each week, we said we’d spot the hidden connections and unasked questions. We’d identify the cast of players and their motivations.
We’d bring in incredible people to discuss these with. We’d try to answer simple yet fundamental questions like, what is going on, why is it happening, who gains and who loses, and where is all of this leading to?
By always asking questions. Always connecting the dots. Always being unfiltered and uninhibited.
We wanted Two by Two to be ‘your personal investigative brain’.
In 2025 we hope to make Two by Two even more interesting and unpredictable. Yes, at its core it will still be a weekly podcast. But I’m excited at the possibility of doing so much more by involving our subscribers, listeners and readers in these endeavours.
We want to make Two by Two ‘our collective investigative brain’.
And hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan will continue to do so with a new episode every Thursday.
To listen to all episodes of Two by Two, consider subscribing to The Ken’s Premium plan, which in addition to the podcast, will also get you access to our long-form stories, Premium newsletters and visual stories.
If you just want access to Two by Two, you can do that as well on Apple Podcasts with a paid subscription.
Two by Two is also a free weekly newsletter published every Friday. You can sign up for it here.
Listen to all Two by Two episodes here:
1. Will Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe becomes Flipkart? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/will-flipkart-become-phonepe-before-phonepe-becomes-flipkart/
2. Why has all the excitement and disruption gone out of startups? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/why-has-all-the-excitement-and-disruption-gone-out-of-startups/
3. Is Zepto a gold medallist or a bronze medallist? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/is-zepto-a-gold-medalist-or-a-bronze-medalist/
4. Delhi pricked the Bengaluru bubble -
https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/delhi-pricked-the-bangalore-bubble/
5. Swiggy needs to reclaim its past glory - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/swiggy-needs-to-reclaim-its-past-glory/
6. Is the golden era of the (software) engineer over? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/is-the-golden-era-of-the-software-engineer-over/
7. Google Pay: Big. Successful. Vulnerable - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/google-pay-big-successful-vulnerable/
8. Private coaching is eating away at schooling - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/private-coaching-is-eating-away-at-schooling/
9. Why Stripe could not become the Stripe of India? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/why-couldnt-stripe-become-the-stripe-of-india/
10. Health insurance in India is ripe for disruption - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/health-insurance-is-ripe-for-disruption/
11. Netflix and its last growth market - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/netflixs-last-growth-market/
12. Ather Energy was a pioneer. Can it also be a leader? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/ather-energy-was-a-pioneer-can-it-also-be-a-leader/
13. Do we even need Product Managers? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/do-we-even-need-product-managers/
14. How will Ola and Uber avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts’? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/how-will-ola-and-uber-avoid-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/
15. The relentless rise of the government as a competitor - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/the-relentless-rise-of-the-government-as-a-competitor/
16. What does the future hold for Ola Electric? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/what-does-ola-electrics-future-hold/
17. Can venture capitalists do no wrong? - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/can-venture-capitalists-do-no-wrong/
18. Dmart versus the challengers at the gate - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/dmart-versus-the-challengers-at-the-gate/
19. Marketing is eating itself from the inside - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/marketing-is-eating-i...
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Happy Deepavali, dear listeners!
On account of Deepavali, the Two by Two team is also taking a small break. But don't worry; we'll be back with our regular programming next week.
Until then, you can always listen to past episodes of Two by Two that you haven't gotten around to yet. If you're a Premium subscriber listening to this on The Ken’s mobile app or on Apple podcasts, you can just scroll down and listen to any of our episodes in their full, unedited form. On the other hand, if you aren’t a premium subscriber yet, you can listen to one of our older episodes which we’ve unlocked for you.
In fact, in the latest unlocked episode, we argue, debate, and discuss what Netflix needs to do to win in its last growth market — India.
Netflix's last growth market. (Full republished episode for free users available on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | Youtube)
By the way, if you’re in the mood for something other than two-by-twos and business models, why don’t you head over to Daybreak, The Ken’s daily podcast?
Just last week, our colleagues Snigdha and Rahel did an amazing episode where they spoke to multiple people to understand why women freeze their eggs.
Successful women are freezing their eggs. And that's on men. (Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | YouTube Music)
If you have suggestions for potential future episodes, we’re all ears. We’re also all ears if you have recommendations for interesting guests we can invite to the show—guests who know their stuff and aren’t afraid to speak their minds, even if it goes against conventional wisdom. Write to us at [email protected].
