Best Place To Build

The year 2025 from the Best Place to Build Podcast! Revisiting your favourite moments! | BP2B S2E16

As the year closes, we bring to you something a little different from the set of the Best Place to Build Podcast. A look at some of the precious moments from the last year ft. your favourite guests, Prof Kamakoti, Prof Sathya, Prof Ravindran, Sharan, Shashwath, Srinath, Neel and many many many more. What's your favourite moment or favourite episode from the last year? Let us know in the comments!

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Dec 29, 202551mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Best Place to Build revisits 2025’s standout insights, stories, lessons

The host curates standout moments from 2025 episodes, emphasizing a deliberate shift toward technical depth and “science-curious” conversations rather than optimizing for short attention spans.
Recurring themes include embracing failure as a credential, building difficult “crazy” things (chips, rockets, satellites), and using setbacks as fuel for resilience and career clarity.
Multiple guests illustrate how context shapes technology choices, from ophthalmology access in India to indigenous 5G milestones and sovereign AI ambitions.
The episode also highlights the human side of builders—origin stories, humor, and formative personal experiences—alongside practical realities of running a podcast (scheduling, brand approvals, and production failures).
The season expands its format with lab shoots and a student-hosted “student edition,” underscoring the show’s mission to spotlight builders across academia, industry, and campus teams.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat technical depth as a feature, not a risk.

Professor Sathya’s willingness to go deep (economics, batteries, imaging stacks) helped set the show’s tone: assume the audience is curious and reward them with real substance.

Failure is both a diagnostic tool and a badge of effort.

Sharan distinguishes between productive stubbornness (“one more attempt”) and the wisdom to stop when something truly doesn’t work; Professor Mahesh adds that “failed startup” now often strengthens a CV.

Put your sails up—luck only helps prepared builders.

Srinath’s sailing metaphor reinforces a builder’s job: keep the capability and readiness in place so policy shifts or market openings (like India’s space sector) can be seized immediately.

Context should drive the technology roadmap.

Professor Mohan Shankar’s cataract story shows why “cool tech” can miss the real bottleneck—India’s challenge wasn’t surgery cost but access—so solutions must start from ground truth constraints.

Indigenous systems breakthroughs are built on unglamorous iteration.

The first official 5G call narrative highlights day-to-day lab grind (logs, parameters, power tuning) and real-world chaos (crowds blocking signals), not just celebratory headlines.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Wear that failure proudly, and go forth.

— Professor Mahesh

You have to be a special, uh, grade of mental... to be able to want to make silicon in today's world.

— Sharan

It will come when you make it.

— Professor Kamakoti (recounted by Sharan)

Always put the sails out and wait. Wind may come, may not come. How does that matter?

— Srinath (Agnikul)

The problem is one of access.

— Professor Mohan Shankar

Year-end compilation of best momentsTechnical depth vs “low-attention” contentFailure, grit, and resilienceDeep tech building in India (chips, space, 5G, AI)Context-driven innovation and access problemsInstitution-building (IIT Zanzibar)Podcast production behind-the-scenes (cameras, brand approvals, scheduling)Student pressure, loneliness, and wellbeing course designWomen in engineering and STEM retentionLab-cast and student edition formats

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