Varun Krishna

Finance, history and culture

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@shrutammegopaya It is true what they say - you can't have a good mind, if you don't have an able body.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@3SkullJoe @Slightly_Two3 Fullmetal Piece!

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@shrutammegopaya Do you have a recommended reading list? Books you think have had an influence on you? Please do share.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@SirJambavan 2nd hand import from Earth!

[prathosh A P @prathoshap]

A 15-year-old dream has come true today. I started a PhD with the dream of creating a system that chants any Sanskrit shloka perfectly.

And here I am opening sourcing 𝐕𝐚𝐠𝐝𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐮 - 𝐀 𝐯ṛ𝐭𝐭𝐚 (𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫) 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 ś𝐥𝐨𝐤𝐚-𝐭𝐨-𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭-𝐭𝐨-𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 (TTS) 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐤𝐫𝐢𝐭. This is the world's first vrutta-aware, open-source TTS for Sanskrit Chanting.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

Why would someone invest in lifestyle changes and fitness routine if they could simply pop a pill? If something is too good to be true, it most likely is.

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

India is a weird market. With obesity rates shooting up, I'd have bet on the sales of generic GLP-1s exploding once their patents expired. They now cost about Rs 1,000–2,500 a month, and there's growing evidence pointing to benefits well beyond weight loss, including cardiovascular, metabolic, and liver health.

Yet, generic drugmakers are quietly cutting their sales targets by 25–30%. At Rs 1,000–2,500 a month, it's cheaper than a gym membership. The real problem seems to be retention. GLP-1s are injectables, and you have to keep taking them. If you stop, you gain back the lost weight. It seems like asking someone to stay on a weekly injection indefinitely is a much harder sell.

A few other friction points:

For a variety of reasons, Indians haven't taken to GLP-1s with the same enthusiasm as Western populations. Could it be because Indian physicians are conservative when it comes to prescribing newer drugs?

Self-injecting is a pain for most people, and that friction and inertia might be stopping them from starting in the first place.

Given that there are now GLP-1 pills, I'm wondering if the adoption curve will change.

[Sekar Vembu @sekar_vembu]

This is a difficult question because "sovereign interest" is often treated as a kind of holy cow to justify expanding government power.

To answer it, I will view the problem through the philosophical lens of an ultra-minimal, decentralized government with a maximally open and free market. In such a system, entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors have greater freedom to experiment and take risks.

For innovators to thrive, we need to remove the barriers created by regulations, permits, and bureaucracy. That is how a culture of tinkering and experimentation develops, and that is ultimately how innovation happens. Many important innovations have come from people driven by curiosity, passion, reputation, or the desire to solve difficult problems rather than by government programs.

Our innovators are often constrained by restrictions and complexities surrounding imports of high-tech components and equipment. As a result, many talented people migrate overseas simply to have the freedom to work on cutting-edge technology.

Even in sectors considered vital for national sovereignty, I will take a consistent position against government subsidies and special assistance through incentives and similar programs. When governments allocate capital, political influence inevitably enters the process. The companies that succeed are often those that are best at navigating the government system rather than those that are best at building products. Over time, this discourages genuine entrepreneurs and innovators who do not possess the political skills required to navigate the government maze.

True national resilience comes from having thousands of competing private companies innovating rather than a few government-backed national champions.

If the government is serious about sovereign technology and national capability, it should focus on creating the conditions for a decentralized, open, and free market where talented innovators can thrive.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@narayananh Another one:
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

Time- also by Pink Floyd.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@sekar_vembu @mindblown004 For companies that operate in areas of sovereign interest - would you make an exception for government assistance or support, sir?

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@narayananh I was visualising the hierarchy pyramid! The top being "self-actualisation" ; which is more personal.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@chandrarsrikant @arindam___paul @puneetiitm Eliminate visual media where there is an implicit test of originality of insight. Have a long face to face conversation and ask good questions. If you walk away feeling enriched, good, else - bad.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@SirJambavan @Akshay_VAK @adityajakki Why would it not be reported? Can that not be used by Ukraine to justify its strikes on Russia? If not reported by West, why would Russia not release evidence?

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

I guess the idea of a difficult life is very, very relative.

[Unnati Bagga @Unnati_Bagga55]

Ashni and Avni Biyani just raised 50 crore from Nikhil Kamath for their food startup.

They watched their father lose India's biggest retail empire. They themselves had already built and lost a gourmet food chain called Foodhall in that same collapse. And they still came back and started Foodstories from scratch.

Genuinely one of the more gutsy founder stories I have come across in a while. Most people would have run a mile from retail after watching that up close. These two ran straight at it.

Going to be watching this one very closely.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@SirJambavan @khatvaanga It does make work easier. With a Claude subscription, I'm able to create no-error financial models, MoUs and other adhoc docs in minutes that would otherwise take days and frees up much of your time. So the yard stick is - is the value of your time saved > cost of a subscription?

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@TVMohandasPai FYI: A rough calculation of cumulative free cash flow + Dividends/Buyback of top IT firms over the last 5 years is approx USD 100bn. Not much compared to global peers but at least enough to get started. Right? (Sarvam aside)

[Krishnan @cvkrishnan]

Sorry sir. With due respect, Indian tech titans sat on their hands for almost a decade now and even professed that India can just build around applications and build its moat. Now when sovereign imperatives demand, the same tech titans seeking the driver’s seat is untenable.

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@TVMohandasPai FYI: A rough calculation of cumulative free cash flow + Dividends/Buyback of top IT firms over the last 5 years is approx USD 100bn. Not much compared to global peers but at least enough to get started. Right? (Sarvam aside)

[Hugh Laurie @hughlaurie]

Thanks for your critique, Janet. We actually tried a couple of episodes where House (Hugh Laurie) (please put the brackets in the right place) gets it right first time, but they were only 6 minutes long. NBC weren’t happy. Then we tried some where House never gets it right and the patient dies. The audience wasn’t happy.

One could apply your trenchant analysis to other art forms: JS Bach wrote 30 Goldberg variations on the same chord structure; Frida Kahlo painted 50 portraits of herself; Henry Moore, what??

The point is, or was, variations on a theme; if all you see is hospital, medical blah blah, then it wasn’t meant for you.

Nonetheless, I look forward to your first novel!

[Varun Krishna @Varunkrishna99]

@SirJambavan Any view on this, sir? Good, bad or ugly?!