Corner Office Conversation

Corner Office Conversation

Corner Office Conversation is The Economic Times’ flagship interview podcast featuring unfiltered, one-on-one conversations with some of India and the world’s most powerful business leaders. Hosted by ET’s top journalists and editors, this fortnightly show goes beyond headlines and press releases to explore how CEOs and founders think, decide, and lead in an era of disruption. From Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), and Roland Busch (Siemens) to Adar Poonawalla (Serum Institute), Suresh Narayanan (Nestlé India), and Ravi Kumar S (Cognizant), these conversations uncover personal leadership playbooks, global strategy pivots, lessons from failures, and bold visions for the future — across industries like tech, healthcare, manufacturing, finance, and consumer goods. New episodes drop every alternate Monday.

Episodes

August 2, 2026 25 mins

AI adoption is soaring, but where are the financial returns? Surya Gummadi, President, Americas at Cognizant, argues that enterprises are consuming tokens without always choosing the right use cases. He joins Anirban Chowdhury to explain why companies remain trapped in pilot mode and what it takes to scale AI successfully. Gummadi discusses the coming transformation of coding, testing, talent models and IT contracts; Cognizant&rsqu...

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India’s insurance industry is changing faster than ever. New regulations, 100% FDI, AI-powered underwriting, rising medical inflation and Policybazaar’s expansion into healthcare through PB Health are reshaping how Indians will buy—and use—insurance.

In this episode of The Morning Brief, ET’s Anirban Chowdhury speaks with Sarbvir Singh, Joint Group CEO of PB Fintech, on why India remains underinsured, ...

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One in two popcorn kernels eaten in India comes from one man's farms. He built the crop from nothing, the processing plant that rivals anything in North America, and a farmer network no competitor can crack. When COVID killed every client overnight, most founders would have cut and run. He doubled his acreage. He has 50Xed his revenue in 5 years, build a moat few can crack and plans to now indigenise other crops and commodities lik...

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She walked into the courtroom with no playbook and built an empire anyway. Host Maulik Vyas talks to one of India's most formidable legal minds Co-Founder & Managing Partner of AZB & Partners, Zia Mody, who reflects on four decades at the forefront of corporate law, from the chaos of early liberalization to billion-dollar cross-border deals. She opens up about the cautious mood on deal street amid global uncertainty, why wo...

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Wockhardt's FDA approval of Zaynich marks a historic first, the only drug entirely discovered and developed by an Indian company to clear US-FDA scrutiny. ET’s pharma editor Vikas Dandekar and Rica Bhattacharyya talk to Habil Khorakiwala, Chairperson of Wockhardt who unpacks the 25-year innovation journey behind this milestone. From a deliberate pivot to antibiotics when big pharma was exiting the space, to navigating financi...

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What does it take to back India's highest-grossing films three years in a row? Host Anirban Chowdhury and ET’s film journalist and critic Rajesh N Naidu talk to Jyoti Deshpande, President - Jio Studios, Media & Content Business -Reliance Industries Ltd, who pulls back the curtain on how she green-lights films, why she rejects 98 out of every 100 ideas, and what Indian cinema needs to do to crack the global market. From St...

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HP’s MD and SVP for India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka Ipsita Dasgupta joins ET’s Anirban Chowdhury in the latest Corner Office Conversation to discuss why India’s PC story is still in its early stages — and how AI PCs, creators, SMEs and students could drive the next wave of growth. She explains why HP sees “a PC in every child’s hands” as a national opportunity, how AI-powered computing coul...

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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says India could become Uber’s largest market globally over the next decade and on whether he is open to a partnership with Travis Kalanick.
In this conversation with ET’s editor, ETtech.com, editor-startups, emerging business, new economy Samidha Sharma and Pranav Mukul, he explains Uber’s India strategy across AI, EVs, bike taxis, logistics, and autonomous driving. He discusses the ...

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She grew up navigating a war zone of a family home, arrived in Bombay with ₹50 lakhs borrowed from a neighbour, and watched her debut film get pulled from theatres the morning after India lost the cricket World Cup. That's where most stories end. Guneet Monga's was just beginning. In this candid, far-ranging conversation with ET’s Anirban Chowdhury and in-house film journalist and critic Rajesh N Naidu, the Oscar-winning prod...

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G.V. Prasad has spent over thirty years at the helm of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories — long enough to know where the opportunities were missed and where the potential and challenges lie. In a candid conversation with ET’s pharma editor Vikas Dandekar on Corner Office Conversation, the Co-Chairman and Managing Director pulls no punches: India is the generic pharmacy of the world, not the pharmacy of the world, and that distin...

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In a wide-ranging conversation with host Surabhi Agarwal, IBM's chairman, president and CEO Arvind Krishna addresses the questions every technology leader and IT professional in India is wrestling with right now. He pushes back on AI doomsday narratives for software services, makes a compelling case for why hybrid cloud and mainframe architecture remain indispensable, and shares his candid take on job displacement, quantum computin...

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In a candid, unscripted exchange, India’s pharma titans peeled back the mythology of overnight success to reveal a harder truth: conviction compounded over decades. What began as two products and a bet on neglected therapy areas evolved into a multibillion-dollar enterprise riding India’s epidemiological shift. Innovation, they argued, is a long game—scarred by failed trials, investor backlash, and capital drought...

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In a market long dominated by premium playbooks, Director of Reliance Consumer Products, T Krishnakumar is scripting a different FMCG story. Handpicked by Mukesh Ambani to build Reliance Consumer Products from scratch, he talks to host Ratna Bhushan about his strategy: targeting India's 500–600 million middle-class consumers, Krishnakumar is betting big on affordability at scale—a counterintuitive move in an inflationar...

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India's AI revolution demands strategic vision beyond enthusiasm. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Rajan Anand, Managing Director of Peak XV and Surge a former Microsoft India head and Google VP shaping India's venture landscape. With 120 unicorns and 300 IPOs last year, India is poised for transformation. Anand's thesis: India needs localized, hyper-affordable AI models—not trillion-parameter ones. Predicting fifty AI unicorn...

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Qure.ai is transforming routine medical imaging into early disease detection at unprecedented scale. Processing nearly 1,000 patients per hour across 105 countries, the startup has made preliminary radiology reports at India’s AIIMS and CMC Vellore AI-powered often flagging diseases physicians weren’t even looking for. In this conversation, Vikas Dandekar speaks with Prashant Warier Co-founder & CEO, Ankit Modi, Fou...

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Suzlon Energy controls a third of India's wind market, but co-founder and vice chairman Girish Tanti isn't celebrating. In this conversation with host Anirban Chowdhury, he confronts hard questions: Why has India tapped only 4% of its wind potential despite three decades of operations? Can the sector scale from 6 gigawatts annually to the 10+ needed to meet 2030 targets? And will promised AI data centers overwhelm renewable capacit...

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Global trade is entering a more complicated phase. It is no longer outpacing global GDP, and the ideas that once drove seamless globalization are increasingly under pressure. In this episode, host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with Tobias Meyer, CEO of DHL Group, to cut through the rhetoric around “deglobalization” and focus on what is actually happening to trade flows and supply chains. Rather than collapsing, supply chains...

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As the global pharmaceutical industry enters a period of profound transition, this episode of Corner Office Conversation examines what lies ahead. Hosts Vikas Dandekar and Teena Thacker talk to Stefan Oelrich, Head of the Pharmaceuticals Division at Bayer AG, about the forces reshaping drug discovery and access from trade tensions and shifting innovation hubs to the promise and uncertainty of cell and gene therapies. Oelrich reflec...

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Bourbon is having a moment and Sazerac wants India to be its next big frontier. In this episode, of the Corner Office Conversation ET’s Ratna Bhushan talks to Diego Bianchi, VP,Global Hubs at Sazerac, who takes us inside Kentucky’s historic Buffalo Trace Distillery to understand how the 200-year-old American spirits giant plans to grow in a market long ruled by Scotch. Bianchi breaks down the company’s India strat...

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How will the rise of the agentic enterprise redefine the future of work, technology and scale for Indian businesses? Host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with Arun Kumar Parameswaran, Executive Vice President and MD of Salesforce, South Asia, about the shift from traditional digital transformation to a new era where autonomous AI agents collaborate with humans to reshape how organisations operate. From hyper-personalised experiences deliv...

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