Hindustan Unilever is one of India’s most valuable companies. The book “The CEO Factory: Management Lessons from Hindustan Unilever” by Sudhir Sitapati is a handbook of counterintuitive management insights that he learnt over 20+ years at HUL. The book covers HUL’s 100+ years of history in India and its management lessons in marketing, product, pricing, sales, cost, HR, and company values. Below is a mind map of all my notes from the book.

Deepit Purkayastha is the co-founder of Inshorts & Public app. Deepit's entrepreneurial journey began in an IIT Kharagpur dorm room with his co-founders Azhar & Anunay. 10 years later, Inshorts is India's #1 short news app, with 10 million+ active users, and Public App is India's largest platform for hyperlocal content, with 50 million+ active users.

Aditi Shrivastava is Co-Founder and CEO at Pocket Aces, India’s largest socially distributed content network, which includes five diverse brands: FilterCopy (short fiction), Dice Media (multi-episode web series), Gobble (lifestyle), Nutshell (infotainment), and Jambo (young-adult animation). Pocket Aces also operates Clout India’s largest digital influencer management practice. The company incubated Loco, India’s largest homegrown game streaming and esports app, which was spun off successfully into a separate entity in 2021.

Jeremy Utley is a Stanford Adjunct, a celebrated keynote speaker, and co-author of the brilliant book "Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters.". Jeremy co-teaches two wonderful courses at Stanford, Leading Disruptive Innovation (d.leadership) and LaunchPad, which focus on creating real-world impact with design and innovation tools.

Matt Abrahams teaches organizational behaviour and strategic communication at Stanford. He is the author of the excellent book Speaking Up without Freaking Out and host of the Stanford GSB podcast ‘Think Fast Talk Smart’. Matt is a passionate, collaborative, and innovative educator and coach. He has published widely on strategic communication, cognitive planning, persuasion, and interpersonal communication. Prior to teaching, Matt held senior leadership positions in several leading software companies, where he created and ran global learning and development teams. Matt has worked with executives to help prepare and present keynote addresses and IPO road shows, conduct media interviews, and deliver TED talks.

Sandeep is the co-founder of dezerv. Dezerv is an expert-led wealth creation platform that aims to deliver sustainable returns to its clients through its unique Integrated Portfolio Approach (IPA). Dezerv was founded in 2021 and today it has 1,000 crores under management.

Shreyaa kicked off her career at Bain consulting, went on to become a content strategist and influencer with 650K+ Instagram followers and was recognised by LinkedIn as a Top Voice for 2022.

This is a fascinating conversation with a young content influencer about why and how she chose to leave consulting and join the creator economy.

Anand Jain is the Co-founder of CleverTap. CleverTap is the world's leading customer engagement and retention platform, valued at USD 775M and backed by Sequoia India, Tiger Global and others.

In this fascinating conversation, Anand talks about how curiosity and constant tinkering of an average student from a humble background have led him to build multiple successful businesses, the value of thinking in first principles, how understanding the customer is selling and much more.

Royal Enfield is The Oldest Motorcycle Brand in Continuous Production. It found its origin in a British needle-making factory in the late 1800s. In 1901, the first Royal Enfield motorcycle was unveiled. The company made its way to the Indian market in 1949 and later set up a JV with Madras motors. In India, Royal Enfield is a cult, not just a motorcycle company. It is as urban a brand as rural. It was brought to India by the Brits, adopted by the Indian army and police, got popular among the socially powerful Zamindars- landlords in the 1960s. Today it is a social icon among millennials.

Peter is the Chief Technology Officer at Buzzfeed, overseeing Product Management, Engineering, Design, and Data teams across all portfolio brands. Peter has built both consumer and enterprise products and fundraised from a diverse range of investors across industries—health (The Mighty, backed by GGVC, Upfront, and WPP Health), SaaS (Buddy Media, backed by Greylock, acquired by Salesforce), media & e-commerce (Refinery29, backed by Stripes, WPP, Scripps).

Peter, in this conversation, talks about his journey as a CTO, leadership vs management, and his delegation mechanism, which Keith Rabois outlined in his essay How to be an effective executive and what has been learnt as an angel investor.

These days there is a debate, especially among the younger talent pool, about being a generalist or a specialist. There is a popular book on this topic by David Epstein called Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Epstein argues against specialisation early on in one's life and makes a case for "range" to gather as many skills and experiences as you can and later to specialise based on your strengths.

What got me thinking is, does the brain have a generalist vs specialist evolution, and do Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Michael Angelo, and other achievers have a generalist or a specialist mindset?

Sidu Ponnappa is a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. His most recent startup C42 Engineering was acquired by GO-JEK in 2015, with C42's founding team joining GO-JEK's board of directors. GO-JEK grew 900X in 18 months and became Indonesia's first unicorn in 2017. Sidu has experienced building and scaling businesses as a founder, CEO, and head of engineering, sales, marketing and HR.

The Namkeen Industry of India. Namkeen in Hindi means snack. It is a $ 15 billion industry in India. No conversation on namkeens would be complete without mentioning, Haldiram's, India's No.1 Namkeen brand. Haldiram's 85+ years of history is an MBA in itself. It is fascinating to learn how Gangabhishenji Agarwal, fondly known as Haldiram, in 1918 kicked off the making of a Rs 5000 Cr, USD ~600M, brand, which is now a household name in India.

Ahana Guatam is the CEO & Co-Founder of Open Secret and a Harvard Business School & IIT Bombay alum. Open Secret is on a mission to un-junk the $ 15 billion Indian snack industry.

James served as the Chief Executive Officer of 7-Eleven and chairman and CEO of Blockbuster. James graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from the College of the Holy Cross. He also obtained an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1980. James is the founder of the 'Education is Freedom' foundation

Sourjyendu is the founder and Chief Business Officer at DealShare.

After spending 15+ years with leading Retail and FMCG organisations such as Metro, Raymond and Britannia, Sourjyendu kicked off his startup journey at the age of 40 to build Bharat's first social e-commerce unicorn.

Taru Kapoor is the general manager of Tinder and Match Group in India. In her previous stints, she has worked with Sequoia Capital and The Boston Consulting Group. Taru graduated from IIT Delhi with a B.Tech and M.Tech in Chemical Engineering and received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

Shrishti is the Managing Partner at SSV. SSV is a sector-agnostic family-office investing in early-stage companies. Through SSV, she has invested in 30 companies such as Plum, Kutumb, Chingari, Rupifi, Jar and 10Club.

Abhinandan is a screenwriter who kicked off his career as an assistant director to Andhadhun writer and National Award-winning filmmaker Hemanth M Rao. His writing credits include Netflix's Little Things Seasons 3 & 4 and Teen Tigada, a film for Prime Video's Unpaused anthology.

Jeffrey Paine is the Managing Partner & Co-founder at Golden Gate Ventures and an Edmund Hillary Fellow. Jeff is one of the most thoughtful VCs I have come across. Last year, he launched an initiative called Coachable that focuses on founders' mental wellness by pairing them with experienced coaches and mentors. He wishes for other like-minded VCs and corporations to join this initiative so that more founders get the support they need while building their startups.

Ashwin kicked off his career as an investment banker landed up working on Walls Street. In 2011 he took a one-way ticket to India to explore the New Media industry and today he is the founder of Pocket Aces and Loco.

Pocket Aces is the production house behind the hugely successful web shows such as Little Things, What the Folks and Please Find Attached.

Utsav is an entrepreneur, a networker and a hustler. He kicked off his career in the music industry, managing Indian rock bands and went on to build a music app. Post his entrepreneurial stint, he joined Uber and launched it in eight Indian cities and Dhaka in Bangladesh, breaking all growth records. After Uber, he joined Glovo and launched it in nine Eastern European markets and built a team of 250+ people. Delivery Hero acquired Glovo for $2.6 billion. Utsav is now back to entrepreneurship, building Evenflow, a roll-up platform acquiring and scaling e-commerce businesses.

Sabeer is the co-founder of Hotmail.com and ShowReel. Sabeer and his co-founder started Hotmail with $300,000 and sold it to Microsoft for $400 million within two years.

Ravi is an EIR at Reforge. Ravi was the Chief Product Officer at Tinder, Product Director at Facebook, and VP of Consumer Product at Tripadvisor. He has an MBA from Sloan School of Business, MIT, and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Boston.

Pramath is an entrepreneur, educator and institution builder, having conceptualised and built hallmark educational institutes such as the Indian School of Business and Ashoka University. Now, he is on the journey of building Harappa Education- a platform that helps future leaders learn essential cognitive, social and behavioural skills.

He has also founded the Vedica Scholars program for women and the Naropa Fellowship. He kicked off his career with McKinsey & Company, headed ABP media and founded the 9.9 Media group.

My next guest on The One Percent Project is Pushkar Mukewar, Co-founder and CEO of Drip Capital. Pushkar kicked off his career at Capital One, went to work for Oliver Wyman and Saama Capital. He has masters from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Wharton School of Business.

David Fallarme is Marketing Director for On Deck. Prior to On Deck David was the head of marketing for Hubspot Asia. He has led the product and content marketing initiatives for Electronic Arts, App Annie and ReferralCandy. He also runs the APAC Marketers Roundtable, one of the most active communities of marketers in APAC.

Amit is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Tau Ventures, an AI-focused seed fund. He kicked off his career at Google and then went to work with Norwest Venture Partners and Samsung NEXT- Samsung's investment arm. He has also co-founded HealthIQ, which is valued at USD 450M. He did his bachelor's and masters from Stanford and MBA from Harvard Business School.

Miten is an engineer, inventor, investor and operator.He kicked off his career in Silicon Valley, then headed strategy for Times Internet, India’s largest digital products company with 600 million monthly users and is now building CRED, one of India’s fastest growing payments apps. He is also a graduate of Virginia Tech.

Shravan kicked off his career as an entrepreneur. He built his first start-up in college and sold it in 2012. Since then he has led product teams for Flipkart, BlackBuck, Times group and Edureka. Shravan is a product influencer, mentor and angel investor.

Billy Naveed is the Chief Strategy Officer at Smile Group. He has spent 20+ years in finance with Morgan Stanely and Credit Suisse. He was the Head of Strategy at Zilingo, a fast-fashion unicorn, and he is the founder of the Young Founders School.

Tarun Davda is the Managing Director of Matrix Partners, India. Prior to joining Matrix Partners India, Tarun was the Co-founder, India CEO and Board Member at StepOut.com, a venture-backed startup. StepOut became India’s #1 online dating site with over 5 Million users. Before that, Tarun established BigRock.com (incubated by the Directi group) - India’s #1 provider of domain name registration and other web services. Tarun started his career at Infosys as an IT consultant. He has an MBA from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad and an Engineer from VJTI, Bombay.

Christina is the CEO and co-founder of The One Health Company, leaders in precision medicine leader for dogs with cancer. The One Health Company is a YC incubated start-up backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Tau Ventures. Christina has been also been recognized as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Abhishek Nag is the Director of Business Development Netflix India, previously with Facebook, Uber, Hike Messenger and National instruments. He is an angel investor with 40+ investments across domains in pre-seed/seed-stage startups.

Deboshree is Group Product Manger at Paypal, Founder & CEO of RoomPlays and blogger with 150K Instagram followers.

Omid is of Iranian origin who was born and bought up in Germany. He kicked-off his career with Google in Dublin, then moved to Google US and was responsible for Google’s LATAM cloud business, landed up heading international expansion for the Chinese bike-sharing unicorn platform Ofo and now he is with Robinhood, Fintech unicorn in the US. Omid's vast experience across different international markets allows him to draw comparisons between regions in ways few can.

Deborah is the Managing Partner of GSV Ventures and the Co-founder of ASU Summit, the incredible Deborah Quazzo. Coursera, Course Hero, Guild Education are among a few Edtech unicorn outliers that GSV has invested in over the years and Bill Gates, Barack Obama, George Bush are among the few superstars whom she has hosted over the 11 years of the summit.

Aviral Bhatnagar is the founder of “A Junior VC” Community and he is A Junior VC at Venture Highway. Aviral is a graduate of IIT Bombay and IIM Ahmedabad. Aviral’s startup essays and his views about the Indian Venture ecosystem have led to the creation of the 20,000-member strong “A Junior VC” Community and earned him 170,000+ follower on LinkedIn.

Sanjay is the Founder & Partner at 100X.VC and Mehta Ventures Family Office. Sanjay has invested in 150+ Start-ups across sectors with a 86% internal rate of return. in his words “Most startups will fail, so you can say everything sucks and be right most of the time. Although you never lose money with that strategy, you never make any either. “. In this conversation, he shares his learning from investing in Start-ups, the ethos of 100X.VC and ISAFE, his advice for new angel investors & VC on brand building and mentorship, and his “So What” strategy while evaluating a business idea.

Abhinav is the founder CEO of Shop101 & Dash101. A graduate of IIT Kanpur and IIM Ahmedabad. Abhinav in this conversations talks about his Entrepreneurial journey from Bain & Company to Shop101, Building for Bharat, How to create a reseller ecosystem and How Shop101 has been able to generate a positive contribution margin as the business has grown.

I was introduced to Devaiah Bopanna and his work through an article about his recent nationally acclaimed CRED IPL Ad series that he co-wrote with his ex-AIB colleagues. The series is a bold attempt by CRED, the Celebrities and the Script-Writer using celebrities to poke fun at advertisers’ obsession with celebrity endorsements.”.

He talks about his career from engineering to creative writing, his AIB journey, distribution by OTT platforms and his process of creative thinking and scriptwriting.

Matt talks about his venture capital journey in the last four years. Why he and his partners, musical.ly / TikTok alums, are optimist about the B2C space and Gen Alpha. He also shares his views about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the opportunity these foundations provide for VCs.

Frank Lantz, Director at the NYU Game Center and Owner of Everybody House Games, talks about game design, the brilliance of gameas such as Chess, Go and Poker and how entertainment companies such as Netflix see Epic Games and sleep as their primary competitor.

Ayush Jaiswal, founder Pesto Tech, who is on a mission to give everyone equal access to opportunity, talks about how his personal background of coming from a 2 tier city and early professional hustle helped him find purpose, value time and build a business with impact

Victor Lang, Co-Founder and COO of Gini shares how within 4 years of Gini’s existence they have been able to build a network of 3000 banks in 60 countries with a small team based in HK through afflictions and partnerships and consumer adoption through word of mouth marketing.

Victor also shares his insights on businesses he built previously and how he managed a successful exit after going insolvent 3 times.

My next guest on The One Percent Project is the world-renowned author, professor and tech entrepreneur Vikram Chandra. His first book Red Earth and Pouring Rain, published in 1995 was received with outstanding critical acclaim. It won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. In 2006, he published Sacred Games,  which won the Hutch Crossword Award for English Fiction and a Salon Book Award. In 2016, Sacred Games was chosen by Netflix to be their first original series from India. Vikram has been teaching creative writing for 25+ years first at George Washington University and now at UC Berkley. He is the co-founder and CEO of Granthika Co., a revolutionary software startup that is re-inventing writing and reading for the digital age. 

I enjoyed speaking to Vikram about his early life, his work and his entrepreneurial journey.

On the momentous occasion of India’s 74th independence day, I have with me a very special guest on The One Percent Project, Mr Jayant Sinha, Member of Indian Parliament and former Minister of state of finance & civil aviation government of India. Mr Sinha is alumni of some of the most prestigious universities across the world, the Indian Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School. He had a remarkable corporate career prior to joining politics, from heading the global IT practise at McKinsey to impact investing at Courage Capital and Omidyar Network.

Utsav Somani, AngelList India Head, talks about his early career, his mentor and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, the evolution of the Indian start-up investment space, building AngelList India and his view on COVID and its impact.

Praun Choudhary, Operating Partner OYO Hotels Japan, talks about the uniqueness and the way of doing business in Japan. The challenges of setting up OYO in Japan and the learnings. How COVID has impacted the hospitality industry and post-COVID scenario. Ritesh Agarwal's leadership style through the pandemic.

Sachin Tipnis, Senior Executive Director, The University of Hong Kong talks about his career, his father's influence in his career. How got he built the MBA program, what he looks for in candidates and the influence of COVID and MOOC on the Higher Education industry.

David Collect, media expert with more than 20 years of experience working with CNN, PERFORM, Opta Sports across Asia and Europe. Defines media in the 21st century, the new frontier in the media industry, the evolution of gaming, SnapChat in Asia and eSports and it’s future in Asia.

Rai Mahimatpat Ray is the District Magistrate, Collector & Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi, Jharkhand, India, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) - Government of India.

Ray talks about the Indian Administrative Services, the progress, the challenges and the opportunities Indians have and how IAS officers like him are working to better the lives and mitigate the challenges an every day Indian faces. We also talk about the COVID situation in Ranchi and measures he has taken to keep the pandemic in control.

Aditi Sharma, Head of Startup Programs & Investments at Grab Ventures talks about her career, how she and the team have built the corporate venture arm of Grab and how they work with startups and new technology to help them grow and scale in Southeast Asia.

Karthik Prabhakar is the Executive Director and Partner at Chiratae Ventures. It is one of India’s leading early-stage venture capital fund with investments in the likes of Myntra, Lenskart, Bounce, CureFit, Policybazaar, EarlySalary and others. In this conversation, he talks about the Indian venture capital landscape, early-stage tech sector and foreign entrants such as Amazon, TikTok and others.

Rui Ma, is the Writer & Co-Host of The Tech Buzz China podcast. She is a China Tech expert and ByteDance observer and commentator. She has spent 15 years in Investment Banking, Private Equity and Venture Capital. She shares her observations about the Chinese Tech ecosystem, the growth of the second generation of Tech gainst such as ByteDance, Pingduoduo, Meituan. and much more.

Alfonso Fiore, Head of Packaged Product at AirAsia. He has been with Grab, Agoda, Nokia and other leading firms shares his journey of becoming a product manager and how his entrepreneurial journey helped him to be a better product owner. He discusses the evolution of Super Apps in Asia, the role that Brand and Trust play in product development and why Google Maps is his most favourite product.