The 33kV Wall
The energy transition is creating a brief opening in one of the hardest industrial sectors to crack. Can a new generation of Indian companies build lasting capabilities before the window closes?
BK
Bharti Krishnan
Founder | Finetrain
Entrepreneurship Startups And Innovation
205 results
Factories Without Formulas
India is investing billions in battery manufacturing. But without the capital to fund indigenous technology, the intelligence inside those factories may continue to be imported.
BK
MJ
Bharti Krishnan & Mridu Jhangiani
·Product & Innovation
From Bazaar to Breakthrough
The next phase of global innovation may emerge not from invention, but from how India adapts and stretches existing tools.
SV
Shrinath V
Founder, The Salient Advisory | Product & AI Strategy Advisor
·Founder Journeys
The best stories of 2024
Scintillating, insightful conversations and incisive articles on business, entrepreneurship and geopolitical trends
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
How mega founders unlock startup success - Part 2
Where do outliers come from? In Part 2 of their conversation Rahul Chandra, author and MD of Arkham Ventures and Third Eyesight’s founder and CEO Devangshu Dutta discuss the startup ecosystem, the power of storytelling, and building for Middle India
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
How mega founders unlock startup success - Part 1
Good delusions, irrational goals, marathon mindset. In Part 1 of their conversation, Rahul Chandra, author and MD of Arkham Ventures and Third Eyesight’s founder and CEO Devangshu Dutta discuss what sets outlier entrepreneurs apart
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
The biggest non-Excelable part of the startup success puzzle
An extract from Rahul Chandra’s book, ‘Tightrope to the Moon: How Mega Founders Win the Startup War’
RC
Rahul Chandra
Managing Director | Arkam Ventures
·Founder Journeys
The risk taker
What makes Elon Musk tick? Insights from the biography by Walter Isaacson
DS
D Shivakumar
Operating Partner | Advent International
·Founder Journeys
From employee to entrepreneur
A message to young graduates: Don’t ignore regular salaried employment. It can gain you valuable business experience and serve as a springboard to an entrepreneurial career
SV
S. Ramakrishna (Rama) Velamuri
Strategic Growth & Innovation Expert | Visiting Professor
·Founder Journeys
The Middle India consumer
Middle India has low trust for a new interface. Here’s how Razorpay, Smartstaff, Meesho, Dehaat and Krazybee are investing in gaining trust. An extract from ‘Winning Middle India: The Story of India’s New-Age Entrepreneurs’, by Bala Srinivasa and T.N. Hari
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Insights #701: Making trillion-dollar companies
July 25, 2022: Climate propaganda; The trouble with education’s ‘success formula’; Age of surveillance
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Insights #696: Treat everything as an experiment
July 18, 2022: James Webb’s impact; What can’t be taught; The paradox
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Insights #674: Why some startups fail
June 16, 2022: Crypto matters; The toll of psychiatric drugs; Defining age
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
The Contrarian
Sridhar Vembu built Zoho by questioning the conventional wisdom. For the longest time, no one took much notice. But now people are curious about what makes him—and Zoho—tick
NR
N S Ramnath
Senior Editor | Founding Fuel
·Venture Ecosystem
FF Insights #613: VCs and startup culture
March 21, 2022: Newspapers battle to go digital; Life outside Excel; The global world order
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Insights #603: A fairy tale called startup
March 4, 2022: The state of nuclear fusion; Putin’s inner circle; Hooked
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Insights #592: Sustainable innovation
February 17, 2022: The average and the poor in India; How to be a bad boss; Corrigendum
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
How Sugar Cosmetics found its sweet spot
Vineeta Singh, CEO of Sugar Cosmetics, talks about turning fears into wins, taking an unconventional approach to succeed in a David & Goliath scenario, and building resilience from unexpected sources
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #531: The right age for entrepreneurship
November 24, 2021: AR fights VR in the metaverse; How to choose a doctor; Fake news
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
An edtech entrepreneur’s learning journey
Parul Gupta, co-founder and president of Springboard, talks about how to build a trusted education brand, cultivate a growth mindset and unlock the big opportunities that lie ahead in edtech
AB
Aparajita (Opu) Bhattacharyya
Product Strategy & Monetization | Microsoft Azure, Seattle
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #475: Think like an entrepreneur
September 15, 2021: Covid strikes education; The line between failure and fraud; Divine signs
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
From Bombay to the Bay Area: The journey of “becoming a VC from nothing”
Shruti Gandhi, general partner and founding engineer at Array Ventures, talks about the power of people and relationships in building an entrepreneurial career from nothing, how to hustle when you know it’s the right time for you, and what it takes to be a constant learner
AB
Aparajita (Opu) Bhattacharyya
Product Strategy & Monetization | Microsoft Azure, Seattle
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #459: Why show not tell matters
August 26, 2021: Unbundling market infra & market governance; How Taliban used tech; Road signs for a polarized world
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #453: The phases of disruption
August 19, 2021: How balloon angioplasty proved to be a disruptive technology; The difficulty of interpreting data; How Amazon wins; Star Wars explained
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
Gaining ‘Tracxn’ in the startup world
Neha Singh, co-founder of Tracxn Technologies, talks about why she chose to be a generalist despite her techie credentials; how the startup ecosystem is evolving in India; and what founders ought to know about venture capitalists
AB
Aparajita (Opu) Bhattacharyya
Product Strategy & Monetization | Microsoft Azure, Seattle
·Product & Innovation
FF Daily #416: Practical innovation
July 6, 2021: Innovate to solve immediate and consequential problems; Vaccine hesitancy; The space race; Thinking time
FF
Founding Fuel
·Product & Innovation
FF Daily #411: What the Wright brothers got right
June 30, 2021: Clayton Christensen on reframing the problem; A new normal in Singapore; Michael Holding on racism; How teachers feel now
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
Is it in the genes?
A conversation with Anu Acharya, CEO of Mapmygenome and former CEO of Ocimum Biosolutions, about why early influences matter, what it takes to scale two genomics companies in India, and everything else from Nutella cravings to an equal partnership at home and work
AB
Aparajita (Opu) Bhattacharyya
Product Strategy & Monetization | Microsoft Azure, Seattle
·Founder Journeys
An Indian beauty upstart in the West
A new breed of South Asian women entrepreneurs is leading Americans to embrace the Indian grandmother’s age-old beauty secrets in new easy-to-use ways. As a marketing strategy, it is Indian tradition marketed in digitally native formats
AB
Aparajita (Opu) Bhattacharyya
Product Strategy & Monetization | Microsoft Azure, Seattle
·Product & Innovation
FF Daily #382: The battle between fuel and friction
May 27, 2021: Why do new ideas meet with resistance; The politics of Gandhi; Zoom fatigue; Here comes the sun
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #365: What an entrepreneur needs to survive
May 5, 2021: How to increase the power of your voice; Statistics and stories; Music for the day: Naham janami
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
The ant and the elephant
Designing for 100 million users is different from designing for 100 users and scaling it up for 100 million, says Shankar Maruwada, co-founder of EkStep Foundation
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #303: Figures resemble their creators
February 19, 2021: When a big tech acquires a startup; Lessons from Paul Graham; What WFH really is
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #291: Should you shift from WhatsApp?
February 5, 2021: Meditations on entrepreneurship; Misinformation—WhatsApp vs Signal and Telegram; How to read online reviews; Be yourself
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
FF Daily #283: Technology and trust in agriculture
January 27, 2021: How to perform under pressure; Why you should throw away your Bucket List; The state of Machine Learning
FF
Founding Fuel
·Venture Ecosystem
FF Daily #282: How VC pitches are failing women entrepreneurs
January 25, 2021: The genius of RK Laxman; Why you should watch Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out; How to correct VC bias against women entrepreneurs; Where Bernie meets Gump
FF
Founding Fuel
·Venture Ecosystem
Trendspotting 2021: Inside India’s Great Digital Reset
A new set of winners and losers are poised to emerge from the ashes of the pandemic. And a wall of foreign capital is pouring in to fund a slew of digital startups. A peek into what 2021 portends
HC
Haresh Chawla
Investor | Entrepreneur
·Founder Journeys
To learn fast, go to the real place, look at real things, talk to real people
In this excerpt from his new book ‘The Learning Factory: How the Leaders of Tata Became Nation Builders’ Arun Maira talks about what he learned about learning from TELCO’s Sumant Moolgaokar
AM
Arun Maira
Former Chairman, BCG India | Member, Planning Commission
·Product & Innovation
When the Swiggy generation rediscovers the home kitchen
Home food was boring for millennials, but the pandemic and the sudden loss of options to eat out or order in is forcing them into the kitchen. They are discovering the joys of being creative and the assurance of being self-sufficient, but they still want convenience. Food entrepreneurs are taking note
RK
SK
Rachita Kapoor & Sanjeev Kapoor
·Social enterprise
The doughnut and the hole
A message for social change-makers seeking ‘impact on scale’ even as sources of funding dry up: Stay focused on the purpose (the doughnut) and not the scale and brand of your organisation (the hole). Innovate. And learn to be a catalyst
AM
Arun Maira
Former Chairman, BCG India | Member, Planning Commission
·Founder Journeys
WFH Daily #180: The Paytm playbook
September 19, 2020: How to say no; Climate change—a harder problem than the pandemic; Four Covid-19 personality types
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
Dad, I want to start up!
Pallavi Desai wanted to start up seven years ago. Her dad Santosh Desai had serious reservations. She finally launched Creatures of Habit in February 2020. In Episode #4 of TAMG, they share the passions and anxieties, the highs and lows, as Pallavi set up an apparel label.
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
Everybody loves a startup…
Or maybe not, as Pallavi Desai found out when she told her dad she wanted to take the plunge. But dad Santosh Desai, CEO of Futurebrands, thinks it’s appropriate to ask any venture hard questions. And they’ve both learnt from Pallavi’s startup journey
PD
SD
Pallavi Desai & Santosh Desai
·Founder Journeys
WFH Daily #105: Focus on how you are solving the problem
July 6: Be right, but also be helpful; thrive under constraints; spot the creative destruction
FF
Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
What to copy from China
The Growth Factor: Local problems, global solutions; China strategy; MSME loans
NR
N S Ramnath
Senior Editor | Founding Fuel
·Founder Journeys
WFH Daily #94: Are you measuring what matters?
June 25: Keep your eyes on the mission, measure what matters, plan ahead
FF
Founding Fuel
·Product & Innovation
Six learnings on innovation from anti-Covid efforts
Organisations across the spectrum have been able to get their act together, focus, and solve tough problems quickly. This makes you wonder—why are they unable to muster even a fraction of this ability in normal times?
RK
Rishikesha T Krishnan
Former Director, IIMB | Professor of Strategy
·Founder Journeys
The Satara uprising
Across Maharashtra, fresh farm produce was rotting after supply chains were disrupted by the national lockdown. The local administration in one of the districts offered a window of opportunity to small farmers’ collectives to build a farm-to-home model—and dramatically turn the tide
AS
Anmol Shrivastava
Entrepreneur, strategist, and technology consultant
·Founder Journeys
Masterclass: Shaping startup culture
‘We are customer-driven’, ‘we are data-driven’. Those are typical refrains from companies. But are they really? It all boils down to culture
FF
Founding Fuel
·Ethnography and Design Thinking
Why ethnography is the fuel for innovation
Ethnography is a life skill that many business executives and entrepreneurial leaders need to learn. It keeps them grounded and in tune with the lives of real people they hope to serve
FF
Founding Fuel
📚 Curated Collections
Explore hand-picked article collections in this category
The Future of Work and Agentic AI Series
Much of the conversation around AI focuses on tools and productivity. This series looks deeper: at how AI is reshaping organisational architecture—how decisions are made, how knowledge flows, and how work itself is organised.
5 articles28
War in the Middle East: Global Faultlines
Stories that place the Middle East’s conflicts in a wider global, historical and cultural context.
7 articles55
Journeys, Not Itineraries
Reflective travelogues on attention, place, and inner change.
8 articles112
Thinking Through India’s AI Moment
Essays and conversations on AI, institutions, and scale in India.
7 articles52
Leadership When Judgment Matters
A curated selection on leadership under uncertainty.
7 articles75
Best of FF Life 2025
Personal essays on work, learning, and the inner life.
11 articles161