Dear readers, 

This past weekend has been a series of community activities and updates followed by learning adventures. Before we dive into the details, here is a quick overview for you - 

• 🚀 Fellowship launch(s): D2C Fellowship with Arjun and Trisha Vaidya, and The Writing Fellowship

• 🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Community updates: Making it to British Civil Services, COVID response, and NC at UChicago Booth.

• ✨ New masterclasses: Case Study: How GEM Crossed 1.1 Lakh Crores in transactions in one year, Building your Personal Brand with India’s Image Guru Dilip Cherian, and Taking Philosophy to the Markets with Mahmoud Rasmi

• 💌 Newsletter spotlight: Humor Seriously: Making Sense of Our Weird and Whimsical Life, Jeff Bezos' Final Shareholder Letter: Key Insights, and Bilibili, New Book, 100 Podcast Episodes

Fellowships

D2C Fellowship with Arjun and Trisha Vaidya

With the official kick-off on Friday, the Network Capital D2C Fellowship lead by Trisha and Arjun Vaidya is in full swing.

For the first cohort we have 28 fellows who are either founders, operators, or investors in the D2C space in India. So far we have explored the fundamentals of brand building, product development and online marketing. In the coming days we’ll be doing a deep-dive on operations, team-building and hyper-scale.

The Writing Fellowship

The internet is sprinkled with great advice on writing effectively. Lack of actionable nuggets isn’t what holds most of us back from becoming better writers. The core challenge is to translate ideas and insights into action.

In the Network Capital Writing Fellowship starting April 24, 2021 you will engage in deliberate practice as a community. There are 3 key elements to the fellowship.

• Practice the pitch

• Get the first draft out

• Time-Bound, Deliberate Practice

Enrol for the Writing Fellowship

Community Updates

Making it to British Civil Services

COVID response

Karishma Jadeja will be leading all Network Capital collaboration efforts to fight COVID for all stakeholders. We believe in her and she is incredible. This is the link to the subgroup.

NC at UChicago Booth

Multiple Network Capital members were invited as panelists for the Chicago Booth Emerging Markets Summit. If you want to speak at panels with high visibility, please comment on this thread with your email and primary area of expertise/curiosity.

Nominate Yourself

Masterclasses

Case Study: How GEM Crossed 1.1 Lakh Crores in transactions in one year

Watch the Masterclass

Mr. Kumar is a member of the Indian Administrative Service of 1987 batch. He holds a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur in Electrical Engineering, M Tech from IIT Delhi and an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas with concentration in Finance and Management Information Systems. After graduating from IIT, Kanpur in 1985, he was awarded a full scholarship for MS leading to PhD in Digital Electronics in Carnegie Melon University in Pennslyvania, USA.

Mr. Kumar brings with him 33 years of experience in public administration. In Government of India, he served as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry from 2010-2015 and also held additional charge as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Delhi Mumbai Industrial Development Corporation (DMICDC) Ltd. He has also served in West Bengal in various capacities as Additional Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary, Excise Commissioner, District Magistrate etc leading Departments and Directorates.

Building your Personal Brand with India’s Image Guru Dilip Cherian

Watch the Masterclass

Dilip Cherian, who is widely regarded as the ‘Image Guru’ of India, is the co-founder of Perfect Relations, which is South Asia’s largest Image Management and public affairs consultancy group for the last 20 years, with more than 17 offices in India and across South Asia.

Dilip pioneered the concept of ‘Image Management’ in the country. He is also a valued political advisor and a practising lobbyist of repute. Dilip started his career in Government, where he was Economic Consultant to the Ministry of Industry, Bureau of Industrial, Costs & Prices (currently known as Tariff Commission), and went on to become the editor of Business India – India’s leading business magazine. Subsequently, he was designated as the Co-Founder and Business Editor of The Observer of Business & Politics, one of India’s largest business dailies.

Taking Philosophy to the Markets with Mahmoud Rasmi

Watch the Masterclass

“Inspired by the Socratic method, and a long tradition of philosophers who were interested in the practical side of philosophy, I am interested in working with people and enterprises to cultivate an action-driven, belief-disrupting, philosophical way of thinking.”

Newsletters

Humor Seriously: Making Sense of Our Weird and Whimsical Life

These days one can’t help but think of Dante’s Divine Comedywhere for the first time humans were depicted as the products of a specific time, place and circumstance as opposed to mythic archetypes or a collection of vices and virtues. Perhaps this pandemic has made us all victims in direct and indirect ways but life, it just goes on. It marches forward as are making plans.

Read More

Jeff Bezos' Final Shareholder Letter: Key Insights, and Bilibili

Endings matter much more than we realize or give credit to. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ final shareholder letter was the perfect end to his tenure. It was memorable, remarkable and sprinkled with profound insights on business, creation and reason for being.

Read More

New Book, 100 Podcast Episodes

Chinese tech industry is adventurous, surprising and way ahead of most if not all countries. Couple that with the massive state intervention and the great Chinese firewall, things starts getting dystopian pretty quickly. That is another discussion for another day. 

Last week we presented the masterclass and newsletter by former US Army veteran, INSEAD MBA and Amazon executive Rohan Pasricha who invested almost all his savings into a single Chinese stock - NIO - and made $15 Million in a few months. 

Today we are going to tell you more about another less known (in the west) company - BiliBili. This is how my friend Lillian Li describes it

Read More

Give a gift subscription

⚡️If you are new to Network Capital, start by going through our most popular - masterclass (Career Principles with Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller); newsletter(Writing Fast and Slow); and podcast (The art of writing with Dr. Shashi Tharoor)

💝 Connect and network with other Network Capital members here. You can sign up for a networking session and our serendipity tool here.

💞 If you need an invite to Clubhouse or Lunchclub, let varya@networkcapital.tv know. You can also reach out to them for feedback, suggestions, doubts and any help navigating the Network Capital ecosystem.