The Nutgraf (Private)

AI may be overhyped, but the fact that we’ve now entered a different era seems to be apparent. Even if AI never attains the best version of itself, the world has already decisively changed. And everything from capital, geopolitics, and a cultural shift with work, careers, and society is playing its part. The old world is not coming back. And this new world is filled with paradoxes. Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains further in the last episode of The Nutgraf.

The art is back in product management. It’s like someone just pressed a switch, and all the old rules are gone, and nobody knows what the new rules really are. This is really what Praveen had missed the most about product management, as he had written about on multiple occasions. Back in 2011, when he started his career, product was dismissed as an offshoot of the IT team.By 2016, friends on track for partners at MBB firms were asking him how to break into PM. By 2020, gimmicky PM courses were everywhere. He has lived through it all. So by 2021, he felt that product management had run its course, and decided to do other things instead. But today, he feels like the power has decisively shifted back to Product.In this episode of The Nutgraf, listen to Praveen Gopal Krishnan’s journey and his advice for adjusting to this shift. 

Previously, we have looked at AI as a technology evolving in a (mostly) predictable way, and focused on what India should do across policy, tech, capital, and labour to take advantage of it. It is assumed that India will behave more or less exactly as it has in the past.  For this edition of The Nutgraf, we have Praveen Gopal Krishnan’s take on how AI could benefit India, based on his predictions of how the technology could evolve.

Over 500+ subscribers took the AI survey that we put out, and they poured their heart out.In fact, if you were at The Ken’s most recent event where we discussed product development in the age of AI, you’d have caught a glimpse of these responses.There are many themes that emerged from the survey. For this edition, Praveen Gopal Krishnan has chosen to focus on how using AI is making people feel, rather than the specifics of how they’re using it. 

When TCS broke the news about layoffs, guess what happened to its stock price?It fell by 3% in a week.When Microsoft announced multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few months, they used more or less the same corporate jargon that TCS did: AI transformation, agile, future ready. The layoffs also impacted the same cohort of employees across both companies—middle and senior management.And yet, the response couldn’t have been more different.In this edition of The Nutgraf, we have Praveen Gopal Krishnan with an in-depth analysis.

There have been telecom partnerships before, most notably with OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar, and Amazon Prime. They’ve usually been bundled with postpaid plans, or sometimes with higher value prepaid topups. Nobody has ever gone to Airtel and said, “we want you to give our product away for free to all of your subscribers….yes, all 360 million of them…send us a quote.” The most intriguing aspect of the Perplexity-Airtel deal is the full-scale buyout of distribution.Listen to Praveen Gopal Krishnan divulge on the importance of this kind of a deal in this edition of The Nutgraf. 

Amazon launched Rufus in February 2024, the company’s AI shopping assistant, across both mobile and desktop platforms. It is more popular than you might expect, that is, ~14% of all searches on Amazon’s website in October 2024 may have been handled through Rufus. After all, AI is the obvious answer to one of the hardest and most annoying problems in e-commerce. There are several reasons why but it primarily it comes down to three things. Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains in this edition of The Nutgraf. You can take the survey here. You can also read the edition here. 

After almost a year, Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto don’t appear to be on the front foot any longer. The market was bound to tap out at some point, and it was always going to plateau much faster than food delivery did. There is a well-known framework for understanding how humans respond to perceived threats. Tune in to The Nutgraf to hear Praveen Gopal Krishnan explain the above companies’ responses. 

In content creation, the only inefficiency is the time it takes to create something, which isn’t a bug, but a feature.In eliminating the inefficiency, AI ends up killing the very product it's meant to improve.If you are still unconvinced, ask yourself: What inefficiency does AI address in content creation?It’s certainly not volume.Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains further in this episode. Tune in.*****Apply for Product Designer: https://the-ken.com/jobs/product-designer/

Faith-funding is when founders change roles and become VCs to invest in their own companies.It was viewed with suspicion, and for good reason—a founder putting money into their company is a sign that they couldn’t convince someone else to do the same.Over the last few months, faith-funding hasn’t just become palatable, it’s become more powerful.Praveen Gopal Krishnan delves deeper in this episode of The Nutgraf. Tune in.

It’s almost a clichè these days to call Aggarwal as the Indian Elon Musk, particularly because it’s no longer evident if the comparison is meant to be complimentary or derogatory. But the one thing that Tesla and Ola Electric have in common is that both these brands seem to have been hit, and are less desirable in the minds of their consumers. These parallels don’t just extend to their EV companies, but it goes beyond that…to their other companies. Praveen Gopal Krishnan delves further in this episode. Tune in. Earlier The Nutgraf edition referenced in the episode: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/krutrim-is-whatever-ola-wants-it-to-be/

If you’re a B2B AI startup in India, your biggest problem isn’t revenue, costs, profit or even talent — it’s time-wasters. Like most things in life, this seems to be a uniquely Indian problem.And they are right to be frustrated by this. However, they also believe that this is a problem only faced by them. This is where they are wrong.Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains why in this episode of The Nutgraf. Tune in.

The blood-brain barrier is one of the human body’s most important ‘features’.A similar barrier existed in the tech world. But now, with the rise of agentic AI, platforms are looking to take things a step further.For example, Google changed its privacy policy so it could read Google documents that its users created using its platform. Meta went after all your social posts. Everything was fair game. Everything was eaten. The next to be devoured isn’t content—it’s e-commerce.Praveen Gopal Krishnan elucidates in this episode of The Nutgraf. Tune in.

Job cuts in tech happen all the time, but this one feels different. Microsoft didn’t get rid of its employees for the usual reasons—poor performance, macroeconomic conditions, or lower-than-expected earnings. In fact, as of today, Microsoft’s share prices are trading at close to its all-time high. If you wanted to, you could easily make the case that Microsoft, the most valuable company in the world, is in the most powerful and dominant position in its history.And at this point, what did Microsoft do?It eliminated human roles to focus on investing in machines instead.Tune in to the latest edition of The Nutgraf as Praveen Gopal Krishnan delves into the many intricacies of AI layoffs.

Recently, one of Ola’s investors slashed Ola's valuation to $1.2 billion—a drop of over 80% from its peak in 2021. On the other hand, at least one of the investors of rival Rapido believes that Rapido is worth $1.1 billion.Even if you ignore the specific valuations, the trend is uncontestable. Ola is falling, Rapido is climbing, and now, their paths cross in a moment of reversal. How did this happen?Well, there are two theories for it, explains Praveen Gopal Krishnan in this episode of The Nutgraf. Tune in.At 3:40, we mention that Rapido raised $200 billion from Westbridge Capital in September 2024. It had raised $200 million. The Ken regrets the error.The Ken articles referenced in the episode:Krutrim is whatever Ola wants it to beHere's how the Swiggy, Zomato duopoly might crack How Ola and Uber are being disrupted in Bengaluru 

A couple of days ago, Moneycontrol broke the story about a fallout between the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).The NRAI, India’s largest restaurant body, put a hold on onboarding new members onto the platform.Well, it has several reasons to be unhappy. After all, it's pretty undeniable now that ONDC is struggling to make its model work, especially in food delivery.In this week's episode of The Nutgraf, Praveen Gopal Krishnan explores the reasons behind the rising discontent—and why ONDC is losing. Tune in.You can also read this edition here. 

For over a decade, startups have been religiously pursuing hockey stick growth.But in 2025, we’ve discovered that’s not true anymore. Startups aren’t growing like they used to—so we’re discovering newer, more unfamiliar curves. Most strikingly, we now know what the shape of the downward curve looks like.How startups and companies respond to the pressures of a new environment where growth is no longer easy can be represented through a melting ice-cream curve. And it has three distinct stages.Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains in this episode of The Nutgraf. Tune in.------You can also read this edition here: The melting ice-cream curveEarlier edition referenced here: Founders are choosing respawning over resistance 

Earlier this week, Blusmart informed customers that it was temporarily pausing operations.What Sebi discovered in its investigation or the arcane methods of how Blusmart’s founders orchestrated this scheme is, frankly, less interesting.Instead, it’s the broader response to this that’s much more fun to talk about. As Youtube view counts often demonstrate, reaction videos can often be much more enthralling than the event itself.And the response to news about the Blusmart collapse has been strikingly consistent. In some ways, Indian businesses, startups, and media personalities have built and monetised a content economy that’s ultimately conformist, unremarkable, and post hoc.Praveen Gopal Krishnan explores how in this week's The Nutgraf.You can stream the full episode on The Ken app with a Premium subscription or on Apple Podcasts for just Rs 299/-.The Ken - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/the-nutgraf/Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-nutgraf-premium/id1808596991You can also read this edition here: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/stories/Read 'Blusmart’s relationship with co-founder’s listed company could prove costly' here -  https://the-ken.com/story/blusmarts-relationship-with-co-founders-listed-company-could-prove-costly/--------This is the audio edition of The Ken’s popular weekend newsletter, The Nutgraf. Every Saturday, author and host Praveen Gopal Krishnan reads aloud his latest edition, where he synthesizes and tells a story about the most interesting thing that happened that week in India’s business, tech and startup scene.

How many vehicles does Ola Electric actually sell in a month?Nobody knows the answer.In February 2025, the firm sold 25,000 scooters, but only 8,390 were registered on the government’s VAHAN portal. This discrepancy exists due to a renegotiation of contracts with two firms that carry out registration of vehicles for the EV maker.If you are a public company in the business of making automobiles and you’re in the middle of a bad narrative—as Ola Electric is—the timing of this seems… unnecessary. Most people are already spooked about your company’s performance. Now, you’re messing around with the one reliable source they had to track how you’re doing and creating room for all kinds of conspiracy theories to take root.For Ola Electric, this is the definition of a self-goal.So why do it?Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains in this week's edition of The Nutgraf. Tune in.--------You can stream the full episode on The Ken app with a Premium subscription or on Apple Podcasts for just Rs 199/-.The Ken - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/the-nutgraf/ola-electric-didnt-stop-digging/Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/ola-electric-didnt-stop-digging/id1794924619?i=1000703240087You can also read this edition here: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/ola-electric-didnt-stop-digging/'Are Trump's tariffs a crisis or an opportunity for India?' - https://the-ken.com/podcasts/two-by-two/no-easy-moves-is-india-facing-a-crisis-or-an-opportunity/--------This is the audio edition of The Ken’s popular weekend newsletter, The Nutgraf. Every Saturday, author and host Praveen Gopal Krishnan reads aloud his latest edition, where he synthesizes and tells a story about the most interesting thing that happened that week in India’s business, tech and startup scene.

On Thursday, Piyush Goyal, India's commerce minister, kicked the hornet's nest with his comments on the country's startups.Essentially, Goyal’s main complaint was… “why are Indian startups like this? Just look at China."As the minister’s remarks went viral, India’s startup leaders, executives, and thought leaders took a break from making Studio Ghibli-style AI images and decided to hop on the next trend—posting their thoughts on Goyal’s comments on Linkedin and X. Most of them are variants of—“Don’t blame startups, look at how many jobs we created”, or “China also started with food delivery before they built deep-tech companies”, or the more aggressive version: “Maybe you should help startups instead of blaming them.” A few leaders, quite predictably, even agreed with the minister and exhorted startups to take it as “constructive criticism”.These are all valid points of view, but they don't answer the most intriguing part of it all—why did Goyal say what he said?Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains in this episode of The Nutgraf.

Mayhem rules as India’s ad agencies get raided over alleged price-fixing—three days before India’s biggest marketing event.Praveen Gopal Krishnan explores why in this week's The Nutgraf.--------You can also read this edition here: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/stories/Earlier edition referenced: 'Jiohotstar is not content' -  https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/jiohotstar-is-not-content/

On Tuesday, Airtel announced that it had reached an agreement with SpaceX to distribute Starlink’s high-speed internet service to customers in India.By Wednesday morning, the business papers were in a predictable frenzy. The development was described as a masterstroke orchestrated by Airtel to get the upper hand over Jio, its competitor.A few hours later, Reliance Jio came out with an announcement of its own. Jio was also partnering with SpaceX for the same purpose.One of the oddities of India’s duopolistic telecom market is that when one company does something, it’s declared as a masterstroke, but when both companies do the same thing… well, nobody is sure what to make of it anymore. So, what do we make of it? What does this mean for Starlink, Airtel, and Jio?--------You can also read this edition here: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/starlinks-toe-hold-in-india/ Earlier edition referenced: 'Elon’s Monsoon Hungama moment' - https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/elons-monsoon-hungama-moment/--------This is the audio edition of The Ken’s popular weekend newsletter, The Nutgraf. Every Saturday, author and host Praveen Gopal Krishnan reads aloud his latest edition, where he synthesizes and tells a story about the most interesting thing that happened that week in India’s business, tech and startup scene.