Episodes
Start anywhere. The common thread is people taking real swings before they feel fully ready.
A growing library of real conversations with people still in the middle of it.
Long enough for real nuance, not just soundbite advice.
New drops keep the conversation moving.
Let me draft this properly at 3,019 characters. Here's the description: Picture this: it's 2023, ChatGPT just dropped, every Fortune 500 suddenly needs an "AI strategy," and the job postings want 5 years of experience in a technology that's barely 18 months old.
Getting hired at Amazon is one thing. Getting hired into a role that actually fits you is the harder part.
Two weeks into my first semester in the U.S., I remember sitting at my desk refreshing LinkedIn like it was a slot machine. At some point you start asking yourself the obvious question: is this just how it works here… or am I doing it wrong?
Two years ago, I was lying in an ER bed, scared enough to get brutally honest with myself. And the thing that bothered me most was not some giant life philosophy.
Everyone's hyping autonomous AI agents. Your corporate IT department is quietly building a blacklist.
Most people grinding through a tough job market send 300 applications and wait. Deep Suchak bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco.
Here's the thing nobody tells you when you start a business from your laptop in Kolkata: the company setup is the easy part. It's the tax side that'll keep you up at night.
Do you really need a massive following to make a massive impact (and income)? If you're an entrepreneur, coach, or creator, you've probably felt the pressure to go viral.
Beyond the Bot: Why Your AI Marketing is Failing (and the Journalist’s Fix) In the noise-saturated landscape of 2026, the barrier to entry for content has never been lower, but the barrier to trust has never been higher. Everyone has access to the same LLMs, the same prompts, and the same "perfect" prose.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of international students and tech workers face the same terrifying math: there are 85,000 H-1B seats and over 400,000 applications. But what if you didn’t have to play the lottery at all?
What happens when a Marvel writer loses $500,000 on his first tech deal? In this episode of Ready Set Do, I sit down with Victor—a legally blind, albino filmmaker and founder who is disrupting the AI space.
The Reality Behind the Viral Video When the world’s biggest YouTuber hands over a check, the internet asks one question: Is it real? Joining us on Ready Set Do is Shafkat Alam, the Joint Secretary of Tiljala Shed and the man who stood face-to-face with MrBeast’s team in the heart of Kolkata’s slums.
How do you build a community of 600,000 people who want to be alone? In this episode, we sit down with Amanda Black , the founder of The Female Traveler Network , to reveal how she turned a simple travel blog into a global empire and a safe haven for half a million women.
The leap from farming in India to building humanoids at 1X is not the kind of story people usually tell without sanding off the hard parts. This conversation keeps the rough edges intact and shows what it looks like when ambition is paired with actual follow-through instead of just a good LinkedIn post.
A lot of people frame success as leaving, which is convenient because it keeps the story simple. This episode is more interesting because he chose IIT Kharagpur instead, and the whole thing becomes a very different kind of bet on AI, ambition, and where the best launchpad actually is.
If you think running a nonprofit fundraising event is just about booking a venue, finding a caterer, and collecting auction items, you’re in for a rude awakening. The landscape has shifted beneath our feet.
How He Stopped the Clock & Got Hired in 40 Days (The Blueprint) Description: Getting laid off is a punch to the gut. Getting laid off on an F1 Visa with the 90-day unemployment clock ticking?
Are you afraid to hit "post" on LinkedIn? Do you worry that your employer might judge you, or that you don't have anything valuable to say?
Are you an NRI, student, or expat living in the USA who feels sluggish, bloated, or heavier despite "eating healthy"? Millions of Indians move abroad and immediately switch to a diet of salads, cold sandwiches, and protein bars, thinking they are making better choices.
This conversation is not about that kind of trip. This is about the kind of travel that changes what you think a vacation is for.
In this episode of Ready Set Do , my guest is Umang Chaudhary , a Machine Learning Engineer at TikTok and former Applied Scientist at Amazon . Umang’s story is one of momentum — a reminder that you don’t need decades of experience to reach the top tiers of tech.
In this episode I talk with Hrohaan Malhotra, a Data Scientist at Wells Fargo who actually landed his role through a career fair. Hrohaan rewired the usual career-fair playbook: he didn’t show up to collect business cards — he showed up to build one great, memorable interaction.
Moving abroad for studies often gets reduced to a checklist: applications, visas, internships, and landing that first good job. In this episode of Ready Set Do I sit down with Bhushan Chougule, a graduate student at Purdue University studying Engineering Management, to talk about what most study-abroad advice misses — the small, human things that actually make your time overseas feel like living instead of surviving.
If you want a ruthless, recruiter-grade breakdown of how to actually get hired in 2025, press play. This episode features Shreya Mehta — professional growth coach and former recruiter at Microsoft, Amazon, and TikTok — and she does something rare: she publicly evaluates (nay, lovingly roasts) my podcast producer Deep’s LinkedIn profile and uses that teardown to teach every listener the exact moves that win interviews and offers.
How To Prepare for US Non-Immigrant Visas (ex-US Visa Officer POV). This episode follows the first moves, tradeoffs, and lessons that show up before a story looks clean from the outside.
"You need experience to get the job, but you need the job to get experience." It is the classic Product Management "Death Loop." If you are a doctor, a teacher, a marketer, or a salesperson, you are constantly told that you don't have the "technical DNA" to be a Product Manager. You are told to go get an MBA, learn to code, or start at the bottom of a support desk.
This episode is a goldmine for builders: my guest is VJ Swaminathan, a serial entrepreneur you probably already know from Pathfinders and Authentic Hustle. VJ does something rare on this show — he literally pops the hood on his AI recruiting product, , and walks us through the exact tool stack, architecture decisions, and development trade-offs that got him from idea to demo.
Why Astrology is More Than Fortune-Telling — A Raw Conversation with Poonam Dutta What happens when you put a professional astrologer and spiritual scientist in the hot seat and ask the hard questions? In this episode of the Ready Set Do Podcast I sit down with Poonam Dutta — an expert in the Vedas, Sanatan Dharma, and Vedic astrology — for a multi-faceted, super-raw conversation that cuts past clichés and goes straight to the reasoning behind belief.
Amazon interviews have a way of making smart people overthink the obvious and underprepare the parts that actually matter. This one gets into the loop, the hiring bar, and the kind of interview prep that is useful when the room is moving fast and nobody is handing out extra credit.
What does it take to create the largest gathering ever for skilled Indian immigrants in the United States? In this episode, we sit down with the visionary behind the Open Atlas Summit 2025 , a groundbreaking event designed to connect, empower, and celebrate the Indian professional diaspora in America.
Agentic AI isn’t just hype—it’s the future of how intelligent systems will work. In this episode, we dive deep with Meri, an engineer and educator at the forefront of this next-gen paradigm.
How does studying in Europe prepare you for launching one of the most innovative companies in a country as complex as India? In this dynamic episode, we sit down with Supra , a global strategy professional who helped expand Tesla into new markets , including India.
People get strange about accents because they confuse sounding local with belonging. Gurasis talks openly about being judged for how he spoke, the pressure to sand down your voice, and the bigger question underneath it: who gets to decide what 'professional' sounds like?
In this insightful episode, we dive deep into the world of Mechatronics Engineering with Shivam, a passionate engineer who stumbled into this interdisciplinary field by accident—but never looked back. Whether you're a student exploring engineering specializations or a tech enthusiast curious about how mechanical systems, electronics, and software come together, this conversation is a must-watch.
Machine learning interviews have become a strange mix of theory, product sense, and please-do-not-waste-my-time energy. Nirmal and Karun pull the curtain back on what candidates keep getting wrong, what hiring teams actually notice, and how to stop rehearsing answers that sound smart but do not land.
In this episode featured not-Guru is Jackie Henning. Jackie is a Product Manager at Cylinder and thru her content, has helped hundreds of aspiring PMs break into Product Management.
In this episode my guest is Subhabrata Debnath. Subho is a co-founder and CTO at Neuralgarage, whose proprietary solution VisualDub provides state-of-the-art LipSync using AI while maintaining exceptionally high visual fidelity.
Most robot vacuums still feel like they were built by people who have never watched one get stuck under a chair leg. Anshuman talks through what Matic had to rethink, why the obvious fixes were not enough, and what it takes to make hardware that works in the mess people actually live in.
Varun shares exclusive interview-coaching insights from his 21-Day Interview Mastery cohorts. We cover practical frameworks for every interview-question type and the psychology of endearing yourself to any interviewer, no matter the industry, role, or career stage.
This is a special crossover between the podcast and my YouTube series Build Your Own App , where we spotlight cutting-edge AI tools for everyday creators. Farah and I walk through multiple ways to build a fully customizable personal portfolio site that helps you stand out to recruiters.
Akshansh joins Naman for a conversation about build A Strong Profile For Masters In USA. In this episode, my nephew, Akshansh who has been a featured not-expert on this show in the past asks me questions about how he can walk a path similar to the one I walked when I started my Masters from the US about 5 years ago from Purdue University before moving to Chicago for work, where I've been living for the past 3 years my links/socials: If visas + study abroad is the mess on your desk right now, this episode is a strong place to begin.
Travel stories get boring fast when they only exist to confirm what the traveler already thought. This one is better because the surprise is the point: what India looks like through the eyes of someone seeing it properly for the first time, and what that says about expectation, culture, and the stories we drag around before we arrive.
Suchit is the founder of Crucible Institute, a business school that is seeking to completely revamp higher business education in India - by optimizing for practical skills needed for digital first businesses (which the world (including india of course) is currently seeing a boom of) instead of outdated theory taught by industry professionals and with a fee structure that's super unique.
Shifra is a Developer Relations Advocate at and this is part 2 of my 2-part conversation with her. the topic of this discussion is how professionals in any industry can and should be leveraging LinkedIn to grow their careers and networks, pivot to better toles, and build their personal brands.
Shifra is a Developer Relations Advocate at and this is part 1 of my 2-part conversation with her. the topic of our discussion is how to switch to a career in tech - esp if you come from a non technical background - like Shifra, who had a background in music before becoming a data scientist and finally pivoting to the DevRel role.
Matt Williams built Approachable, an app for finding friends to explore your city with, at a moment when adult loneliness keeps getting worse. He talks about the build process, why he refused to hire US engineers for early-stage development, how he made $18K from a launch party, and what user behavior data taught him about social products in the real world.
Data engineering is the role people find after they get tired of vague 'learn data' advice. Sam makes the path concrete: what the job really asks for, which tools matter, and how to get hired without pretending you woke up fluent in all of it.
For over the past five years, Abhay has been working out consistently - at first at home, and then in an actual gym. The question Abhay and myself have tried to answer here today is "Why should someone that has never worked out start working out and how can they do so?" Beginner-friendly workout plan: Abhay: All my social links:
Quitting a BCG job to fix broken news apps sounds dramatic until you sit with what actually pushed the decision. This episode is about the part people skip: the frustration, the tradeoffs, and the strange clarity that shows up when you stop pretending the old system is fine.
Sara is a forensic science graduate from University College London with experience as a Forensic Biology Research Intern at the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner. my social links!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A clean career pivot sounds nice until you are the one in the middle of it. Bhoomika walks through moving from economics academia into data science, what her background gave her, and how to make a non-linear path feel honest instead of apologetic.
Is working for the Indian Government boring? The reality of building India's $350 Billion startup ecosystem is fast-paced, high-stakes, and surprisingly accessible.
How To Start (& Scale) A Podcast in 2025. This episode follows the first moves, tradeoffs, and lessons that show up before a story looks clean from the outside.
Does "healthy eating" mean boiled chicken, tasteless broccoli, and zero happiness? For most busy bachelors, the choice is usually binary: Order takeout and feel guilty, or try to cook "healthy" and end up eating cardboard.
AI product management sounds clean from far away. Up close, it is a mess of shifting expectations, vague job titles, and people pretending the role is already settled.
Jasprit is a climate change advisor at GIZ and a master's degree holder from LSE in climate regulation and policy.
Ved keeping with our theme of learning from somebody that’s just two steps ahead instead of an expert, my goal with this episode is to explore the mind and musings of a young boy - and how the timeless optimism of childhood can indeed be discovered by anyone of any age. By the end of this episode, you will walk away with a perspective on why the child-like curiosity is the greatest treasure we possess, and yet something we all discard as we grow this episode we also witness the Conventional Mind in Robert Greene's Mastery, the concept of the Conventional Mind describes how societal pressures, practical demands, and conformity erode the innate openness and curiosity we possess as children.
Most people talk about yoga like it is either wellness content or a neat philosophy deck. This conversation goes into the messier middle: what happens when a tradition gets flattened for the internet, how someone actually becomes a guru, and why criticism of Hinduism does not fit into the tidy little boxes people like.
Data science interviews have become their own weird theater: LeetCode, dashboards, vague case studies, and a whole lot of pretending. Karun keeps it grounded here and walks through what actually matters if you want the job, not just the buzzwords.
How To Start An AI-based Company & Community opensphere.ai. This episode follows the first moves, tradeoffs, and lessons that show up before a story looks clean from the outside.
Arjun is an IT-professional turned singer/producer/songwriter known for his hit indie songs. Join us for an intimate journey through the life of a musician who traded corporate stability for artistic passion.
Emma is the creative director at The Idea Farm - which is a marketing consultancy with over 50 years of history that seeks to help businesses crack the code of digital marketing in today's privacy-first world.
Can you build a startup while you are still on an F-1 visa? Supreeth Reddy, co-founder of Serene AI, talks through the sleep-tech problem he chose, how he found mentors, what it took to raise support, and the legal and practical mess of building as an international student.
"Born to make art, forced to produce content." It’s the meme that haunts every creative in 2025. We all marvel at the beauty of a masterpiece, but when it comes to the business of art, most of us are clueless.
Aashka is the founder of various initiatives all focused on AI regulation, including her podcast @onairwithaashka , while also being a freelance bug bounty hunter for topic for today’s discussion is AI Safety and Regulation - what exactly it means, why its important and what the average person of the world can do to play their part. We also go over some of the most critical risks that are already becoming prevalent, including the tragic incident of a florida teenager who tragically ended his life in connection with a bot and steps that can be taken to prevent such instances to the degree possible.
Product, project, and program manager roles get mashed together until the whole thing starts sounding like one vague career blob. This episode breaks that apart in plain English and gets into what matters if you want to get hired without pretending the title alone is the answer.
Vishwas is the head of Revenue Strategy at subject of today’s discussion is AdTech. Vishwas takes us thru the fascinating and cash-strapped world of ad tech and the engineering marvels it takes to serve personalized ads to users within 200 ms.
Most people think funny people are just born with it, which is a nice way to avoid the awkward part where you actually have to learn timing. This conversation gets into how to write something sharp without trying to cosplay as a comedian, which is usually where the whole thing goes off the rails.
Most AI conversations skip the part where someone has to build the thing inside an actual product with real users and real constraints. Nikhil talks through what it looks like to design generative AI features for Adobe Acrobat and how that kind of work maps to machine learning engineering roles.
What happens when you move back to India after a master's in the US? Ratik Dutta talks through reverse culture shock, the job market for returning graduates, and the strange work of settling back into a place that is already supposed to feel like home.
Tom is a co-founder at Omnia, which is a one stop-shop for deploying XR content at scale. Another way to think of Omnia is simply the YouTube for XR creators and walks us thru the specific problem Omnia solves, and showcases some stunning use-cases of Omnia that is currently used by realtors in Chicago.
Some career stories sound made up until you realize they were built one unglamorous step at a time. This episode follows a mechanical engineer from Indian Railways to SpaceX without pretending the path was neat, linear, or somehow inevitable.
Trishita is an award-winning playback singer and songwriter whose work has been featured on Netflix, HotStar and Zee5 among other notable places such as live events and concerts. Perhaps like most of you all out there, one of my longest-standing loves in life has been my love for music.
Known more commonly as Yudi J online, Pritesh has built and grown his youtube channel to over 280k subscribers - leveraging his knowhow and lived experience to share amazing insights on how to succeed in the US during and after getting your Masters degree . Yudi J shares the exact blueprint he followed to amass such a huge following - covering not just the highs but also the lows that are part of the journey but that not nearly enough creators talk about.
Amazon interviews have a way of making smart people overthink the obvious and underprepare the parts that actually matter. This one gets into the loop, the hiring bar, and the kind of interview prep that is useful when the room is moving fast and nobody is handing out extra credit.
Everyone wants the clean answer for how to get into Meta, but the real path is usually a lot less tidy than the LinkedIn version. This one gets into the stuff that actually moves the needle: the technical bar, the moves that help you switch to better opportunities, and the kind of prep that does not collapse the second an interviewer asks a real question.
Originally from Moscow, Russia, Mayya recently graduated from a Masters of Arts degree from DePaul University but for the purposes of this episode - we’ll be deep-diving into how Mayya kickstarted her DJ career from scratch. We go over the onset of Mayya’s musical pursuits, how she learnt mixing - which is the fundamental skill every DJ must learn, and how she landed her first gigs.
Grad school advice gets weird fast because everyone starts talking like they were born with a polished profile. Unnati breaks down the real work behind an Ivy League MEM admit: the GRE, the SOP, the letters, and the part where you stop trying to sound impressive and start sounding clear.
Applying online feels like throwing your resume into a black hole. But what if you knew exactly what the person on the other side of the screen was looking for?
A lot of diversity talk gets flattened into slogans and conference-panel language. This one is better because it stays close to the actual arguments: CAT, economics, reverse brain-drain, and what people mean when they say they want a better pipeline but never explain the pipeline.
Sai is the Lead Data Analyst at Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina. Coming from an electrical engineering background, Sai managed to not only get into a top Data Analytics program at University of Connecticut, but also break into his current position without having any prior work experience whatsoever.I believe anybody who is currently in the job market can immediately appreciate what a gargantuan task that is - and Sai breaks down for us his exact strategy using which he was able to succeed.
Soundarya is a founder at and the author of two books - Unshackled and Admitted. Today’s discussion is for anyone who wants to write and publish a non-fiction book today, although we do briefly touch on Soundarya’s next novel which falls into the realm of some fiction as well.
First internships are often less about being brilliant and more about not getting spooked by the process. This episode is for the person who keeps thinking the US product manager path is only for some polished, obvious candidate from the start.
Is it possible to build a massive content career while studying for a Master's degree in the US? Most international students are told to keep their heads down, study hard, and get a corporate job.
Aditi is an ex-tenured professor, published author, and founder of Dr. Paul & Co., where she helps Indian immigrants take charge of their immigration journey - by means of securing the EB1 visa, which she holds; and other talent discuss:- Aditi’s journey moving from STEM field to non-STEM field for higher education- Getting her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Communication- Breaking Bad- How her research paper on dating, after being fired from her department during her PhD, led to being featured on major news channels- The psychology of immigration- How Indian immigrants can assimilate to the culture in the US- Importance of self-awareness for immigrants and realizing how the US is a PR machine- How anyone can build their profile to get an EB1 visa and WHY?
UI and UX advice gets mushy fast because people love talking about taste more than work. Tushar gets specific about the HCI route, what product design at Microsoft actually asks of you, and why good interface work is usually less about pretty screens and more about thinking clearly when the constraints get annoying.
In this episode my guest is Prateek Behera. Prateek is a co-founder at gradCapital, which provides funding for college students in india whose projects can change the world.
In this episode, my guest is Melissa Weinmann. Melissa is a huge travel enthusiast, with her current tally of countries and territories visited being 44 at the time of recording.
Sohan is a data visualization aficionado and loves effective story-telling using data. He’s also been Top Data Visualization Voice on LinkedIn on numerous occasions, spreading the knowledge and empowering others to excel at business analytics and data visualization.
Money questions get weird fast when you are an NRI on OPT or H-1B and everyone around you has a different opinion. A CFP walks through the stuff people usually learn too late: how to think about investing, what actually deserves attention, and where the common traps are hiding.
Akshansh and Harshita are computer science engineering students at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology. Perhaps more notably, they’re also actors and film-makers - having taught themselves how to make short films for their YouTube channel ( and the Film Society at KIIT.
A lot of Dubai talk is either glossy or cynical, which usually means it is not very useful. Kaushik cuts through that and talks about moving to the UAE for a PhD, what living there actually felt like, and why the Gulf makes sense for some people and not for others.
Construction is full of people who act like there is only one way to get in. Farheen did not follow that script; she moved from architecture into construction management and talks honestly about what changed, what stayed hard, and how she kept the move from turning into a performance.
Moving to France sounds glamorous until you are the one trying to build a life there in real time. Devendra talks through SPJIMR's global management program, the move to Paris, and the small frictions that shape a new country more than the postcard version ever will.
A resume usually does not get rejected because you are terrible. It gets rejected because it is speaking the wrong language, and nobody bothered to tell you that until after the damage was done.
Utpal is a co-founder at Digger, but perhaps more notably, a life-long cricket fanatic. He has played semi-professionally in India and continues to play club cricket in the UK as of May 2024, and has also co-founded The Cricket Revolution, which is a product for cricketers to leverage to get better at the sport.
A master's in the US can be useful, expensive, confusing, and wildly overrated all at once. This episode is about getting more out of the move than a degree and a few blurry orientation photos, especially if you are trying to make the whole thing pay off in the real world.
In this episode, my guests are Ritwik and Kartik Khator. The twin brothers Ritwik and Kartik are the founders of Startup Indian , which is a company that offers research, analysis, and financial expertise services to startups and founders.
In this episode, my guest in this episode is Raghav Taparia . Raghav is a financial investment aficionado who has successfully built out robust systems for making strides towards his financial goals.
My guest for this episode is Shikhaj Jakhete . Shikhaj is a Technical Account Manager at Adobe.
In this episode, my guest is Aditya Kothari. Aditya is a Senior Business Analyst at Capital One.
Getting hired at Amazon is one thing. Getting hired into a role that actually fits you is the harder part.
In this episode, my guest is Ananta Chhajer . Ananta currently ranks among India's fastest-growing educational content creators.
