FinFloww

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

Shubman Gill, the poster boy of Gillette, is growing a beard.

But why is the face of India’s biggest shaving company refusing to shave?

Because the beard actually protects him from the biggest risk to his brand:

Being trapped as a youth icon.

Youth icons are valuable, but they are also replaceable.

Every few years, a younger, cuter, more explosive player arrives. And brands naturally start moving towards them.

Gillette itself did that by going after Abhishek Sharma while Gill was already their ambassador.

Which reveals the real problem.

“Clean-shaven young Indian star” is not an identity.
It’s a category.

And categories are replaceable.

This is the exact trap Gill wants to escape.

For years, Gill has been perceived as the future Indian captain. So much so that now when he’s actually entering that era, people don’t feel emotionally overwhelmed by it anymore.

Because audiences already consumed that fantasy years ago.

That’s why Gill cannot compete on freshness anymore.

Freshness is crowded.

There will always be another young batter with a viral innings, sharper social media presence, and newer aura.

Gill instead has to compete on stature.

And stature requires a completely different visual psychology.

The clean-shaven Gill looked like potential.
The bearded Gill looks like responsibility.

The beard adds so much authority apart from the visible visual difference.

For the first time, Gill looks less like Indian cricket’s “next big thing” and more like someone expected to carry Indian cricket itself.

And this transition matters far more than style.

[Aryan Kochhar @aryan_kochhar]

We hear about funding rounds all the time, but what actually goes into the decision to invest?

Love that @Lightspeed is opening up its original memo with SuperLiving's founders, very interesting watch!!

[Aryan Kochhar @aryan_kochhar]

the most dangerous career advice in 2026 might be telling someone to master a tool instead of mastering a problem.

imagine spending your entire 20s learning complicated software only for AI to make half of it unnecessary.

chatgpt can now generate interactive interfaces from a simple prompt.

the real advantage might be knowing what to build, rather than knowing how to build every part of it.

[Aryan Kochhar @aryan_kochhar]

scaling vertically, as one does after an IPO hahaha

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

@aryan_kochhar Is this a sign you start posting from FinFloww again?

cc @__Aayushi__

[MoonBandit @__Aayushi__]

A fulfilling life is usually built on repeated moments of discomfort.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

WhatsApp appointing Kunal Shah isn’t a hiring decision.

It’s a survival strategy.

Here’s what nobody is telling you:

If WhatsApp wanted to improve messaging, it wouldn't need a novelty billionaire fintech founder, right?

After all, there are no messaging, distribution or customer acquisition problems to solve.

In fact, WhatsApp may be one of the few products in history that has escaped becoming optional.

Think about the apps on your phone.

When we want a digital detox, we delete Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.

When we want to be more mindful about our spending and eating habits, we delete Myntra, Nykaa, Swiggy.

But have we ever deleted WhatsApp?
No.

Not because we love it, but because it has quietly become the modern equivalent of a telephone number.

Imagine deleting WhatsApp for even a week and your family, office, clients, school groups and housing society disappear.

And WhatsApp knows this.

It knows that billions of people open the app not because they want to, but because they have to.

That's a very powerful position to be in.
But it also creates a question:

If everyone already uses your product, where do you go from there?

Historically, tech companies answer that by moving closer to money.

👉🏻 Google started with search and built an advertising empire.

👉🏻 Amazon started with books and became a commerce giant.

👉🏻 Apple started with hardware and then layered on services.

Because attention is valuable. But transactions are even more valuable.

And WhatsApp sits on top of one of the largest reservoirs of trust on the internet.

Billions of conversations flow through it every single day.

Which raises an interesting question:

What if the same app that carries conversations also carries transactions?

Because there is another category of apps people never uninstall.

Payment apps.

You may delete social media or shopping apps.

But at least one payment app always survives.

Because moving money has become as fundamental to modern life as communication itself.

Now imagine a world where every transaction begins and ends inside WhatsApp.

You discover a product; talk to the business; ask questions; get support; place an order.

And finally, make the payment—all within the same chat.

At that point, WhatsApp isn't really competing with Telegram anymore.

It's becoming infrastructure for commerce.

And while that sounds ambitious, China has already shown what it looks like.

WeChat started as a messaging app. Then payments were layered on top.

And once money started flowing through the platform, businesses, services and commerce followed.

Eventually, WeChat stopped being just an app.

Instead it became the internet itself.

And that's why the decision to bring Kunal Shah on board starts making sense.

WhatsApp already has payment and business features.

But the challenge is building behaviour around those transactions.

Getting businesses, merchants and consumers to naturally conduct more of their economic lives inside the platform.

And that's precisely what Kunal has spent years studying.

Not just payments. But trust, incentives, financial behaviour and consumer habits.

Which makes this move look less like a leadership change and more like a strategic signal.

WhatsApp may be preparing for a future where the world's largest communication network also becomes one of the world's largest transaction networks.

If you liked this read, like, retweet & follow @FinFloww for more.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

IPL is beating the English Premier League, La Liga, & every other football league in the world by a huge margin.

But is that even possible when football has over 4 billion viewers and cricket has less than 2 billion?

Take a look at the per-match broadcasting rights value of the major sporting leagues in the world.

The NFL leads the list at $36.8 million per match, but right behind it sits the IPL at $16.8 million per match, nearly 70% higher than the English Premier League's $9.9 million per match, despite football being the world's most popular sport.

The gap becomes even more striking when you look at the other major football leagues. La Liga generates $5.2 million per match, while the Bundesliga brings in $4.6 million.

Even globally followed American leagues like the NBA ($1.1 million) and MLB ($0.8 million) are nowhere close.

Evidently so, IPL is beating the most-watched football league in the world — EPL (English Premier League).

Football has over two billion more viewers than cricket worldwide.

But the reason why IPL outpaces all other sporting leagues except one is not population.

Upon his encounter with the IPL, Trevor Birch, former Chelsea CEO, came with an outsider’s perspective.

He pointed to the league’s success as a standalone brand. Now, as Indians, this seems the norm for us.

But in other nations, individual teams like Man City and Chelsea are far bigger brands than the EPL.

So what did the IPL do differently? The unique player auction.

In football, player deals are uncapped and independent of the league. This allows wealthy clubs to stack top talent with ease.

But in the IPL, teams operate under a strict purse cap, ensuring a level playing field.

The mega auction every three years further reshapes squads, preventing long-term dominance.

The last one in 2025 incentivized franchises to scout young prospects like Vaibhav Suryavanshi, fostering fresh talent.

A true IPL enthusiast knows the unpredictability of the infamous points table.
This creates an interest for THE GAME, not just a specific team. The IPL’s compact 60-day schedule creates a fast-paced tournament.

This sustains fan excitement and maximizes engagement.

This sets it apart from longer leagues that suffer viewer fatigue. But when you look at the EPL, you see that the league was established in 1992.

Yet certain clubs like Manchester United have existed since 1878. That’s why the club structure ruled the football world.

So when the IPL launched in 2008, it smartly adopted the franchise model.

It learnt from global leagues to balance commercial viability with centralized control.

This ensured the IPL functioned as a cohesive, league-driven product, unlike club models that prioritize team autonomy over centralized coordination.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

Shubman Gill, the poster boy of Gillette, is growing a beard.

But why is the face of India’s biggest shaving company refusing to shave?

Because the beard actually protects him from the biggest risk to his brand:

Being trapped as a youth icon.

Youth icons are valuable, but they are also replaceable.

Every few years, a younger, cuter, more explosive player arrives. And brands naturally start moving towards them.

Gillette itself did that by going after Abhishek Sharma while Gill was already their ambassador.

Which reveals the real problem.

“Clean-shaven young Indian star” is not an identity.
It’s a category.

And categories are replaceable.

This is the exact trap Gill wants to escape.

For years, Gill has been perceived as the future Indian captain. So much so that now when he’s actually entering that era, people don’t feel emotionally overwhelmed by it anymore.

Because audiences already consumed that fantasy years ago.

That’s why Gill cannot compete on freshness anymore.

Freshness is crowded.

There will always be another young batter with a viral innings, sharper social media presence, and newer aura.

Gill instead has to compete on stature.

And stature requires a completely different visual psychology.

The clean-shaven Gill looked like potential.
The bearded Gill looks like responsibility.

The beard adds so much authority apart from the visible visual difference.

For the first time, Gill looks less like Indian cricket’s “next big thing” and more like someone expected to carry Indian cricket itself.

And this transition matters far more than style.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

That’s a very good insight.

Even founder led growth was a small window. Now if a founder is too involved in building a personal brand they feel like a try hard. Too much salesy.

It becomes worse when VCs do it because they can’t help but make it feel very preachy.

One good way of going about it is by making it look nonchalant (even if you’re making an effort).

Make it look like you’re simply sharing your notes. Or airing discussions that you usually have (peak example Nikhil Kamath)

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

Kolkata was once supposed to be India’s Silicon Valley, not Bengaluru.

The city had everything going for it:

Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata ran India’s first electronic computer in the 1950s, Webel was building an electronics hub by the 1980s, and the city already had colonial‑era advantages like early electricity, telegraphs, railways and a major port backing a dense belt of elite colleges and industry.

On paper, this should have been the place where India’s tech story took off. Instead, Bengal’s politics went to war with computers.

The CPM government spent the 70s and 80s backing protests against computerisation in banks and offices because they feared computers would eliminate jobs.

The message to business was very clear:

if you bring technology here, you will face resistance.

While this fear was driving policy in Bengal, Bengaluru and Hyderabad were opening their doors to the same companies.

So the big IT parks, global tech campuses, startup activity, and serious capital flowed there, not to Kolkata.

And once that happens, it is very hard to catch up.

Regions that resist new technology suffer from what economists call “technology diffusion failure”:

early adopters keep getting compounding benefits from knowledge spillovers, while laggards fall further and further behind.

When an ecosystem settles in places like Bengaluru, network effects and skills start to lock in those advantages, and late entrants face higher costs, weaker local talent pools, and capital quietly moving elsewhere.

TMC arrived promising to correct this.

And some IT investment did come in; the state talks of around ₹14,000 crore in IT and new parks in Salt Lake and New Town.

But Bengal still did not become the first choice for large product companies or global tech hubs, because the deeper issue remained: investors had seen how politics could suddenly turn against a project.

The best example of that is Singur, where Mamata Banerjee’s agitation forced the Tata Nano plant out of Bengal.

That is exactly what can finally change now.

When Tata left Singur, Gujarat under Narendra Modi showed what a pro-industry state can do by turning the same project into a showcase at Sanand.

If the newly forming BJP government brings that same investor-friendly mindset to Bengal, the pitch to companies changes in a very practical way.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

@aryan_kochhar MBA is expensive, but does have an ROI if the college is prestigious.

Do you think that’ll change in sometime and education will become a non-concept? Or something like the Network School will take over.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

Zero-posting is signalling higher status than someone who is too much out there.

When everyone is an influencer, nobody is.

That exclusivity and less posting is also being rewarded by the algorithm apparently. Someone who is posting a lot is getting okayish reach.

But someone who seldom posts is more sought after.

This goes against traditional thinking of consistency on socials.

Just a few insights we collected from our own Insta and our some of the brands we work with.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

@aryan_kochhar MBA is expensive, but does have an ROI if the college is prestigious.

Do you think that’ll change in sometime and education will become a non-concept? Or something like the Network School will take over.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

Its like asking it’s 2026 and you still use an iPhone?

RE is clearly the iPhone of bikes in India.

They’ll have that status because the company is extremely dedicated for its mission. The products are built to make you feel premium, when everyone else is creating mass products.

As our country’s disposable income increases, RE will be the best mass-premium play.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

Zero-posting is signalling higher status than someone who is too much out there.

When everyone is an influencer, nobody is.

That exclusivity and less posting is also being rewarded by the algorithm apparently. Someone who is posting a lot is getting okayish reach.

But someone who seldom posts is more sought after.

This goes against traditional thinking of consistency on socials.

Just a few insights we collected from our own Insta and our some of the brands we work with.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

@RaoSumukh Became something of a status play over regular Nestlé in certain households.

And apparently, it has strong word of mouth. Status may have been the initial driver, but people might actually be enjoying it.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

Raghav Chadha never wanted to join BJP!

Because he was so close to cracking something no other politician was able to do in the last 15 years.

He saw that if a country elects someone as Prime Minister thrice, they really have to love him.

If they are getting him in power again and again, he has to be doing something right.

Now, if you criticize everything he’s doing, 

It's a pattern that voters will ultimately see through.

And once they do, they'll take the opposition to be destructive.

This happens because the current opposition focuses entirely on Position issues.

These are highly debatable topics, that have a for the motion and an against the motion.

But these issues polarisé.

And hence, they shrink the audience.

Like Kejriwal’s brand of politics divides the voters.

You either hate him or love him.

So Raghav devised a very strategic plan countering exactly this dilemma.

He focused on something called as Valence issues 

These are issues that have consensus from all sides.

Like better working conditions for Blinkit & Zepto riders.

These issues bring people together.

For the first time in 15 years, someone was able to create a worthy opposition against PM Modi.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

“My friend” for Donald Trump is back.

This and the Hormuz part shows that India isn’t using the traditional Non-Aligned position in the on-going US-Iran war.

It’s taken a Multi-Aligned position. India has never been against Iran during the course of this war.

This also makes India the only powerful country to be able to make a point that the other side, Iran, will take seriously.

Donald Trump might use India’s help with Hormuz and business side of this war.

[FinFloww @FinFloww]

The interesting thing is, when in the market, almost all teams are sold for roughly around the same price. We saw that with RCB and RR.

Because through his brand value no team has actually been able to make much money. Indians don’t allocate much of their purse to cricket.

But they do allocate their time. That’s why major money is made through broadcasting rights, that are shared by all teams. No differentiation.

So the real value isn’t in the franchise itself, but IPL as a tournament.