A weekly podcast show about Indian startups, entrepreneurs, and more! Hosted by Neil Patel & Friends
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Hear how your workplace is changing. Before you hear it on Slack. In this new weekly podcast, get answers to the biggest questions about how modern Indian workplaces are changing, often even before they become popular questions to ask. Sneha Vakharia, Shreevar Chhotaria, and Akshaya Chandrasekaran, take turns week by week with a fresh new story, fresh new voices, and a fresh take on the Indian workplace
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Hosted by Varun Duggirala and Suchita Salwan, Think Fast is a podcast about the latest trends and conversations happening in the world of business, media, content, marketing and beyond. Suchita and Varun sift through the clutter and unpack the biggest stories to give their hot takes and also dig into the broader picture of where things are going. It’s a fast talking, no holds barred take on everything and anything around the world of business!
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Anushka Gupta co-founder of MyMuse on building India’s first bedroom essentials brand.
51:19
51:19
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On a mission to make intimacy easy, approachable, and fun. Today my guest is Anushka Gupta, co-founder of MyMuse. MyMuse is India’s first bedroom essentials brand, dedicated to making intimacy easy, approachable, and fun for Indians everywhere. Anushka and her husband started in a small apartment and now operate a warehouse serving over 150,000 cus…
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Prince Thomas, CEO & Co-founder of MetaShot on building the world's first console-like cricket game
36:37
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Experience real cricket at home! In this episode, I sit down with Prince Thomas, co-founder of MetaShot, a Bangalore-based gaming startup. MetaShot offers a unique and immersive cricket experience through a cutting-edge metaphysical smart bat. Prince shares how the idea for MetaShot emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss the early days of…
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Karan Singh, CEO & Founder of Aristobrat, on redefining fashion entrepreneurship.
34:18
34:18
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Step into the dynamic world of Indian menswear fashion with our latest episode! Join us as we sit down with Karan Singh, the creative force behind Aristobrat, a brand renowned for its premium men's clothing. In this insightful conversation, Karan takes us on a journey from his inspiration drawn from a transformative trip to Scandinavia to the incep…
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Lalit Kalani, Founder of Rock Paper Rum, On building an innovative premium Indian Rum brand
45:31
45:31
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Drawing inspiration from the timeless game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, today's guest is Lalit Kalani, the Founder of Rock Paper Rum, an innovative Indian Rum brand prominently featured on Season 3 of Shark Tank India. In this episode, Lalit delves into the journey of launching his venture, shedding light on navigating the competitive Mumbai market, mas…
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Megha Gambhir co-founder & CEO of Stupa Sports Analytics on building a global sports analytics company and helping athletes improve sports performance.
50:27
50:27
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50:27
Driven by love for Table Tennis. Megha Gambhir, is the amazing co-founder and CEO of Stupa Sports Analytics. Her company is revolutionising the world of sports by providing athletes with cutting-edge analytics and insights to improve their performance. She talks about how she got started with a MVP - an Excel spreadsheet, to now working the ITTF an…
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Surbhi Jain, Founder of Neend. On Building an app that aims to help people sleep better.
25:43
25:43
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Making India sleep better: More than 55% of Indian adults face trouble falling asleep at least three nights a week. Today, I speak with Surbhi Jain, the founder of Neend, a free app offering stories, soothing sleep sounds, meditation, and more to help users unwind and nod off. Launched in 2021, Surbhi shares how she started this journey after contr…
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Introducing The First Two Years, a brand-new early careers podcast from The Ken
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There is a gap between what young people want from their careers and what they get. We’ve spent months trying to understand this white space, and we've distilled our learnings into a brand new careers podcast from the newsroom of The Ken! The first two years of our careers are hard. They are exciting and full of possibilities, but also frustrating …
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Gokul NA. Co-Founder of CynLr. Revolutionising Robotics and making ‘universal factories’ the future.
51:03
51:03
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Universal factories of the future. Today my guest is Gokul NA, Co-Founder of CynLr. a pioneering deep-tech startup dedicated to the radical reinvention of dynamic vision-enabled robots, unlocking the potential to create the 'universal factories' of tomorrow. In this enlightening discussion, Gokul takes us on a journey back over a decade, recounting…
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Pratham Jindal, Founder & CEO of Praper Media. On building a content agency helping creators create!
31:01
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From a 13-year-old dreaming of becoming a YouTuber to now leading a 6-figure video content agency, today I speak with Pratham Jindal, Founder and CEO of Praper Media—a content agency collaborating with some of the biggest creators on the planet. In this episode he shares insights into launching the agency, recounting the story of securing his first…
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Sarabjeet Sachar - CEO of Aspiration Jobs. A seasoned career coach & mentor. Guiding busy professionals for a fast pace career growth & future-proof success.
49:09
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It's a tough job market out there folks! , and on today's episode, we have an expert to guide us through it. I'm joined by Sarabjeet Sacher, the founder of Aspiration Jobs, with a profound passion for coaching professionals in areas such as career growth, career development, job search strategies, and interview techniques. He shares valuable insigh…
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Thank you for tuning in every week. With this episode, Cost to Company is coming to an end. Do tell us what you liked about the show, what we can do differently, or if you have any fresh ideas in the careers space for us. Write to podcasts@the-ken.com. If you liked Cost to Company, we are sure you'd like our other podcasts First Principles and Dayb…
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The Great Resignation to Resenteeism. What trends tells us about the changing workplace.
44:53
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Each individual episode of Cost to Company is like a part of the elephant in the hands of a blind person. Only but a piece of a much larger story. In this special 50th episode of Cost to Company, the hosts discuss the sum of trends they have observed in workplaces. And what that tells us about the changing nature of the economy, and of work. This e…
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'Influencers' have arrived at the workplace – how to spot them?
27:54
27:54
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Company culture (as we know it) is broken. Seventy-seven percent of the global workforce is disengaged and burnt out, says the latest Gallup report. In fact, there's a new term floating around – loud quitting. These are employees who stay in their jobs and take actions that directly harm the organisation and sabotage its goals. This is a new low, a…
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600 working mothers told us how they navigate work, home and their careers
40:49
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We released a survey for working mothers. The objective was to build a collective of the wisdom of working mothers. Ask them for their needs. And their hacks. How can families and businesses best enable working mothers? And how can working mothers enable themselves? As of writing this, It’s been a week since we put out the survey. 630 mothers repli…
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Why PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans) rarely do what they say
33:22
33:22
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33:22
Failing to plan is planning to fail. But that's not the case with PIPs. Which, more often than not, is planned to fail anyway. In this episode of Cost to Company, I speak to Sharthok Chakraborty (Co-founder, Klaar; Ex-Cipla) Nimesh Mathur (Investor, Advisor, HR Leader; Ex-Haptik), and Sumit Singla (HR Consultant, ex-Accenture) on one of the most co…
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How to spot a stable employer in a turbulent economy
25:47
25:47
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Reverse reference checks. Combative questions during interviews. And employees on why it isn’t the employer’s market yet. With layoffs and recession fears, you would imagine employees are settling for less. You would imagine they are taking up a job, any job, to evade unemployment. Instead, they are making decisions about their next move in the mos…
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Youngest startup talent doesn’t have deep skills
30:20
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There’s hustle. And then there’s excellence. Startups give their employees abundance of the former, but not as much of the latter. In the long run, this can seriously hurt career prospects. This week, we set out to understand the skills startups give their youngest employees.. The skills they don’t. Where this can land them in their careers. Who is…
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If you ask any tech employee about their dream company to work at, it’s usually a Microsoft or a Google or a cool startup. Nobody aspires to work at a healthcare company or a bank, really. It’s where you end up. Not choose. At least that’s the perception all around. But what if I tell you, you’ve been looking at the talent market all wrong? That th…
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Three founders on taking the right risks in your career
27:02
27:02
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How do you evaluate the risks you take in your choice of jobs? The size, stage of the company you’re going to work for. The type of roles you choose. How long you wait in a particular role before you make your next move, look for the next jump. How do the risks we take, and don’t take, shape our careers. This week, we turn to three of the most risk…
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The tables have turned. But the mistakes keep spilling over. In this episode, we spoke to Ria Shroff Desai (People and Culture Lead, Blume Ventures); Udayan Walvekar (CEO, GrowthX); Bhakti Dhanak (Associate Vice President - Human Resources, CIIE.CO) to understand some of the unobvious errors that candidates are making while applying for jobs in the…
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Could you have priced yourself out of the job market?
25:07
25:07
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25:07
For months and months now, there’s a word that’s been whispered among recruiters, founders, CXOs, and executives who are hiring for key positions in their companies. It’s a word used to describe a cohort of professionals whose salaries are out of sync with the reality of the market. It’s a word that is used for people who work in product management…
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The rise and rise of discreet reference checks
31:24
31:24
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31:24
Some call them discreet reference checks, some call them back channel checks, some call them ghost reference checks. They're growing rapidly, and recruiters are leaning on them like never before. In this week’s episode, host Sneha Vakharia takes you behind the scenes into why they’re growing, how they’re done, and what you need to do about it.…
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This time last year, companies were giving away eye-popping rewards to retain talent. From BMW bikes to sponsoring vacations, they did it all to lure top talent. Times were good. Talent was scarce. And start-ups and companies were flush with money and endless capital. But, not anymore. On today’s show, why retention has gone from broad-based to foc…
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Dear listeners, We would like to inform you that the hosts of your favorite show, Think Fast, Varun and Suchita, will be taking a short break from recording for the next few weeks. They have some busy weeks ahead of them, but will return soon with the latest news, interesting views, hilarious jokes, and insights on all things business and technolog…
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The 'job switch' hike isn't a wise decision anymore
30:30
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The situation has changed. And the equation has too. If the past two years were all about throwing money to attract top talent, 2023 has seen a general sobering up of appraisals and job switch hikes. In a strange turns of events, some employees are okay with taking a cut on their annual compensation in exchange for ‘stability’, in this highly volat…
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Reliance X Warner Bros, Vice Media Layoffs & What is Apple up to?
50:03
50:03
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50:03
In this episode of Think Fast, Varun and Suchita cover a variety of topics including the recent layoffs at Clubhouse, Aryan Khan's new start-up D Yavol, Travis Barker's collaboration with Liquid Death Water to release a limited-edition enema collectible, the bankruptcy of Bed Bath & Beyond, Reliance's new partnership with Warner Bros Discovery Inc …
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This week your host Sneha will take you inside businesses at war, through the voices of those fighting in the trenches. We’ll hear how the same war — the war against inflation, a funding winter and shrinking markets — is being fought differently in different businesses. We’ll see how war sharpens, and sometimes disfigures, a business. We’ll see wha…
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Apple in India, Short Video Creators' New Reality & The Fall of Indian Unicorns
50:22
50:22
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50:22
The views, opinions, and statements expressed in the episodes of the shows hosted on the IVM Podcasts network are solely those of the individual participants, hosts, and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of IVM Podcasts or its management. IVM Podcasts does not endorse or assume responsibility for any content, cl…
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MBAs – love them or hate them, but you can’t ignore them. Over the years, they have taken over every business vertical – general management, sales and marketing, growth and strategy, human resources, and even product and technology. Name it, they have been there and done that. But there was one bastion that remained unconquered by the MBAs for the …
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Amazon and Meta are wrong about managers.
33:59
33:59
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In the last few months alone, Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce announced that they were going to begin the process of flattening their organisations. That they were going to have fewer and fewer hierarchies in their organisations. Fewer hierarchies means fewer managers. The pattern here appears to be that in tough economic times, when efficiency become…
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L'Oréal X Aesop, Founder Salaries, & Exploring the GenZ Culture ft. Pranav Manie
49:50
49:50
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In this episode, Varun & Suchita talk about the upcoming Apple store in Mumbai's BKC, how Bangalore rents have hit the roof, EdTech company founders' exuberant salaries, and L'Oreal's acquisition of Aesop + what D2C brands could learn from it. GenZ Pranav Manie who works at Bain & Co. by the day and writes a substack newsletter named 'Hot Chips' by…
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You've heard about them. You've worked with them. You've thoughts around them. But have you really heard from them? In this episode, I speak to Kaavyya Kesarwani (Growth & Community, Juno), Sherina Poyyail (Policy professional, Ex: The Quint), Bhavya Narula (Founding team, GrowthX), Sindhu Shivaprasad (Chief of Staff, Obvious) and Shashank Baliga (…
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The NMACC Gala, World Startup Convention Disaster, & an Ode to Indian Paps
53:11
53:11
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This episode has an extended introduction followed by two major stories. Varun & Suchita deep dive into the history of the paparazzi in India and their journey from negotiating for space in print to building a sought-after social media clout & the World Startup Convention Disaster that looked very promising and gave hope to multiple founders but tu…
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Here's how to empathise with your manager to get what you want
37:48
37:48
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Here are some messages Cost to Company has received over the past months. “I believe working with GenZ is the toughest thing I do at work. They look at their jobs as a means to the next job. This has dramatically reduced their qualitative output, even if their quantitative output is enough. “ “Workplace hierarchy is its absurd with GenZs”. “There i…
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Bye Bye Legacy Twitter Blue Ticks, BluSmart Cabs & Macro Indian Startup POV
49:49
49:49
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Varun & Suchita start by discuss the new Finance Bill, Starbucks getting an Indian Origin CEO, Amazon looking to acquire MX Player from the Times Group, Khan Academy introducing AI into the classroom, Ashneer Grover's CricPe, Byjus X Aakash X Unacademy news and more. They deep dive into the interesting strategies and pivots of some Indian Startups,…
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A meaty part-time role may seem like the best of most worlds. Your workload is relatively lesser. You have more time to spare. The money might be decent too. One major downside of the part-time experience though is that you lose out on important benefits such as paid leaves and health insurance. Or... do you? In this episode, I speak to Saurabh Aro…
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Ryan Reynold's Mint Mobile Sold for 11KCR$, Meta's Year of Efficiency, & The Resilience of FMCG Giants
52:50
52:50
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52:50
In this episode, Varun & Suchita begin with talking about Google introducing AI across all it's apps, Lenskart raising funds from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, PornHub's parent company MindGeek getting acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, LinkedIn building a Podcast academy, Samsung and Xiaomi's smartphone market competition, SVB filing bankrupt…
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Special episode: how work and workplaces have changed in 30 weeks.
52:14
52:14
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In this special episode of Cost to Company, the tables turn. Snigdha interviews CTC hosts Sneha and Shreevar about how work and workplaces have changed in the last thirty weeks. The short version: they’ve changed dramatically. This episode is the long version of that answer. Sneha takes us into the evolving relationship between the employee and emp…
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The Tiktokification of Spotify, HBO + IPL Exit Hotstar, & The Fall of SVB ft. Vidur Singhal
57:31
57:31
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57:31
It's a Naatu Naatu episode! On Think Fast, Varun & Suchita obviously talk about the Oscars and how it was the year of South Asians. Further, they talk about Grammarly employing AI and an update to it's services, Meta's Twitter counterpart, Apple looking at India as a lucrative market, Vinyls selling more as compared to CDs, Slack integrating ChatGP…
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What's It Like Working For A 'Frugal' Company in 2023?
29:47
29:47
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Everybody is cutting costs. Not because they want to. But because they have to. A few months ago, edtech giant Unacademy announced that they were making frugality as one of their ‘core values’ to focus on profitability. But can you really be a frugal company if it’s not in your DNA from the very beginning? In this episode, I speak to Somnath Mukher…
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Blume's Indus Valley Report, Curated Marketplaces, & YouTube's 2023 Agenda
55:36
55:36
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In this episode, Varun & Suchita start by talking about the ongoing Women's IPL, F1 streaming which was on Hotstar but this season, it will be on the independent app; What is an overpaid CEO, Razorpay's profits, Ashneer Grover's CricPe, Blinkit's new venture, and more. They deep dive into the Indus Valley Report by Blume Ventures, YouTube's agenda …
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Internships are booming. Internshala has been reporting jumps of between 30 and 80 percent jumps in internships listed by businesses year on year, depending on which year you look at. The same data says that more and more businesses are offering paid internships. Demand for interns is going up. And if you ask recruiters, they’ll say that the number…
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Aruna Chawla, founder of Salad - A FemTech startup building wellness for women & disrupting the face of a $100bn + global industry.
34:23
34:23
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Enabling the well-being of more than 355 million Indian women through products, experiences, and experts. Today my guest is Aruna Chawla, founder of Salad, a lifestyle planner mobile app that support women to better manage their health throughout the menstrual cycle by providing personalised nutrition, fitness, and lifestyle advice. She talks about…
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It's a Match (group) X Shaadi, Rise of the Tastefluencer, & Taking Algorithms to Court
49:32
49:32
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Varun & Suchita begin with the menstrual leave law that was recently passed in Spain, WazirX shutting its NFT Marketplace, IPL to be streamed for free on Jio, Bill Gates' minority stake in Heineken, Byju's denying rumors of shutting White Hat Jr, Spotify changing its design to appeal to GenZ, US nominating former Mastercard CEO for World Bank, Zoma…
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IT Employees Are Finally Unionising. But There's A Problem.
33:59
33:59
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Gone are the days when unions were something that only caught the fancy of the blue collar workforce. After a slew of unending layoffs, white collar employees in the IT sector are finally waking up to the bells of unionisation. But it’s not without a myriad of unobvious roadblocks. The path to collective bargaining wasn’t easy. But no one knew it w…
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Reliance's Tira Beauty, Airbnb Turns Profitable, & Blue Ticks ft. Twitter & Meta
46:30
46:30
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46:30
Varun & Suchita are back after a weekend in Maldives & at a wedding respectively; they discuss how there exists a 'Raita' playlist on music platforms, the Women's IPL auction, Air India's latest historic purchase of Boeing planes, the closure of Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens in India, all the Elon Musk shenanigans, YouTube's new leadership, B2B i…
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Moonlighting, not for money, but to upskill.
30:50
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There’s a specific idea we have about moonlighting: a trend that emerged in the pandemic. Engineers tasked with sitting at home and delivering their product saw that their skills were so valuable, that it was possible to extract more money out of them by working in two places at once. So a person would either consult with multiple organizations on …
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Google Bard VS MS Chat GPT, Disney Layoffs + Rejig, & LinkedIn India's 100Mn
54:26
54:26
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54:26
This was a Monday morning recording and Varun & Suchita started by telling us about their weekends in Mumbai & Delhi respectively, all the ongoing exhibitions and outdoor stuff before the winter departs. They further chat about Cow Hug Day being revoked, Coke Studio Tamil + Bharat, SRK & Deepika's adorable skincare video for 82East, and the Tu VS A…
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The Golden Era of 'Work From Anywhere' Is Over
19:29
19:29
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What was once touted as the biggest work trend to emerge from the pandemic, is on its way out. Companies are slowly but surely realising that the 'work from anywhere' model isn't sustainable in the long run. Or even in the short run, in some cases. Meesho, for one, had announced an extravagant WFA policy in February 2022. They scrapped it only a fe…
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Budget 2023 + Adani X Hindenburg with Anupam Gupta
57:57
57:57
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In this episode, Varun & Suchita battle it out between Alka Yagnik who surpassed all artists to be the most streamed artist on YouTube versus Queen Taylor Swift. They discuss how JioCinema might combine with Voot ahead of IPL, Adani buying the Ahmedabad Women's IPL Team Franchise, Instagram Founders' new app, RIL and Sephora's deal being called off…
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