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Articles by NS Ramnath
The Best of FF Life 2025
As the year draws to a close, we’re sharing The Best of FF Life 2025—stories we hope you’ll return to slowly. These are stories to linger with. To reread. Perhaps with a blanket, a cup of something warm, and a little more time to think. At Founding Fuel, we’ve made a deliberate choice to keep our work open to all. Not because it’s easy—but because we believe ideas travel further, and matter more, when they are shared freely.
A Vellayan: The quiet patriarch
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Our extended minds and AI notetakers
By NS Ramnath & Charles Assisi Many times in the last few years, we started noticing strangers in our Founding Fuel Masterclass Zoom sessions. They were often called Notetakers and were brought into the room by our guests. These Notetakers were punctual—they were always on time—and remained quiet through the session. It didn’t take long for us to realise they were AI bots that record and transcribe every word uttered during online meetings.
Who owns your data-you, the creator, or the platform?
Home Daily Newsletter Articles The Kunal Kamra-BookMyShow face-off is more than a dust-up between a performer and a ticketing platform. It is a snapshot of a larger issue that will only become more pressing. And it impacts all of us By NS Ramnath and Charles Assisi When comedian Kunal Kamra posted a letter on X (formerly Twitter) addressed to ticketing platform BookMyShow (BMS), it instantly drew widespread attention. The company was under pressure to delist him from the platform.
We’ve been experimenting with intermittent fasting. Here’s what we’re learning
Home Daily Newsletter Articles Charles Assisi and NS Ramnath share their journeys—and lessons—on the road to better health. And Dr Aasim Maldar, an endocrinologist, weighs in on how and why to make it something one can sustain By Charles Assisi This isn’t a story about dramatic transformation. This is no breathless account of having lost a dozen kilos. And there is no “before” and “after” photo. What I do have is something quieter. A shift in how I live. A growing awareness of what my body needs.
Briefing #3 | The US-China tech rivalry: More than tech
By NS Ramnath and G Venkat Raman The third of four briefings to set context for the Masterclass series on The World in 2025, scheduled for Friday, 31st January 2025, 6:30 pm and Friday, 7th February 2025, 6:30 pm. Read Briefing #1 and #2 here. As you read this, DeepSeek, an AI company spun out of a hedge fund, is making waves in the tech world. It has built AI models that match its rivals OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, at a fraction of the cost.
Paytm: Emperor’s new clothes
By Indrajit Gupta and NS Ramnath For more than three weeks now, the indignation and the diatribe launched against the Reserve Bank of India for its action against Paytm Payments Bank, has beggared belief. The primary arguments trotted out—all of it remarkably specious—is that the regulator doesn’t understand the fintech sector (and insists on unnecessarily stringent KYC norms), isn’t willing to create space for innovation in the banking sector and it tends to favour the incumbent banks.
FF Life: A parikrama… of history, architecture, culture, and spirituality
[Meenakshi Amman temple, Madurai. Photo by Bernard Gagnon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia] Our good friend Raja Narayanaswami’s gift to us — a short piece on his visit to Ujjain’s Mahakaleshwar Jyotirlinga that he sent along with his travelogue on Nepal — sparked an intense discussion in the team. What do temples represent beyond religion?
Tim Harford on sensemaking and storytelling
By NS Ramnath and Anmol Shrivastava During the early days of the pandemic, Tim Harford, who writes the popular Undercover Economist column for Financial Times, and most recently, the author of How to Make the World Add Up, lost the man who persuaded him to become an economist. Peter Sinclair, who taught Harford and many others including former UK Prime Minister James Cameron at Oxford University, succumbed to Covid-19 in March 2020.
FF Recommends: How to plan the jab
Home Daily Newsletter Articles March 13, 2021 | FF Daily #322: For citizens, there are many unanswered questions swirling around India’s vaccination process that’s currently underway.
FF Recommends | Clubhouse, the buzziest new social media app
[Photo by Dmitry Mashkin on Unsplash] Good morning, By now you must have heard about the buzziest new social media app, Clubhouse. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were on it recently. Launched with about a thousand members only in May last year, it is already valued at $1 billion. Twitter has launched a rival, and Facebook is planning one soon. It’s only on iOS right now, but an Android version will be out soon.
The Rise of the Indian Start-Up Ecosystem
Home/Magazine Archive/November 2019 (Vol. 62, No. 11)/The Rise of the Indian Start-Up Ecosystem/Full Text India Region Special Section: Big trends By Charles Assisi, Avinash Raghava, NS Ramnath Communications of the ACM, November 2019, Vol.
Meet the Aadhaar naysayers, whose objection is that the system takes power away from the people
Why should civil society – which presumably has public interest in mind – want to junk a programme that the government asserts was created for inclusion, better delivery of public goods, and for innovation that will help society at large? The answer to these questions lies in the stories of social sector activists and technologists, and how they came together to fight what they believe is one of the biggest wars of our times. Identity or identification?
Today in Tech: Facebook Search; Predictive Computing; iPhone 5
Facebook Search Two years back I had an opportunity to meet MS Krishnan, a professor at Ross School of Business, University Michigan. Among the things he spoke about was a big trend that he captured in The New Age of Innovation. In the book, CK Prahalad (his mentor and co-author) and Krishnan argue that businesses will increasingly need to customize their products/services for each individual consumer and tap the best resources from across the globe.
These 6 charts explain why Infosys and the media disagree on everything
Infosys, India’s storied software exporter, has slapped legal notices on three newspapers seeking Rs2,000 crore ($338 million) from each in damages. The stories “have caused and continue to cause grave and irreparable damage, loss, harm and disrepute to Infosys,” the company says. Once a darling of the media, Infosys has been getting bad press of late. Obviously, its management has a different take on the state of its business.
These 6 charts explain why Infosys and the media disagree on everything
Infosys, India’s storied software exporter, has slapped legal notices on three newspapers seeking Rs2,000 crore ($338 million) from each in damages. The stories “have caused and continue to cause grave and irreparable damage, loss, harm and disrepute to Infosys,” the company says. Once a darling of the media, Infosys has been getting bad press of late. Obviously, its management has a different take on the state of its business.
How To Get A Pay Hike
Inspired by a piece my colleague Charles Assisi shared on Facebook earlier today, I did some research on a subject that's probably more relevant these days - how to get a hike. I am happy to report I have found five definite ways to get one. But before you go on, two points. There weren't too many studies available for India, but I assumed what works for someone somewhere, will work for anyone anywhere. And two, I have been rather generous in interpreting certain factors, as you will see.
An accidental entrepreneur's pioneering venture takes off
Imagine going to a foreign land. An unfamiliar landscape, alien tongue and a strange culture will assail your senses. Even if you were a seasoned traveller, you would be glad you carried a copy of Lonely Planet. This was the state of the venture capitalists, who beat their paths to India during the dotcom boom. Here, a new crop of young entrepreneurs ��� not burdened with the memories of the licence Raj and aware of the infinite possibilities of technology ��� were just emerging.
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