Introducing: Subtext by Zerodha
A new podcast series by the Markets by Zerodha team.
Hi folks, I’m Bhuvan, and I’m here to tell you that our newest baby, Subtext, has arrived.
Well, it’s not really a new baby. It’s an old one brought back to life.
Subtext started sometime around early 2024 with a piece on that year’s interim budget by Big Pranav (you’ll see why this makes sense), who now makes sure that the well-beloved The Daily Brief (TDB) remains one of the best finance newsletters in India. One idea we cooked up was to start this publication for long-form, in-depth explorations about the weird and wonderful world of finance.
That was version #1 of Subtext, run by just four people: me, Big Pranav, Krishna, and then a few months later, Kashish. Eventually, in the future, we hoped that Subtext would evolve into a platform outside of us where thoughtful people with deep expertise in all things adjacent to markets could write for us.
In the initial days, our Subtext posts averaged north of 2,500 words, and it was a mixed bag where we wrote about all sorts of niches. Those include ticket scalping in Indian concerts, a history of mathematics, finance lessons from the Greek legend of Pandora’s Box, a guest piece by Abid Hassan, and one must-read self-memoir by Big Pranav about how Zerodha messed up by hiring him that — I shit you not — starts with him on a pristine Western toilet. Cinematic stuff, I tell you.
Along the way, we had the idea to start a daily newsletter on finance, something akin to a daily newspaper. That eventually became the The Daily Brief by Zerodha, under the larger Markets by Zerodha initiative.
With our team size, we couldn’t keep both Subtext and the Daily Brief going at the same time. TDB was, and still is a treadmill, to say the least. We were publishing five newsletters a week while constantly experimenting with other things. Sadly, that forced Subtext to take a backseat, even though I used to publish there occasionally.
Meanwhile, TDB became one of the most popular finance newsletters in India. It is almost like a digital daily for traders, investors, analysts, economists, policymakers, and curious people not just in India, but around the world. That was something we hadn’t really foreseen.
But beyond TDB, the broader Markets by Zerodha umbrella took on a life of its own. Some of our experiments as part of Markets also turned into full-blooded initiatives with their own life.
There’s the Aftermarket Report by Zerodha, an evening newsletter we publish after the markets close. It summarises the big developments of the day, and what traders and investors should watch out for before the next trading session.
There’s The Chatter by Zerodha, a newsletter with a cult following of its own. We go through earnings calls, wade through all the corporate boilerplate, and pick out the high-signal things firms say. In the works is also a global-only version of Chatter.
There’s Who Said What, a weekly series where we pick out some of the most interesting comments from the most influential names in business and policy, and then contextualize what they are saying and why.
There’s Points and Figures, our newest initiative, where we tell stories about finance, markets, and the economy using data and high-quality visualizations.
And then there’s In the Money led by the fantastic Sandeep Rao, a channel dedicated to the nitty-gritties of trading strategy.
All of these things now have their own loyal followings. And if I may be a little conceited, I genuinely think they have become the gold standard in their respective arenas.
Once Markets by Zerodha found its footing, though, I told the team that it was time to revive Subtext. And our work in Markets provided direct impetus to that idea.
You see, throughout all our Markets initiatives, we realised that there are so many geeks who have accumulated a phenomenal amount of context about specific sectors, industries, companies, markets, and policies we never knew existed before. Many of these people aren’t well-known outside the specific circles they travel in, but we sincerely believed more people should hear them out. Subtext was meant to platform the work of those people.
But the problem, as those of us writing The Daily Brief know all too well, is that writing is really, really hard. It takes a strange willingness, like a form of self-torture, to sit with your own thoughts and wrestle with them until they stop looking like a half-digested mess, and a lot of experts have day jobs besides writing.
In a pivot, we asked ourselves, instead of asking busy people to write for us, what if we spoke to them? What if we had long, thoughtful conversations with them, recorded those chats, published them as videos and podcasts. And then, hopefully, we could use the transcripts, with LLM assistance, to turn those chats into high-quality articles?
We were also very clear about one thing: we didn’t just want to speak to the same 15–20 people who keep appearing everywhere, saying roughly the same things, in slightly different rooms, with mostly the same microphones. That didn’t really fly with a team that finds it natural to go against the grain.
All of this passion for Subtext remained just that, until LLMs showed up to help us reinvigorate, even modify, those abandoned efforts from the past.
And if you haven’t noticed already, Subtext is already in full swing.
We have already published 14 conversations with policy practitioners, academics, investors, entrepreneurs, and operators who have spent years thinking deeply about the specificities of the Indian and global economy. Some names include: Pranay Kotasthane, Rory Johnston, Deepak Shenoy, Kyle Chan, Rosa Abraham, Zohra Khan and Ajay Srivastava. We thank them for giving our newest baby a chance.
You can find these existing chats on the Markets by Zerodha YouTube channel. But going forward, all new conversations will be published on the new Subtext YouTube channel.
And we’re only getting started. We have a long list of people whose work we’ve learned from and greatly admire. Our plan is to convince them to come on Subtext. We have a pipeline of episodes that we’ve already shot and are in post-production. Our aim is to publish one or two conversations a week. One is a given. Two, we will try. Along with that, every Sunday on Subtext, the Markets team posts what we’re reading that we don’t find space to talk about elsewhere.
Leading the charge on Subtext are Small Pranav (Kumar) (editor’s note: don’t ask) and Kashish, who have put immense efforts in everything from guest outreach, to research, to the actual hosting, to social media.
So, to recap, that’s five days of Daily Brief, five days of Aftermarket Report, multiple editions of Chatter during earnings season, Points and Figures, Who Said What, In the Money, plus everything you see on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn — all of that the result of 8-9 people. And now Subtext. Not that we’re complaining.
Much of it owed to the efficiencies borne due to LLMs. Much of it, to smart planning that doesn’t have us burning the midnight oil every single day.
But more than anything, all of this has been possible only because of the love all of you subscribers have shown us. Markets by Zerodha continues to grow from strength to strength only because so many of you keep reading, watching, listening, sharing, criticising, suggesting, and cheering. We thank you the most.
So, yet again, we ask you to give love to another thing we’re trying. Please subscribe to the Subtext YouTube channel if you prefer to get an alert whenever we publish. It is also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the newsletter if you prefer reading the insights our guests share. Our 15th episode comes out tomorrow.
Moreover, if you have accumulated a lot of insight and wisdom on a particular topic and are itching to share it, please hit us up. We’d love to have you on the show. We promise to do strong due diligence on your work and ask you thoughtful questions.
If you have feedback, suggestions, criticism, or guest recommendations, please leave them in the comments. We read and respond to them religiously.
Until next time.