Worth over $1.5 billion today, Fractal has raised close to $700 million in venture capital over its lifetime. But the path it took to get here is anything but boring. 

Growing up in a middle-class Indian family, Srikanth Velamakanni, Fractal’s co-founder and group CEO, remembers his father telling him there was no such thing as an “honest businessman”. The phrase was an oxymoron.

“So when I grew up, I told myself that while I’d go and get a world-class education, I would always work for a high-quality company. I would never start a business. It was very clear to me,” he says as we sit down for the latest episode of First Principles.

And yet, in 2000, Srikanth and five of his friends quit their jobs, scraped and pooled in Rs 2 lakh each (~US$2,400), and started Fractal.

It takes a lot to build companies for the long term—only 2% of all companies get to celebrate their tenth anniversary. The school of hard knocks is unforgiving to young companies and first-time founders. The odds are measured in terms of survival first and not success.

Fractal and Srikanth were part of the 2% that survived the first ten years.

Listen to this episode of First Principles to understand how the soon-to-be 25-year-old company plans to beat the odds and still be around 50 years from now.

You can read the full transcript of the conversation here: https://the-ken.com/podcasts/first-principles/srikanth-velamakanni-fractal/