Manish Sharma is a well-known name in the Indian startup world. For those who don’t know him, he’s the man who built Printo, the printing retail chain which is pretty popular in Bengaluru and some other cities.

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Outliers Season 01

Manish Sharma of Printo on his startup journey

Ashwini Asokan, the cofounder of artificial intelligence startup MadStreetDen, talks about how bad sexism really is in the country’s tech ecosystem.

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Ashwini Asokan gets vocal about sexism in the tech ecosystem

In this episode of Outliers, Naval Ravikant of AngelList talks about philosophical life lessons based on his own entrepreneurial journey and his observation of several founders and investors over the years.

*This podcast was recorded over the phone, hence the audio might sound a bit feeble and low. Sorry for this.

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Naval Ravikant - A monk in the Valley, tells us he's ruthless about time

In this episode of Outliers, recorded at his ancestral home in Agra, Amit talks about his experiences in building solutions that solve users’ problems and shares his concerns about the lack of disclosures on paid content and sponsorships by bloggers and social media influencers.

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Outliers S01 E10

Ep 10: Amit Agarwal, of technology blog Labnol, on why he gave up blogging

The story of Sinha’s journey to build Eko since late 2007 has all the ingredients of a thriller, and that’s not just about the number of times he faced near-death experiences as an entrepreneur. From navigating regulatory uncertainty to facing nearly a hundred creditors demanding payback one fine morning at the office, and hosting the world’s richest man Bill Gates and his family while being completely broke — all these incidents capture a quintessential entrepreneurial struggle.

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Outliers Ep 20

Ep 20: Abhishek Sinha’s extraordinary battle to build Eko India Financial Services

Wangchuk is best described as an innovator, education reformist and, of course, an Outlier.

“I’ve failed at more than half of the things I’ve tried. I wish people more problems, so they learn,” he tells me at the SECMOL campus in the Phey village, Leh.

This podcast is the first in a series of three stories we’ve managed to capture during a two-day trip to Leh.

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Ep 21: Sonam Wangchuk wishes people more problems, so they can learn

For Chilaka, 42, an engineer who grew up idolising Walt Disney and fantasising about creating animation superstars, the journey started in the year 2000. But, the real tipping point came in 2008, May to be precise, when Chhota Bheem first aired on Pogo channel.

EP 23: Meet Rajiv Chilaka, the man behind India’s animation superhero, 'Chhota Bheem'

“When Steve Jobs went on the stage in 2008 to announce the App Store, he showed the first 500 apps, and the five of them were built in this building, in Udupi,” Rohith Bhat, founder of Robosoft tells me as I sat down to record this episode of Outliers in Udupi, a small temple town located some 400 kilometres from Bangalore. 

What’s really exciting about Bhat’s journey is not just having Apple as an old, loyal customer, but how he is transforming Robosoft into a next-generation company that’s now building new gaming apps too. The Star Chef game, for instance, has been downloaded over 20 million times and has earned revenues of nearly $20 million in three years. 

But it’s been a long, slow and at times frustrating entrepreneurial journey too. And that’s where Bhat is inspired by the Japanese culture and its companies. If you remember the Outliers Podcast with Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu, even he talked about why Indian startups need to emulate the likes of Honda, and not get starry-eyed by looking at the Silicon Valley all the time. 

Listen in.

Ep 44: How Rohith Bhat built an app development powerhouse from small town India

In June this year, we broke away from the mould to bring you companies, not just people, that are outliers with How AngelList works. If there’s one thing common in most of the companies that appear outliers, it’s their founders. From Steve Jobs to Elon Musk and even Jeff Bezos, the founder’s mentality continues to shape Apple, Tesla and Amazon. These founders are almost inseparable from their companies. 

I first discovered Zoho, the cloud software company, in 2010 when I wrote this story about how it was hiring talent from unconventional places. Sridhar Vembu, the Zoho founder who we hosted for the 27th episode of Outliers podcast last July, is an outlier for many reasons. For instance, amid all the startup frenzy, he believes in “slow laddering” or building a company slowly, one step at a time. And to top that, he’s shunned venture capital and said “no” to an over $25 million acquisition offer from Salesforce during the early days of Zoho. 

Zoho, the cloud software company with estimated revenues of over half a billion dollars, is an outlier for many reasons. For over a decade, Zoho has been hiring students from government schools and colleges and turning them into software programmers. Such students will constitute nearly half of the company’s over 5,000 workforce very soon. 

And then, there’s a strong growing “Zoho mafia”, too, wherein former employees and leaders including Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham and Chargebee’s co-founders are building the next generation enterprise software companies. 
Why Zoho exists: Sridhar Vembu
“Zoho exists because India exists. I always thought that if I were born in a different country, I may not have been an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to become a professor, to teach, publish papers. But growing up here...surrounded by what you see, at some point you ask, 'Why are we so poor?’” he tells me. 

“I realised you have to be building a lot of things to skip poverty. And I am the kind of person who will say, 'What am I doing about it?’”

“So, in a sense Zoho exists because India exists and it continues to exist because some 27 million kids are born in India (every year), and in this state of Tamil Nadu the number is around 1 million. That’s actually the same number as all of Japan’s. And you see the number of companies, the brands from Japan….”

“South Korea has around 45 million population and Tamil Nadu has about 72 million people. Which brands are popular worldwide?”

“It’s not just about the brands. It all correspondingly translates into jobs, incomes, infrastructure, all of that.”

“If we are not able to create world class products and world class companies here, then we will never have world class incomes, or world class healthcare. In other worlds, we cannot consume if we cannot produce.”

Why Zoho exists: Sridhar Vembu

Over past few years, and especially as a rookie entrepreneur myself, a lot of what Phani said and did have started making sense. After the exit, he took his mother to London, her maiden foreign trip. Phani tells me now in this podcast that she’s not in a shape now to travel overseas. 

And his thoughts about how entrepreneurship is a self purification journey cannot be more relevant at a time when debates about a crisis of culture and integrity are at centre of India’s start ecosystem.

Ep 86: Phanindra Sama on how entrepreneurship is a self purification process

Sebastian Thrun, the Google X founder and among the world’s top AI and robotics scientists, flying cars are no more science fiction. In this episode of the Outliers podcast, he talks about flying cars and solving today’s problems 

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Outliers Season 03

Outliers S03E05

Sebastian Thrun on flying cars and solving today’s problems

A.R. Rahman is one of those Outliers who, having charted a unique path of their own and spread their magic along the way, hardly need an introduction. His genius lies not just in his creative melodies but in seeking out all that is ‘good’. In music, in life, in other human beings.

Produced by Anand Murali

Music Credit: www.accelerated-ideas.com/

Outliers Ep 100

Outliers 100: Life lessons from AR Rahman

For Ashwini Asokan, co-founder and the CEO of AI startup Mad Street Den, fears of her startup’s “death is a distraction.”

“Hope is not a strategy. I truly believe that death is a distraction, sooner or later everybody dies, sooner or later all companies die and it’s a question of when, it’s never a question of if and it’s a distraction and it’s the same for companies,” Ashwini tells me in this episode of the Outliers.

Outliers Special

Outliers Special Ep 04

Outliers Special Ep 04: “Hope is not a strategy”

In this episode of the Outliers podcast, I asked Rajan to share some of his learnings from watching the founders fight the battles they do, and how they can navigate the pandemic.

Outliers Special Ep 09

Outliers Special Ep09: “The strongest bonded teams are teams that go into a battle”

In this conversation with Amit Somani, you will learn about how to be watchful about different biases while making decisions or navigating a crisis. He talks about one of such techniques called “Invert, always Invert” from Charlie Munger, co-founder of Berkshire Hathaway.

Outliers Special Ep 10

Outliers Special Ep10: “Have an insanely optimistic belief about the distant future”

Outliers Special Ep 11

Outliers Special Ep11: Adya Satapathy

Outliers Special Ep 13

Outliers Special Ep 13: Tanmay Bakshi

Anand Deshpande has navigated Persistent over the past three decades through different cycles of disruptions and existential crises. He’s an outlier for many reasons. And creating a software product focused company when everyone around was busy building immensely lucrative software outsourcing business in the 90s, isn’t the only reason. Over the years, Anand has built Persistent into a well-oiled machine that continues to survive and keep its focus intact, sometimes doggedly.

Outliers Special Ep 14

Outliers Special Ep14: Season 4 Finale with Anand Deshpande

Tune in to this episode of Outliers to learn more about Superhuman’s product journey, and how Rahul is navigating the ongoing pandemic as an entrepreneur.

Outliers Season 05

Outliers S05E01

Rahul Vohra of Superhuman on Product Building Blocks and the Future of Email

In this episode, I talk to Jav Vijayan talks about some amazing, deep insights from Jay about life and work, and what makes Tesla and Elon Musk great.

Outliers S05E02

When you break out of resistance you always come out stronger

In this episode of Outliers podcast, I discussed a range of topics with Dhruv, from growing up to the thinking behind his selection of topics and his science fiction view of the world going forward.

Outliers Season05

Outliers S05E03

“The ideology spectrum is like a horseshoe magnet: both the ends are similar”

Gaurav Taneja, aka Flying Beast, is an outlier in the social media world for many reasons. First, he’s a professional airline pilot who worked with Air Asia until last week, before he turned a whistleblower revealing the airline’s security malpractices. Tune in to this podcast to learn life lessons from flying and being a social media influencer.

Outliers S05 E04

"If you have made mistakes, don’t carry that baggage forward."

Outliers How Notion Works

Outliers S05 E05 Ivan Zhao: How Notion Works

Outliers S05 E06 Akshay Kothari: How Notion Works

Outliers S05 E07 Camille Ricketts: How Notion Works

Outliers S05 E08 David Tibbitts: How Notion Works

Outliers S05 E09

Outliers S05 E09:  Mitch Grasso

Outliers S05 E10

Outliers S05 E10: Dhimant and Anuradha Parekh

Oultiers S05

Outliers S05 E11

Outliers S05 E11: Aditi Mittal

Outliers S05 E12

Outliers S05 E12: Ajit Isaac

Outliers S05 E13

Outliers S05 E13: Nand Kishore Chaudhary

Outliers S05 E14

Oultiers S05 E14 Lucky Ali

A podcast about the ones who chose to take the road not taken often. It’s about the crazy and the curious. Those that dared to stand out, and stand alone. It’s about their journey through hope and disillusionment, failures and pitfalls, joy and success, pain and bliss. It’s a candid exploration of experiences and ideas that have driven some of the shining stars, told as is.

Produced by Anand Murali

Outliers with Pankaj Mishra

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