Zero Shot

"We have vibe coding and Biryani sessions on Fridays…”This is not a scene from a tech startup or a weekend hackathon. It is a statement by Nikhil Narendran, a partner at Trilegal who heads the firm’s digital innovation group.Naturally, our host Praveen Gopal Krishnan was taken aback. Lawyers who are coding away? Who could imagine?Praveen was even more surprised when Nikhil said he almost never types and only uses Wispr Flow now. “You are the first non-tech person to say that,” he admits.This episode takes you inside a law firm that is aggressively using, collaborating, and experimenting with AI.About 75% of Trilegal’s lawyers currently use AI at various stages of their workflows. Several projects are underway and some prototypes are even created in-house. In fact, legal AI platform Lucio was incubated inside the firm and is its primary service provider. All of this is not surprising considering how tech forward Trilegal has been. For context: they started using Slack in 2012.In this episode, host Brady Ng tries to understand what Anthropic’s plugins mean beyond the immediate market shockwaves. Nikhil unpacks this through the choices made at Trilegal over the last couple of years, getting into the details of SLMs, custom-GPTs, multi-LLM systems, context windows, and much more.This is an episode on legal AI  — a rapidly-growing space that does not get enough attention in our tech conversations.This is our first attempt at diving into the AI usage of a non-technical industry. What did you think of it? Would you like to hear similar stories? What other industries are you curious about? Write to us at zeroshot@the-ken.com.---This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.---Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.--- Additional Resources Trilegal's Rahul Matthan on the firm, the partnership, and the principleshttps://www.lucioai.com/https://wisprflow.ai/Lawyers don’t like tech. Businesses don’t like legal teams. Spotdraft wants to fix it allHarvey reportedly raising at $11B valuation just months after it hit $8B

Pick any conversation on AI in India, one project keeps coming up again and again: UPI. Every major stakeholder — across government and industry — seems to be interested in replicating the success story of the payments interface. Praveen Gopal Krishnan argues that Sarvam AI — the startup that is a VC darling and government favourite at once — is at the heart of this narrative.Here is the problem. The UPI moment came to India in very specific circumstances. We did catch “lightning in a bottle” as Rohin Dharmakumar puts it. But it is unlikely to happen again.The AI supply chain is fundamentally different. There are many moving parts and a range of use cases to be solved for. A state-led centralised approach — with a main character around which everything pivots — is not the answer.What are the alternatives? Competing AI companies. The government enabling innovation in a diffused manner. Research incentives. Encouraging competition so that Indian AI companies are at par with the best in the world.There is precedent to this. Brady Ng, our resident China expert and tech nerd, gives us a history lesson.And if you have been wondering where the foundational model is, Sarvam AI is expected to unveil one soon. We will cover that ground when that happens. Until then, tune in for a round up of India’s AI strategy and its main company.------Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN. Share your comments, critiques and suggestions with us at zeroshot@the-ken.com. Or write in just to say hi. We would love to hear from you!------Additional Resources: Sarvam AI’s Rs 10,000 crore pivotIndia’s ‘UPI Moment’ in AI has ArrivedFor AI, India can build on the Aadhaar-UPI modelVoice AI is India's next UPI moment: Infosys chairman Nandan NilekaniThe Economic SurveyPhonePe dominates payments but loses money. Now what?AI is not UPI: Why going by the UPI model risks stalling progress on artificial intelligence

It’s the end of 2025, so we don’t have a full episode of Zero Shot for you today.This podcast launched in September, and we’ve produced 14 episodes for you so far. We’ve covered a wide range of topics, and our conversations—between Praveen, Rohin, and Brady—only work because you’re willing to sit with the complexities we wade into. We know artificial intelligence will move fast in 2026, so we’ll keep asking the questions that matter in this AI hype cycle. We’re glad you’re coming along with us.So, thank you, and we’ll be back next week.As always, if you’d like to get in touch with any or all of our hosts, please drop us a note at zeroshot@the-ken.com. We respond to all messages.The cover art of Zero Shot is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.

Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.