Mala's Podcast

Welcome to Mala’s Podcast, where honest conversations meet the future of AI, startups, and leadership.Mala sits down with CEOs, founders, and innovators leading the world’s most exciting AI companies — from Silicon Valley to Singapore and beyond. Each episode uncovers what really happens behind the scenes: building teams, surviving chaos, scaling products, and shaping the next era of intelligent technology.If you’re curious about how the AI revolution is being built — one decision, one founder, one story at a time — you’re in the right place.

Mala's Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Mala Ramakrishnan, with 32 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Mala Ramakrishnan hosts Mala's Podcast, a business show with 32 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #27

  Why customer-centric companies always win | Insights from Customer Support Executive

  May 20, 202622 minS1

  <p>In this episode, Mala sits down with Kshama Swamy, VP of Customer Engineering and Success at CircleCI, for a practical conversation on customer engineering, AI adoption, enterprise software, and what it takes to build customer-centric teams at scale.</p><p><br></p><p>Kshama’s career spans consulting, the Department of Defence, Cognos, IBM, Intapp, PAR, and now CircleCI. Across these roles, she has led support, services, customer success, and customer engineering teams across legal tech, restaurant tech, and developer infrastructure.</p><p><br></p><p>In this conversation, Kshama shares how curiosity shaped her career pivots, why support is...

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  Episode #26

  Why most IT teams don't drive growth | Insights from a Chief Information Officer

  May 18, 202626 minS1

  <p>In this episode, Mala sits down with Sumit Johar, CIO of BlackLine, for an insightful conversation on AI transformation, enterprise IT, finance technology, cybersecurity, and what it takes to drive change inside highly regulated organizations.</p><p><br></p><p>Sumit leads technology at BlackLine, a SaaS company serving finance organizations across the world. In this conversation, he shares why AI adoption in finance is especially challenging, because hallucinations, vague outputs, and “almost accurate” results simply do not work in environments where trust, predictability, auditability, and governance matter.</p><p><br></p><p>The conversation traces Sumit’s journey from g...

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  Episode #25

  What it takes to make AI work in enterprises | Head of Product Strategy ⁨@rackspacetechnology⁩

  May 7, 202630 minS1

  <p>What does AI strategy look like inside industries that are still catching up to cloud?</p><p>In this episode, Mala speaks with Madhavi Rajan, Head of Product Strategy for Rackspace’s Private Cloud business, about her journey from NASA-funded research to enterprise infrastructure and AI strategy. Madhavi shares hard-earned lessons from 20+ years in deep tech, including how to move from engineering to product, why enterprise customers adopt technology slowly, and how leaders should think about private cloud, responsible AI, security, and business outcomes.</p><p>This episode is especially relevant for founders, product leaders, infrastructure builders, enterprise SaaS te...

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  Episode #24

  Inside AI Implementation at a $1B Company | With Chief AI Officer ⁨@Buildops⁩ ​

  May 5, 202620 minS1

  <p>In this episode of Mala’s Podcast, Mala sits down with Duncan Grazier, a seasoned technology leader who has helped scale companies from early-stage teams to major exits, including ShopKeep’s $550M sale to Lightspeed Commerce and Weedmaps’ public-market journey. Duncan is now Chief AI Officer at BuildOps, a unicorn transforming the commercial contracting industry with software and AI.  </p><p><br></p><p>This conversation goes deep into what it actually takes to scale engineering teams, build trust in AI, and bring automation into industries that still rely heavily on paper-based workflows. Duncan shares how BuildOps is helping electri...

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  Episode #23

  The hard truth about business turnarounds | CFO @Fullproof.ai

  Apr 29, 202641 minS1

  <p>Shannon Power started in a bunny suit doing semiconductor manufacturing at Motorola and Intel. An industrial engineer turned finance executive, today she's a fractional CFO and COO who gets called in at inflection points — when companies are changing business models, scaling after a big raise, or preparing for an exit.</p><p>In this fireside chat with Mala Ramakrishnan, Shannon breaks down why CFO turnover has doubled in the last year, why finance and operations roles are merging at companies like Salesforce, and how she actually evaluates AI tools — including her honest take on why most companies are getting AI i...

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