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Two By Two Fri, 21 Nov 25 |
An abridged, narrative version of the latest episode of Two by Two, The Ken’s premium weekly business podcast. |
Good Morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
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Hello, I’m Uddantika, the producer of Two by Two and First Principles, and I’m both excited and a little nervous to be writing this newsletter for the first time.
But there’s something thrilling about diving into this topic–a feeling similar to when I discovered I could get Perplexity Pro free for a whole year, just for being an Airtel user. Accessing a premium AI tool without paying a rupee, especially after watching my friends pay a lot for ChatGPT plans like Go, Plus, or Pro, I felt like a proud “Airteller”.
Then came the announcements. ChatGPT partnered with Phonepe. Gemini tied up with Jio. Suddenly, that sense of exclusivity began to fade.
During this episode, Rohin shared an analogy that made everything click for me. He compared these AI deals to India’s famous sale season, where retailers mark up prices by 2X just before offering a 50% discount. As he put it, Indians want to know the MRP before appreciating the price. We don’t just want something for free–we want to know we’re getting the expensive thing for free.
That’s exactly what these AI companies are banking on. The sticker prices of–Rs 17,000 for Perplexity Pro and Rs 35,000 for Google’s AI bundle–aren’t just numbers. They’re psychological anchors that make “free” feel irresistible.
But here’s what this episode really dives into: while these marketing strategies have definitely created excitement, what’s actually happening behind these deals? Are AI companies making money from these “free” partnerships? Who’s spending what, and why?
That’s exactly what our hosts, Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, set out to decode in this episode. They brought in two experts to help reverse-engineer the playbook: Prakash Deep Maheshwari, who led Netflix’s growth strategy across India and Southeast Asia, and Chandrashekhar Vattikuti, former CPO at Inmobi and SVP of their Telco Cloud business.
Together, they did something ambitious: they tried to work out the actual math behind these deals–estimating costs, activation rates, and what both sides stand to gain or lose.
Here are some excerpts.
Why telcos? The desperation theory
One of the most fascinating debates in this episode centred on a key question: why are AI companies courting telcos so aggressively? Is it purely about achieving scale just scale, or is there a layer of desperation on both sides?
Prakash Deep Maheshwari: I think what they do know is that there is value in scale for this kind of business, and India is, in some sense, the place that gives you scale the fastest and the easiest.
Chandrashekhar Vattikuti: The first is the money, which in many cases drops straight to the bottom line… The second thing is that, beyond the check, there is also a constant push to find solutions that just result in a more sticky customer base and or new customer acquisition.
Rohin Dharmakumar: I feel it’s money, money, money… The analogy is, remember during the boom years of the VC thing, we were all ordering stuff at discounts from all over the place and like, God bless VCs. This is that, but at a planetary scale.
The activation math: how many users will actually sign up?
Perhaps the most revealing part of the discussion was when the team tried to estimate actual user activations. With Airtel boasting 391 million subscribers and Jio around 400 million, how many would actually activate these AI products? The consensus was surprisingly conservative.
Rohin Dharmakumar: It’s somewhere between five and 10 million is my random guess… Airtel has 391 million users. Activations would be around 10 million is my guess.”
Prakash Deep Maheshwari: Anything in the ballpark of 15 to 20 million is what I would ideally want to get out of it… but my more realistic guess of what that number is probably similar to yours which is like anywhere between five to seven, best case 10 million.
Chandrashekhar Vattikuti: I don’t see that in reality being anything materially more than 10 million, right? And I’m sure they’re throttling towards a desired number that everyone’s gunning towards… a 15 million is where it starts becoming so successful that it’s not healthy for you, if you were Perplexity. If you are Gemini, it is completely different, right?
This episode attempts to unpack the complex economics behind these simple “free” offers. The hosts and guests estimate that AI companies might be spending around Rs 5,000 per activated user–combining telco payments and inference costs–hoping to capture somewhere between 5–10 million users.
The motivations and planning behind these deals are undoubtedly complicated, but personally, I’m going to enjoy my free Perplexity Pro plan until it lasts. Will I renew it when the year is up? I honestly don’t know.
Will you renew yours?
Listen to the whole episode here.
Continuing our new section featuring listener critiques and alternative takes, we turn our attention to last week’s episode on “What will bring ambition back from the dead?”
We were joined by Arundhati Ramanathan, Gaston Schmitz, and Vipul Nanda to discuss who bears the burden of reigniting purpose—the corporation or the individual?
Here are two distinct perspectives from our subscribers:
Ramkumar RS, a subscriber of The Ken argues that the fundamental purpose of a corporation has inverted over the last three decades:
The purpose of a corporation was always shown as a circle with stakeholders in 360 degrees… All the stakeholders were ‘people’—shareholders/creditors were also people… We deeply knew but rarely said this: ‘People are the purpose, Money is just the means.’
Today you can define a corporation visually as a machine… You put all the people on the top… And at the bottom you get a bin full of money. It is not even hard cash. It is imaginary money—shares at 1000X multiples… An optimisation algorithm mutated and got a life of its own. It says ‘Money is the purpose, and people are just the means.’
Abhishek Pal, another The Ken subscriber, believes the loss of ambition is a symptom of economic stratification:
My opinion is that ambition is getting lost in India due to huge competition, societal pressure, and complacency. People at the bottom are struggling to survive as wages are stagnant… while those at the top are closer to FIRE and those at the middle are weighed down by the pressure of keeping up.
We love reading your takes. Please keep sharing them by emailing us or leaving a comment.
In other exciting news, The Ken’s Premium subscribers can now listen to the full Two by Two library—including paywalled episodes—on Spotify. We’re the first organisation in India to partner with the audio streaming platform and make this possible for you. Link your accounts on The Ken and Spotify in under 30 seconds, and our full podcast catalogue unlocks instantly. Check it out now.
If you liked the episode or have thoughts, arguments, or data to share, please email us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.
Until next week,
Uddantika
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Uddantika produces The Ken's subscriber podcasts Two by Two and First Principles. A journalism graduate from OP Jindal Global University, she's interned across editorial, video, and radio at Burda Luxury (Lifestyle Asia), The Print, HT Media (Fever FM), and ZEE Media.
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