First Principles

1 · Summary

Part 2 of 2. Part 1 laid out the bet: a fund built only for Indian consumer brands, back when the idea sounded absurd, and the anti-power-law machine Kanwal Singh built to make it work. This half is the person. The near-decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him his love of consumer, the Intel years, and the Paper Boat conviction that taught him to back the founder over the idea. Then the man himself: parents who came to India as refugees from Pakistan, a father who kept collecting degrees while feeding the family, the coach he started seeing in his sixties and what separates coaching from therapy, and how he reads a founder by meeting their family. He turned down twice the money he could have raised. He rates his life a 10.
2 · Chapters

0:00 Part 2 intro
1:22 The Hindustan Lever decade that started it all
2:25 Intel Inside, and bringing the inside out
4:22 The Paper Boat conviction: backing the founder
6:38 What he adds as Fireside's "CEO," and value of good
17:53 Capping the fund: turning down 2x the money
20:24 Hiring: read the person, meet the family
27:01 Refugees, and a father who never stopped studying
30:39 Three words, and a 100%-locked calendar
33:30 Motivating through the down days
34:51 The coach, and coaching vs therapy
43:40 How he learns, and consumer vs tech founders
51:27 Rating his life a 10, and success redefined
52:47 Cotswolds, golf, and the empty nest refilled3 · Pull-quotes

[17:56] "I could have raised 2x of this. Genuinely, we could have raised 2x of this."

[23:55] "You cannot build to sell. You build for sustenance, you build for good."

[27:04] "Both my parents were refugees from Pakistan."

[51:34] "A 10." (asked how happy he is with his life)

4 · Frameworks & mental models

Founder assessment through the family: read a founder by their story and support system, often over a meal with their spouse, on the belief that no one survives a decade-long build without one.

Build for sustenance, not to sell: the best businesses are bought, not sold; you build for the long run and treat a sale as a business decision along the way.

Value of good ("do good to do well"): founder first, planet first, one Fireside, with goodness as the foundation of doing well.

Coaching vs therapy: therapy addresses a medical issue; coaching is vulnerability and honesty in a business context, and only works once you have the self-awareness to accept there's a problem.

This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar 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.

1 · Summary

Part 1 of 2. Kanwal Singh is the first venture capitalist to appear on First Principles, and the reason is the bet he made with the fund itself. In 2017, at the peak of the tech boom, he walked away from tech investing to raise a fund only for Indian consumer brands, when almost nobody believed India had a consumer story worth venture capital. His first backers weren't institutions, they were the consumer families who had built India's brands. This half covers the whole bet: what investors actually said when he pitched a consumer-only fund, why he raised in India rather than abroad, the ownership and follow-on design he corrected fund after fund, his claim that most of his companies succeed rather than one outlier, and his working map of India 1, 2 and 3. Part 2 turns to the person behind it.
2 · Chapters

0:00 Cold open and Part 1 intro
3:27 What Fireside is, and why it exists
10:04 How the fund makes money
11:23 The stats: 9 years, 4 funds, 68 investments
12:50 Raising fund one: consumer families, not global institutions
17:14 Two years as a solo angel
25:51 Ownership by design, and the follow-on model
34:05 What "success" means, and the anti-power-law
36:56 The centre of excellence
45:40 The three breaks from the VC default, and India 1/2/3
53:47 Quick commerce is brand-first
57:54 Brand vs performance: Underneat, Truvi3 · Pull-quotes

[0:20] "For a 5x, nobody will call you legendary."

[34:24] "We can build successful funds, fund after fund... not necessarily depending on those one or two outliers. Good news is we also have the outliers."

[40:26] "The answer lies in the question. It is hard."

[54:12] "The power of the brand is truly manifest in quick commerce."

4 · Frameworks & mental models

Anti-power-law investing: a portfolio where most companies clear "capital plus," not one built to live or die on a single outlier.

The three breaks from the VC default: consumer over tech, Indian consumer-family LPs over global institutions, one shared-credit team over lone-hero dealmakers.

India 1, 2, 3: his working map of where consumption grows, with India 2 needing products designed for it and India 3 reached through doorstep models.

Quick commerce is brand-first: scarce shelf space and a buy-not-browse shopper mean only brands with genuine pull survive.

This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar 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.

Part 2 of 2. In Part 1 we walked the road from 2011 — three companies, an investor ultimatum, and the capital it took to build. Part 2 is the mind. Saahil Goel starts with what, given hindsight, he'd do differently, then the first principles he runs Shiprocket on (distribution beats product), the two or three metrics he genuinely obsesses over, his bet on applied AI, why he believes you can't actually manage people, who does and doesn't survive at the company, the guitar he still plays, his dog, and the question Rohin closes every episode with, which Saahil answers with a single number.

Chapters

1:02  With hindsight, what he'd do differently
2:10  “A paisa of every transaction in India”
5:23  First principles: distribution beats product
11:32  The metrics he obsesses over
17:22  Betting on applied AI
29:33  “You can't manage people”
31:45  Who doesn't survive at Shiprocket
42:05  The guitar, Pink Floyd, and Bruno the CHO
58:28  The book he forgets — and how he reflects
1:00:50  Rating his life an 8
This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar 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.

Part 1 of 2. Most people date Shiprocket to 2017; in truth it was born in 2011, and the road there runs through two companies called KartRocket and Craftly. Saahil Goel walks Rohin through the build: Rs 15 lakh of their own money, nearly not being hired by their own first engineers, the hard lesson that in India you sell outcomes not software, an investor ultimatum to take $4 million or nothing, and by the end, just how much capital it's taken to get from that first office to the edge of a public listing. Part 2 gets into how he actually thinks.

Chapters

0:00  The company that started in 2011, not 2017
4:01  KartRocket: building an agency to learn the market
6:09  Bootstrapped on Rs 15 lakh
9:02  Why Indian SMBs wouldn't pay for software
17:58  “Take $4 million or nothing”
22:38  How Shiprocket was born
27:06  What Shiprocket actually is — and how it makes money
37:58  The IPO, and the state of the business
44:19  Quick commerce without owning a truck
48:42  From Delhi to a US career — and back
55:59  Lessons from failed fundraises
1:04:23  How much they've raised
This episode was produced by Rohin Dharmakumar 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.

Part 2 moves from the journey to the operating philosophy. Riyaaz Amlani unpacks his evolving stance on the aggregators — from resistance to "uneasy truce" — and the hard lesson that restaurateurs who send guests to Zomato and Swiggy have only themselves to blame. He argues delivery and dine-in are two different businesses, lays out his ambition to turn Impresario into a full-service-restaurant platform, and gets personal on hiring, Gen Alpha kids, weekends, and why his life scores 9.9 out of 10.

 
CHAPTERS
00:00  Recap and what's ahead: aggregators, the platform, the missing 0.1
01:48  "Digital landlords": Zomato & Swiggy, then and now
02:47  From resistance to cohabitation; how aggregators trained demand
05:24  Owning the customer; the cross-sector aggregator tension
07:04  The Booking.com / Hotels.com parallel and how hotels fought back
09:41  Build your own loyalty — don't blame the aggregator
10:09  Delivery vs dine-in: two completely different businesses
13:09  Restaurants beat the movies; lessons from raising VC/PE
16:34  Growth math: IRR, 20-25% stable growth, the late-stage problem
17:45  What motivates him: reading a city and its community
18:56  Curiosity over the "5 people"; planning for serendipity
24:29  Hiring: "doers and divas" and the largesse of hospitality
30:24  Social as social infrastructure: coworking from day one
34:25  First principles: people + process, soul, belongingness
37:08  Harvesting feedback: NPS, ORM, AI, the guest-experience officer
39:18  His kids and the Gen Alpha worldview
43:39  Weekends, FIFA, meditation, and protecting solitude
48:10  Comfort food and deferring to the chef
50:11  The 25-year view; the 10,000 cr platform and the invisible 85%
59:03  Anti-loyalty vs frequency: cafes are loyalty, restaurants are experience
1:01:44 Final question: 9.9 out of 10, and the missing 0.1

KEY COMPANIES & BRANDS

Impresario Handmade Restaurants; Social; Zomato; Swiggy; ONDC; Booking.com; Hotels.com; Rebel Foods; Haldiram's; Rameshwaram Cafe; Starbucks; NRAI; PlayStation/FIFA/Minecraft (referenced).

KEY CONCEPTS

Aggregators as "digital landlords"; deep discounting & perceived value; the uneasy truce; owning the customer relationship; the Booking.com hotel-inventory parallel; loyalty programs & direct outreach; delivery vs dine-in as separate businesses; patient capital, IRR & late-stage growth math; "doers and divas"; largesse of hospitality; full-service-restaurant platform; store-level vs corporate EBITDA; the invisible 85% "iceberg" of running a restaurant; anti-loyalty vs frequency; cafes (loyalty/convenience) vs restaurants (experience/variety); NPS/ORM/AI feedback; Gen Alpha.