Good Morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

Five years ago, on this day, I published the first edition of The Nutgraf.

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Since that day, every Saturday morning, I’ve showed up in the inboxes of The Ken’s subscribers barring vacations and sick days. By my approximate calculations, I’ve written 230-odd editions, and nearly half a million words in all. Five years ago, if you’d told me that I’d still be here (admittedly with a much better logo), still writing this newsletter, I wouldn’t have believed you. Discipline and consistency have never been among my better qualities. I’m less ‘slow and steady wins the race’ and more ‘buy expensive shoes, fill the registration form, feel like I’ve done a lot of hard work, then tell myself I deserve a day off, and so decide to skip the actual race’ kind of a person. 

There are other reasons why this is such an unlikely product. A lot of people don’t know this—The Nutgraf began as a side-hustle of mine at The Ken. Fewer people know that it’s still just a side-hustle. Every week, I spend roughly five hours on The Nutgraf, and the rest of my time is devoted to my actual job, i.e., running the business team of The Ken. However, these five hours come at the most inopportune time—right at the end of the work week. When everyone else logs off for the weekend, that’s when my work begins. For five years, I’ve not done anything on Friday nights, except research, write, and edit the next day’s edition of The Nutgraf. I’ve skipped invitations for dinners, birthdays, and movies. I’ve written on flights, on trains, in cabs, in hotel rooms in random cities, and most memorably, once at The Ken’s annual company offsite. Even a global outage couldn’t stop me from writing today. I’ve written when I didn’t feel like writing, when I wasn’t in the best place mentally or physically, and when I simply couldn’t think of anything to write about. 

So today, for the first time, I thought I’d write a bit about why I write The Nutgraf. I’ll share how this has changed and evolved over the years, and how I think about it going forward. Naturally, this is somewhat self-indulgent. I’ll keep it as interesting as I can, and hope that I’ve earned the right to talk about it on the fifth anniversary. If you disagree (or if you are new here) and you want your regular Saturday morning reading fix, don’t worry, I have something for you at the end. You can skip right to it if you want.

Honestly, and this is something I’ve never told anyone—the hardest part of The Nutgraf isn’t the actual writing, but describing it. This has been my problem from the very beginning. Just scroll up and see how clumsily I described it in my first email five years ago. I can write landing pages for every product at The Ken, except my own newsletter. Whenever I met people who asked me what The Nutgraf was about, I was at a loss for words. At first, I used to say, “it’s a newsletter that gives you context and decodes the most significant events… where are you going…?” Then after a while, I started using words like synthesis, but that was usually met with blank stares. More than once, I had to explain the difference between synthesis and photosynthesis. On one occasion, I used a string of words like insight, deep-dive, sharp, and crisp until the other person politely asked me if I was a Linkedin influencer. 

Then I finally gave up and decided to ditch the prose and go for poetry instead. So I called it a newsletter about “connections and consequences”. This had a nice ring to it, but I’m not sure if it really worked. Then I started making big promises. I’d say that The Nutgraf “explains business to you in a way that you won’t forget”. Which is nice, I guess? But also somewhat presumptive? Maybe people don’t want to vividly remember everything they read, especially when they are hungover on a Saturday morning, which is basically The Nutgraf’s core audience. 

Also, because I had no idea what this newsletter was about, it prevented loyal, long-time fans and readers of The Nutgraf from recommending it to others. Especially in the early days. They loved it, but they couldn’t elaborate much beyond, “Bro, you gotta read it, it’s kickass.” Not persuasive enough to get someone to pay for a newsletter. 

Anyway, I’m happy to say that I’ve finally figured it out. It took me five years, but I finally have a description. It’s this: The Nutgraf is a newsletter where I find interesting ways to write about things that interest me. 

That’s it. 

Back in 2018, the reason why I left a career in tech and joined The Ken was for a very specific reason—nobody was writing about the things that interested me. And the ones who tried were boring and predictable. Most of the reporting about startups, tech and business were exclusively about layoffs or funding, depending on the market cycle. The commentary was as bad—mostly just anodyne interviews of CXOs and PR-fueled hand-wavy stories about what companies plan to do way into the future. All of these were written and delivered in the same manner, i.e., rewrites of press releases issued by the companies themselves. Most interviews of CXOs you read in business newspapers are just documents sent back and forth on email with zero interaction between the reporter and the subject. I’d had a short and eventful stint as a journalist at a business newspaper a decade earlier (which crashed and burned spectacularly), and I’d vowed never to go near the profession again. 

Over the last five years, the evolution of what I used to write about every week in The Nutgraf is a reflection of how my interests have changed over those years. In the beginning, I wrote about things like the annual budget, the economy, and policy. Then, I had a phase when I got tremendously interested in telecom. This was the time when Jio overran this sector, and Vodafone (now Vi) went through a dramatic destruction. Then came the pandemic, and I got fascinated by vaccines, geopolitics, and Jio’s grand ambitions. I think I had the most fun during the ZIRP era, because for the first time, I was starting to see patterns that others weren’t. This was also when I wrote the most popular edition of this newsletter—about the limits of India’s consumer market. What made it popular wasn’t just what I wrote, but when I wrote it. This was the edition that really changed everything, because The Nutgraf transitioned from a newsletter that wrote about the past and present, to one that connected things to see the future a little earlier than others. I’ve been able to do this reasonably well for topics like OTT, where I argued that Disney needed to kill Hotstar, why Netflix has started winning in India, and Zomato’s rise. Or about why online fashion is in a difficult place. But I’ve missed other things too, like the sudden, unexpected rise of quick-commerce. 

There were periods where I’ve gotten somewhat jaded and bored with startups and switched to writing about cities and careers. I’ve worked long enough in tech companies to know that successful products are as much accidental as they are orchestrated. Not everything is part of a grand plan. Most things can’t be measured. Organisations are filled with people—who have all kinds of motivations. If you start analysing things only after you know the outcome, you can retrofit any strategy from the past as an intentional masterstroke. This is fine if it’s written well, but it seldom is. 

This brings me to the last aspect of the evolution of The Nutgraf—the way I write about things. For me, this is as important (and as fun) as what I write. Over the years, I’ve gone from relying on historical contexts and analogies to being more comfortable writing about my own observations and experiences. Earlier, I used a ton of visual storytelling to explain strategies and what companies are trying to do. I’ve read obscure and somewhat abstract papers on political theory and linked it to the floods in Bengaluru. I’ve written imaginary dialogues for CEOs. I’ve conducted a discussion on Twitter Spaces. I’ve connected my early Product Management career with online fashion e-commerce today. And most recently, I used a subscriber survey to write a gigantic edition about how India uses quick-commerce apps.

Finally, a word of thanks. Even though I write this newsletter myself, I’m supported by an entire system behind the scenes, with my wonderful colleagues Jonathan and Rahul who help in editing it, and the design team led by Adhithi who creates all the wonderful visuals and charts you read every week. 

There’s exactly one publication in the world that lets me do all this, and that’s The Ken. For five years, everything that I’ve learnt about writing and about business comes from the collective knowledge of all the incredible writers, reporters, and editors here. Thank you to all of you. If The Nutgraf is a newsletter where I find interesting ways to write about things that interest me, then I need to be at an organisation that not just lets me, but even pushes me to go to places nobody has gone before. Rohin and Seema have created an organisation that automatically makes me do these wonderful things, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful. 

People in my life have shaped this newsletter too. Like my partner Sushmita, who has not just sat home on Friday nights with me for the last five years, but also taught me almost everything I know about arcane but relevant topics like political theory, cities, law, and urban development. I wish more people in tech were taught humanities—because it fundamentally alters the way you see technology, startups, businesses, and products. The world suddenly becomes more complex, interesting, and much more beautiful. Without her influence, The Nutgraf would’ve been just another tech newsletter, and my perspectives would’ve been much more limited.

Above all, thank you to you. I’ve done all kinds of experiments, not all of which have worked, but you’ve been patient, understanding, and let me indulge in it. Thank you for subscribing and for reading me every week, and for all the wonderful emails that you send me. I read everything I receive but I often struggle to reply. I’m trying my best to fix this. 

The Nutgraf is what it is because I stand at intersections. For the first six years of my career, I was building products inside India’s most formidable startups, looking out, and getting frustrated at how people were talking about what we did. For the last six years, I’m been inside India’s leading business journalism organisation writing about business and startups from the outside. I’ve been forged by tech, and shaped by people who’ve taught me humanities, storytelling, and narratives. Also, I live in Bengaluru, the epicentre of the transformation that India is going through.

And because this is Bengaluru, we stand at intersections much longer than others.  

Thank you for standing here with me.

Here’s to the next five years.

Introducing Two by Two

We are in 2024 now, and I don’t think things are much better. Most business journalism is about… layoffs or funding. Incredibly, the commentary has gotten worse. We live in a time of unprecedented upheaval in India’s businesses and technology. The revolution will not be written using generative AI.

So, on the occasion of The Nutgraf’s five-year anniversary, it’s time for us to go forward a little bit.

And that’s where Two by Two comes in.

Two by Two is our first subscriber-only, premium podcast. Frankly, I’m quite excited to do this, and I’m incredibly glad to have Rohin with me, who shares my love for both interesting things and saying it in interesting ways—something he’s done all through his career, and in his podcast plus newsletter First Principles. Each week, Rohin and I, as the co-hosts, will be joined by a few interesting and opinionated guests to discuss some of the biggest questions from the world of Indian business. Most podcasts are about narratives, about explanations, about scripts, and about answers. Instead, we will freely discard any narratives we start with if that’s what our discussions demand. We are not an “explainer” show. We don’t (and won’t) have a script. And we won’t always have the right answers.

Today, we’re describing Two by Two as your personal investigative business brain.

I don’t know what that will be in five years, but if The Nutgraf has taught me anything, it’s that Two by Two will also evolve and go through its own journey.

But that journey begins with the very first episode, which we’ve titled, ‘Will Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe becomes Flipkart?’. The premise is simple. Walmart-owned Flipkart and Walmart-owned Phonepe are both headed by ambitious CEOs. Both companies want to IPO. Both have over 500 million users. And both are also increasingly competing on each other’s respective turfs. Who will get to the other place first?

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Today morning, Rohin wrote about what this conflict is all about, and summarised our hour-long discussion with Prof. R Srinivasan, who teaches Strategy at the Indian Institute of Management–Bangalore (IIMB), and Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation and Anumati, one of the earliest startups in the Account Aggregator (financial data sharing) space.

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If you haven’t listened to our podcast yet (you should), you must absolutely read this story.

Will Flipkart become Phonepe before Phonepe becomes Flipkart?

I’ll be back next week with another edition of The Nutgraf.

Take care.

Regards,
Praveen Gopal Krishnan

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