South Asian Trailblazers
South Asian Trailblazers
Simi Shah | Trailblazers Media
Diving deep into the journeys of trailblazing South Asians. To date, Host Simi Shah has interviewed Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Zarna Garg, Raj Shamani, Ananya Birla, Vas Narasimhan -- from founders to Fortune 300 CEOs, comedians to congressmen. Learn more at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com.
Karan Bhagat: How India Creates & Passes On Wealth | CEO of 360 ONE, India's Leading Wealth Manager
Simi speaks with Karan Bhagat, Founder and CEO of 360 ONE — one of India's largest wealth and asset management firms, advising nearly 9,000 of the country's top families with almost $80 billion in assets under management, including industrialists, tech founders, Bollywood stars, cricketers, and some of India's most prominent public figures. Recorded at the India Conference at Harvard, this conversation traces Karan Bhagat's extraordinary journey from cold-calling Delhi's wealthiest families a...
Jul 1
29 min
Sakshi Sindwani: The Curve Model & Creator Redefining Beauty Standards in Indian Couture
Sakshi Sindwani is one of India's most prominent curve models, content creators, and body-positivity advocates who has built a community of 700,000 women. In 2021, she became the first curve model to appear in a Manish Malhotra bridal couture campaign, and in 2026, the first Indian creator to walk the Grammys red carpet. Recorded at the India Conference at Harvard, Simi's conversation traces Sakshi's path from growing up hearing "You're fat, you're never going to be worthy of love" to e...
Jun 17
25 min
Sid Sriram: A.R. Rahman's Protégé & Coachella's 1st South Indian Artist on How We Get Our "Bad Bunny" Moment
Simi Shah sits down with Sid Sriram — one of the most distinct voices in global music — for a live-recorded conversation at Harvard. Born in Chennai, raised in Fremont, trained at Berklee, mentored by A.R. Rahman, Sid Sriram has spent 15+ years alchemizing Carnatic and R&B music and putting Eastern and Western music "in conversation with each other." He was the first South Indian artist to perform at Coachella and took NPR's Tiny Desk by storm. With over 3.8 billion+ Spotify streams alon...
Jun 3
35 min
Masoom Minawala: India's Original Influencer on Authenticity in the Age of AI, Motherhood & Why India Is Undervalued | South Asian Trailblazers
Simi speaks with Masoom Minawala — one of India's pioneering influencers. Masoom bet her career on the internet at 17, starting her fashion blog Miss Style Fiesta in 2010, a decade before the world knew what an influencer was. She became the first Indian content creator to walk at Milan Fashion Week, a fixture on the Cannes red carpet, and has collaborated with over 500 brands, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Hermès. She also launched the #SupportIndianDesigners movement that generated 300...
May 20
46 min
South Asians in Sephora — Diipa Büller-Khosla, Lisa Mattam, Nisha Phatak, Rooshy Roy (Live Panel)
In a first-ever live multi-founder panel from South Asian Trailblazers, Simi Shah sits with 4 South Asian beauty founders at the vanguard of South Asian-inspired beauty: Diipa Büller Khosla (indē wild), Rooshy Roy (Aavrani), Nisha Phatak (Lion Pose), and Lisa Mattam (Sahajan). The conversation was born from a single line. When Rooshy returned to Trailblazers to announce Aavrani's acquisition, Simi asked about whether the dynamics with other founders were collaborative or competitive. Her resp...
May 7
1 hr 37 min
Raj Shamani: On Building the #1 Podcast in India and Soon, the World
Simi speaks with Raj Shamani — India's #1 podcaster, ranked #25 in the world — in a special live-recorded episode in New York City. Across 540+ episodes, 15 million subscribers, 400 million annual views, the Host of Figuring Out, Raj Shamani, has interviewed Bill Gates, President of France Emmanuel Macron, Aamir Khan, MS Dhoni, MrBeast, Vijay Mallya, and several other notable figures. Raj speaks primarily in English with moments of Hindi throughout — subtitles on YouTube. But here's what make...
Apr 10
56 min
Revathi Advaithi: From the Factory Floor to Fortune 500 CEO of Flex
Simi speaks with Revathi Advaithi, CEO of Flex — a $24 billion global manufacturing company that builds the critical infrastructure behind AI, cloud, healthcare, and automotive. Flex operates in 30 countries with over 140,000 employees, and under Revathi's leadership, the stock has soared from ~$7 to over $60. Revathi started her career on a factory floor in small town Shawnee, Oklahoma. She is the youngest of five sisters and lost her father at the tender age of 15 in India. After nearly fai...
Mar 24
1 hr 23 min
Ananya Birla: Carving Her Own Path inside the Multi-Billion Dollar Birla Dynasty
Simi sits down with Ananya Birla, business leader, artist, mental health advocate, and 7th-generation scion of one of India's oldest and most storied family businesses — the Aditya Birla Group. Ananya is building across more industries than most people will touch in a lifetime. At 17, she founded what is now India's second-largest microfinance institution. After dropping out of Oxford to pursue music, she became the first Indian artist to go platinum with an English single. A consummate multi...
Mar 10
54 min
Priyanka Chopra and Anjula Acharia: The Partnership Powering Priyanka's Global Stardom from Bollywood to Hollywood
Simi sits down with power duo Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Anjula Acharia — like you've NEVER seen them before. In this first-of-its-kind conversation, Priyanka and Anjula — best friends and business partners of 15 years — sit down together to tell the full story of how they built one of the most extraordinary careers in global entertainment. 15 years ago, Priyanka was searching for her next chapter in Bollywood. Anjula, a VC investor with a knack for spotting unicorns, saw something the rest o...
Feb 22
30 min
AAVRANI has been Acquired: Founder Rooshy Roy on Exiting her Beauty Brand
AAVRANI has been acquired — and founder Rooshy Roy shares the full story for the first time on South Asian Trailblazers. Six years ago, in Season 1 (2020), Rooshy first sat down with Simi as a freshly-funded, newly-married Forbes 30 Under 30 founder building one of the first beauty brands rooted in Indian heritage. Today, she becomes the first trailblazer to ever return to the podcast — here to share the end of her nine-year journey bringing Indian Ayurveda-inspired beauty to the world. In ...
Feb 10
1 hr 9 min
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