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Markets, Media And The New Rules Of Access
The Weekend Playlist
In partnership with
Good morning.
This week’s conversations look at what happens when familiar routes to growth, visibility and security begin to change.
Kirthiga Reddy explains why brands now need to think beyond search rankings as consumers increasingly turn to AI for answers. Alok Agarwal sees market leadership shifting towards manufacturing, power and defense. Saurabh Mukherjea makes the case for rethinking retirement around longer lives, higher costs and more global careers. And Viraf Patell looks at why Bollywood still struggles to connect new writers with serious buyers.
Across markets, media and careers, the old playbook is being rewritten.
WEEKEND EDITION
Why AI Visibility Could Matter More Than Search Ranking
If consumers stop searching through links and start asking AI for answers, who controls brand discovery?
In this episode of Weekend Edition, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Kirthiga Reddy of OptimizeGEO.ai, about how generative AI is changing brand discovery, marketing and purchase decisions.
Search once rewarded rankings, keywords and paid visibility. AI answers work differently. They draw from websites, reviews, creators, forums and other authority sources, making consistency and credibility across the internet increasingly important to how a brand is represented.
Yet bigger media budgets do not necessarily translate into greater AI visibility. Reddy says brands need to understand not only whether they appear in an answer, but why they appear, what consumers are asking and where information gaps exist. That makes AI search useful not just for marketing, but also for product, PR and customer research.
The next shift could go further still, as AI agents begin researching and making purchase decisions on behalf of users.
Key Insight
AI is turning brand discovery from a ranking problem into a trust problem, where consistency across websites, reviews, creators and forums determines how brands surface in AI answers.
SPECIAL EDITION
The Market Is Moving Beyond India’s Old Winners
What if the companies that dominated Indian markets for two decades are no longer where the strongest growth is emerging?
In this episode of Special Edition, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Alok Agarwal of Alchemy Capital Management, about the changing sectoral leadership of Indian equities.
For years, banks, IT services and consumer companies benefited from favourable structural trends. Alok now sees a different set of forces gaining importance: manufacturing, power, defence, data centres and metals, supported by rising CapEx, electrification and stronger domestic production.
Yet the shift is not simply from services to manufacturing. India may also benefit from global themes such as AI without being a leader in chips or large AI models, through the power equipment, cables, transmission systems and raw materials that this new infrastructure demands.
Key Insight
The next phase of Indian market leadership could be shaped by companies supplying the physical infrastructure behind global technology and domestic industrial growth.
The Future Of Retirement May Be More Global Than Domestic
What happens when you live longer, earn unevenly and face a cost of living that rises faster than expected?
In this Special Edition featuring a Spotify Unlock conversation, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Saurabh Mukherjea of Marcellus Investment Managers, about how retirement planning is changing as people live longer, work differently and face rising household costs.
Mukherjea sees a growing mismatch between increasingly global lifestyles and largely India-focused portfolios. Overseas education, imported technology, healthcare inputs and other expenses can all carry significant currency exposure, while Indian equities can also go through long periods of weak returns.
However, his case for global investing is less about chasing higher returns and more about reducing dependence on any one market. Combining Indian and international assets, bonds, gold and liquid investments can make retirement outcomes less vulnerable to a single economic cycle.
Key Insight
Retirement planning is shifting from building a domestic investment corpus to managing a longer, more expensive and increasingly global financial life.
THE CORE QUIZ
Which company operates Green SM, the ride-hailing fleet, in India? |
THE MEDIA ROOM
The Long Road From A Good Pitch To A Greenlight
If the film industry is always looking for original stories, why do so many new writers still struggle to get into the room?
In this episode of The Media Room, Vanita Kohli-Khandekar speaks with Viraf Patell, Actor, Model, Screenwriter, about how Bollywood finds writing talent and why that process remains fragmented.
Patell’s Frame Your Idea initiative tries to make that market more structured. Instead of writers chasing producers through informal networks, it brings both sides into a curated pitching format. The platform has grown from 650 meetings in its first edition to more than 3,300 structured interactions involving over 450 writers and around 75 producers.
However, the numbers also reveal how narrow the funnel remains: only about 5–7% of meetings lead to another conversation.
Key Insight
Bollywood’s bottleneck is not the supply of writers, but the limited number of serious buyers and the lack of structured ways to connect the two.
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