Part 1: Captain Fresh's Utham Gowda on seafood as the world's last unorganised trillion-dollar industry, why undervaluation is a founder's superpower and his “reverse career path”

More from First Principles

1. 

   S3 · E12 · 30 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 3 min

   Part 2: Curefoods' Ankit Nagori on why Indians only eat healthy Monday to Thursday, focusing on brand over scale, and what drives him now

   Welcome back to First Principles . This is Part 2 of our full conversation with Ankit Nagori, founder and CEO of Curefoods. If you have not listened to Part 1, go back and start there. In this half, the conversation slows down a little and gets even more interesting. Ankit has strong opinions about why healthy food will always lose to biryani on a Friday night, what building a brand people actually love looks like, and what a Unilever of foods means to him. He is also candid about how he hires, how he spends his Sundays with his son, and what drives him beyond the business. _________ This…

2. 

   S3 · E12 · 23 Mar 2026 · 54 min

   Part 1: Curefoods' Ankit Nagori on cold emailing his way into Flipkart, designing for talent density, and surviving a pandemic on 2 crores a month

   Welcome to First Principles . This is Part 1 of our full conversation with Ankit Nagori, founder and CEO of Curefoods. Ankit joined Flipkart as the 22nd employee after cold emailing its founders at a book fair with almost no relevant experience and within six years he was Chief Business Officer. He then co-founded Cult with Mukesh Bansal, built it into one of India's most recognised fitness brands, and spun out Curefoods in the middle of a pandemic when the business was down to 2 crores a month. In this half, Rohin and Ankit get into what those Flipkart years really felt like, what talent…

3. 

   S3 · E11 · 2 Mar 2026 · 58 min

   Part 2: Captain Fresh's Utham Gowda on seafood as the world's last unorganised trillion-dollar industry, why undervaluation is a founder's superpower and his “reverse career path”

   Welcome to First Principles! This is part 2 of episode 52, the full conversation. Rohin met Utham Gowda at Spacebot Studio in Indiranagar on a Tuesday afternoon. Utham was compact, measured, and precise in the way he spoke, like someone who has spent years learning when to talk and when to listen. What's striking was how quickly he opened up. Within the first half hour of the conversation, you got the sense that this is someone who has thought very deeply about his own life, his choices, and what drives him. It makes for one of the best examples on this podcast of a guest easing into a…

4. 

   S3 · E10 · 9 Feb 2026 · 57 min

   Part 2: Kalpana Morparia on the culture of dissent, the 90-day NYSE race, and why ambition requires self-redundancy

   Hello, listeners, and welcome back to part 2 of the 51st episode of First Principles. Ms. Kalpana Morparia reached out to us via email after the bro-ification episode. It was the most pleasant surprise and we immediately knew we had to get her on the podcast. Here's someone who joined ICICI in 1975 as a lawyer, had absolutely no background in finance, and was then asked to run Treasury. She was terrified but her colleagues told her: " You do not say no to Mr. Kamath and live to have a great career in ICICI. " So she said yes and built one of the most remarkable careers in Indian banking. She…

5. 

   S3 · E10 · 2 Feb 2026 · 1 hr

   Part 1: Kalpana Morparia on the culture of dissent, the 90-day NYSE race, and why ambition requires self-redundancy

   Hello, listeners, and welcome back to part 1 of the 51st episode of First Principles. Ms. Kalpana Morparia reached out to us via email after the bro-ification episode. It was the most pleasant surprise and we immediately knew we had to get her on the podcast. Here's someone who joined ICICI in 1975 as a lawyer, had absolutely no background in finance, and was then asked to run Treasury. She was terrified but her colleagues told her: " You do not say no to Mr. Kamath and live to have a great career in ICICI. " So she said yes and built one of the most remarkable careers in Indian banking. She…

6. 

   S3 · E9 · 19 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

   Part 2: Darwinbox’s Rohit Chennamaneni on leading without a CEO, the ‘show don’t tell’ product mindset, and why resilience beats intelligence

   In the 2nd part of the 50th episode of First Principles , Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founder of Darwinbox, joins the show to talk about what changes after the early chaos of a startup fades. He explains how Darwinbox has operated without a CEO for years, how the 3 founders divide ownership of decisions instead of debating everything together, and why this structure helped them move faster as the company grew. Rohit also gets specific about product building. He talks about designing HR software that does not need training sessions or long explanations, why adoption matters more than feature…

7. 

   S3 · E19 · 28 Sep 2026 · 14 min

   Season 3

   Summary I have hosted First Principles for four years and 58 episodes, and I have never once stopped to look at it. This episode is me doing that. There is no guest. It runs about fourteen minutes, and it ends with something I need from you. Season 3 started with Vidit Aatrey of Meesho in April 2025 and ended with Mukesh Bansal in August 2026. A lawyer, a banker, a restaurateur and a venture capitalist were guests on a show I had built for founders. The businesses were trucks, fish, kitchens and bikes. And my questions moved away from fundraising and towards where a person came from and how…

8. 

   S3 · E17 · 17 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 3 min

   Part 2: Mukesh Bansal on hiring for loyalty to a mission, "no means not now", writing three books, and compounding sideways

   Where Part 1 followed the companies, Part 2 is about the person behind them. Picking up from Mukesh Bansal's move from one venture to the next, this half gets into how he finds talent ("work with them for six months"), the mental models he runs his life by, and the beliefs underneath them. He explains why rationally no one should start a company, how he processes every rejection as "no means not now", why he writes three books by simply showing up to a blank page, and how he separated the longevity basics he trusts from the biohacking he no longer does. It ends close to home: loyalty as…

9. 

   S3 · E17 · 10 Aug 2026 · 58 min

   Part 1: Mukesh Bansal on founder mode in the AI age, the three kinds of professionals in the AI age, and the Haridwar boy who found entrepreneurship in a library

   Mukesh Bansal has founded and left more companies than most people build in a lifetime, and in Part 1 he explains why. He founded Myntra and sold it to Flipkart; he co-founded Cult.fit and turned fitness into a category; and today he runs the AI company Nurix and the Meraki Labs studio. Asked what he is now, he says "a learner", and admits he gets bored the moment a company starts working. Part 1 traces the thesis and the companies: how he allocates his weeks, why he thinks the AI era rewards the hands-on operator over the people-manager, what Nurix and Fermi are, why Myntra's move into…

10. 

    S3 · E16 · 27 Jul 2026 · 1 hr

    Fireside Ventures' Kanwaljit Singh on the decade at Hindustan Lever that gave him consumer, raising half the fund he could have, and keeping a coach in his sixties

    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…

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