Shows
Zero Shot (Private)A tale of two AI summits: Beyond the stolen robot dogHere’s a fresh take on the India AI Impact Summit that took place last week in New Delhi: it was two events stitched together, happening at the same time. There was the expo, where companies and nations showcased their products and services to 250,000 visitors. And then there was a conference where the geopolitical effects of AI were front and centre.Inderpal Singh, one of The Ken’s reporters, was on site to find out where the action was. Hear his firsthand account about what really mattered at the summit, what India’s builders were up to, and ho...
2026-02-2547 min
Zero Shot (Private)Voice AI startups are drawing in VC cheques fast. Will they 'differentiate or suffocate'?“It’s a land grab market…” That’s how our guest Devyani Gupta, the founder of voice AI startup Arrowhead, describes the space she is operating in. A simple fact illustrates the competition she is stressing on: VC funding for Indian voice AI startups went from seven crore in 2023 to 280 crore in 2025. There is a lot to unpack in these figures. And Mrunmayee Kulkarni, The Ken’s AI reporter, followed the money to do just that. She found that the voice AI market is crowded, with ma...
2026-02-1756 min
Zero Shot (Private)'Vibe coding lawyers': How AI is changing work at Trilegal"We have vibe coding and Biryani sessions on Fridays…”This is not a scene from a tech startup or a weekend hackathon. It is a statement by Nikhil Narendran, a partner at Trilegal who heads the firm’s digital innovation group.Naturally, our host Praveen Gopal Krishnan was taken aback. Lawyers who are coding away? Who could imagine?Praveen was even more surprised when Nikhil said he almost never types and only uses Wispr Flow now. “You are the first non-tech person to say that,” he admits.This episode takes you inside a l...
2026-02-1150 min
Zero Shot (Private)Will Sarvam be to AI what PhonePe became for UPI? No.Pick any conversation on AI in India, one project keeps coming up again and again: UPI. Every major stakeholder — across government and industry — seems to be interested in replicating the success story of the payments interface. Praveen Gopal Krishnan argues that Sarvam AI — the startup that is a VC darling and government favourite at once — is at the heart of this narrative.Here is the catch. The UPI moment came to India in very specific circumstances. We did catch the “lightning in the bottle” as Rohin Dharmakumar puts it. But it is unlikely to happen aga...
2026-02-0451 min
Zero Shot (Private)Google has the driver’s seat in the AI race. Who will trip it?“Imagine the AI race is a giant F1 race where the biggest AI companies are driving in their souped-up racing vehicles around the track again and again…”Rohin Dharmakumar sets the scene. Who’s winning this? Google, he argues. OpenAI and Anthropic are on the cusp of their IPOs and are doing whatever they can to generate revenue. Microsoft is trying to integrate Copilot into everything and is primarily in the enterprise game. Meta’s AI efforts are stuck in a loop of ads and more ads. Th...
2026-01-2850 min
90,000 Hours (Private)Meet the fitness warrior: why ordinary professionals are training like elite athletesOver the last few years, something has shifted.Run clubs. Triathlons. Marathons. Hybrid races. Ordinary professionals are training like athletes, travelling across the country to compete, and building entire social lives around endurance sport. Somewhere along the way, being an athlete became a badge of honour.Founders started rewarding it. Networks are forged around it. In this episode, we unpack the rise of what we are calling the “fitness warrior”. This is a new professional archetype where work follows the same logic as sport: optimise, train, perform.You will hear fr...
2026-01-2724 min
90,000 HoursBangalore is unsustainable. Here is how founders are building in smaller tech citiesBeing an employee in corporate urban India is living in a perpetual state of frustration. Long hours, followed by longer commutes. Add infrastructural issues to the mix. It is a nightmare. But people stay on for opportunities and growth. That script is now flipping. Smaller cities in India are attracting talent, GCCs, and investments. In this episode, we tell you the stories of three cities: Mangalore, Vizag and Nagpur. In Mangalore, we talk to a founder looking to make the region the “silicon beach of Ind...
2026-01-2022 min90,000 Hours (Private)Bangalore is unsustainable. Here is how founders are building in smaller tech citiesBeing an employee in corporate urban India is living in a perpetual state of frustration. Long hours, followed by longer commutes. Add infrastructural issues to the mix. It is a nightmare. But people stay on for opportunities and growth. That script is now flipping. Smaller cities in India are attracting talent, GCCs, and investments. In this episode, we tell you the stories of three cities: Mangalore, Vizag and Nagpur. In Mangalore, we talk to a founder looking to make the region the “silicon beach of Ind...
2026-01-2022 min90,000 Hours (Private)Why AI startups are rushing to hire a Forward Deployed EngineerThere is a new kind of race within AI startups and companies to hire for an old role that lends itself perfectly to selling products powered by technology that is changing as we speak. We are talking of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE). The techie, consultant and product person all rolled into one. Open AI created its FDE team early last year and Anthropic is rapidly growing its applied AI team, which includes FDEs and product engineers.VC firm A16z calls its the “hottest” job in tech right now, while Salesforce says the ro...
2026-01-0627 min90,000 HoursCareer forecast 2026: Pyramid collapse, hiring woes, and being human in an AI worldWe started 90,000 Hours because we believe careers are at an inflection point. Nothing seems to be certain anymore as old rules are actively being thrown out of the window. As we wrap up five months of this podcast, our reporting and stories reflected just that. We have covered everything from how the American dream has shifted to how traditional networking has upended. Across all these episodes, some themes showed up time and again. And before heading into 2026, we ask: — What will replace the pyramid structure in organisations? — What will the...
2025-12-2328 min90,000 Hours (Private)Career forecast 2026: Pyramid collapse, hiring woes, and being human in an AI worldWe started 90,000 Hours because we believe careers are at an inflection point. Nothing seems to be certain anymore as old rules are actively being thrown out of the window. As we wrap up five months of this podcast, our reporting and stories reflected just that. We have covered everything from how the American dream has shifted to how traditional networking has upended. Across all these episodes, some themes showed up time and again. And before heading into 2026, we ask: — What will replace the pyramid structure in organisations? — What will the asses...
2025-12-2328 min90,000 Hours (Private)Young, skilled and floundering: Overcoming the hope gap in careers todayEvery generation has a way of thinking their problems are unique and that they have somehow been handed the wrong end of the stick. Most times, it is a cliche. But sometimes, it captures a rare moment that we are only beginning to understand.Ask a young software engineer at an IT services firm today, this reality hits deep. The thing is there is a general sense of dread in the air. Only compounded by the constant noise about automation and AI taking away entry-level jobs. Add tariff uncertainties and clients tightening budgets... You get an...
2025-11-2534 min90,000 HoursYoung, skilled and floundering: Overcoming the hope gap in careers todayEvery generation has a way of thinking their problems are unique and that they have somehow been handed the wrong end of the stick. Most times, it is a cliche. But sometimes, it captures a rare moment that we are only beginning to understand.Ask a young software engineer at an IT services firm today, this reality hits deep. The thing is there is a general sense of dread in the air. Only compounded by the constant noise about automation and AI taking away entry-level jobs. Add tariff uncertainties and clients tightening budgets... You get an industry...
2025-11-2534 min90,000 Hours'I automated 20 hours of my work': What AI really does to your jobWe ran a survey last month asking professionals whether AI tools had saved them time at work. About 200 of you wrote in. We heard from consultants, lawyers, product managers, software developers — even a yoga instructor. There were early-career professionals, mid-level managers, and senior leaders.Almost all of them said AI had saved them time — meaning it had managed to reduce the amount of time they would otherwise spend doing certain tasks at work. Most also saw an increase in productivity. They were getting more work done.In this episode, we tell you the story of AI a...
2025-11-1121 min90,000 Hours (Private)'I automated 20 hours of my work': What AI really does to your jobWe ran a survey last month asking professionals whether AI tools had saved them time at work. About 200 of you wrote in. We heard from consultants, lawyers, product managers, software developers — even a yoga instructor. There were early-career professionals, mid-level managers, and senior leaders.Almost all of them said AI had saved them time — meaning it had managed to reduce the amount of time they would otherwise spend doing certain tasks at work. Most also saw an increase in productivity. They were getting more work done.In this episode, we tell you the story of AI a...
2025-11-1121 min90,000 HoursEx-founders get a bad rap, but they’re exactly who enterprises needWe have all heard the founder's story. The kind they make movies about. The kind of founders who see unimaginable success and build massive brands that the whole world knows about.Or the other kind of founder story. The founder whose startup fails. Who loses the company, the money, and sometimes even themselves along the way.But there’s another version of the founder story. What happens when the startup ends… but the founder doesn’t start again? What if instead, they take their entrepreneurial skills and instincts to another organisation as an employee?In t...
2025-10-2828 min90,000 Hours (Private)Ex-founders get a bad rap, but they’re exactly who enterprises needWe have all heard the founder's story. The kind they make movies about. The kind of founders who see unimaginable success and build massive brands that the whole world knows about.Or the other kind of founder story. The founder whose startup fails. Who loses the company, the money, and sometimes even themselves along the way.But there’s another version of the founder story. What happens when the startup ends… but the founder doesn’t start again? What if instead, they take their entrepreneurial skills and instincts to another organisation as an employee?In t...
2025-10-2828 min
3 ThingsIndia's AI dream, capping movie tickets, and stranded NASA astronauts to return homeFirst, we talk to The Indian Express' Vidhatri Rao about India's quest to create its own Large Language Model. She talks about Swecha, an NGO that is collecting data to create a Telugu LLM, by way of which she explains the nuances that developers will require to focus on in order to create an Indian LLM.Next, The Indian Express' Sanath Prasad talks about the Karnataka government's announcement regarding capping all movie tickets at Rs 200, including multiplexes. He explores why the Kannada film industry is in favour of the decision while the multiplexes are not. (15:49)Lastly...
2025-03-1732 min