Daybreak (The Ken)

2024 was a defining year for Saregama, one of India’s oldest music labels. 

This is a company that has been around for well over a century. For a long time now, it has been associated with the kind of music your parents and grandparents grew up listening to – the classics, evergreen Bollywood numbers, Ghazals, Carnatic music…you get the drift.  

But this year, something changed. Saregama made it clear that it was done banking on old melodies alone. It has been on a mission to make fresh hits. And that mission has largely been successful thanks to Youtube. 

But there is a flip side to this strategy. In the Youtube-Saregama relationship, the former holds all the power. 

Tune in. 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Cloud, streaming, generative AI… while all of these are increasingly becoming hot topics of discussion, data centres—the large, boxy buildings that house high-powered computers—are looking for innovative solutions to stay cool.

The advent of GPU processing has opened an opportunity for a handful of foreign companies to throw their hat into the ring. Their proposition? Liquid cooling. 

So far, air cooling has been the preferred way to keep data centres cool. Like its name suggests, it is the process of using air to keep these centres cool. Liquid cooling does just that but with water. 

It’s more efficient and largely believed to be a better way of cooling. But change does not come easy. Many data centre operators here in India believe it is riskier than air cooling. But with AI technology advancing the way that it is and GPUs growing more popular, they may soon not have a choice. 

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

With the advent of plastic in the 1980s, the once-flourishing jute industry of India saw a slow demise. But lately, the tables seemed to have turned.

Countries are implementing more stringent ESG rules forcing global retailers like Ikea, Walmart, Tesco, etc to look for alternatives to plastic bags. India being the largest producer of jute is suddenly in focus. More than $120 million worth of jute bags were exported in the last financial year alone.

However, neighbouring Bangladesh, also one of the leading producers of jute is quickly catching up.

Tune in to find out more.

Recommended reading: Walmart and Ikea are why a British-era industry is back in vogue

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

In the last few years, companies like Everest that manage cab fleets have become the silent battalion in Uber’s army of cabs. In fact, 90% of Everest’s fleet is with Uber.

This, of course, has helped Everest grow its revenues and both seem to have found their relationship to be mutually beneficial. Everest gets to run its assets on a high demand platform. And for Uber, it become so much easier to manage its cars.

So Uber is deepening its ties with Everest, especially with Uber Green in mind. But as Uber gives more control to the fleet management company, the basics of the ride hailing business could change forever.

Tune in

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

The voice of the gig worker is getting louder, and it's coming to a point where neither delivery companies nor the government can afford to ignore it for much longer.

Last month, the Rajasthan government came up with a new law that aims to establish a welfare board and a dedicated social security fund for platform-based gig workers in the state. One could say the new law sets a precedent for gig workers across the country.

However, that is so only if you take it at face value.

Once you look beyond the headlines and go through the technicalities of the law, it doesn't paint as rosy a picture for the aggrieved gig workers.

Tune in to find out more.

Recommendation

Gig-worker strikes are just the tip of the iceberg, unionisation lies beneath

India's first law to protect gig workers is surprisingly good news for their employers

Does the delivery-partner fee you pay 'fully go to them for their time and effort'? Nope

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

What put iPhone city on the map is that it produces more than half of the world’s iPhone’s every single year. The global demand for the Apple iPhone has only increased over the years. To keep up with that demand Foxconn hires up to 200,000 workers – a mix of migrants and college students – to make sure that the assembly lines keep running. Especially during the peak season which happens to begin right around now, from September to February. 

Iphone city is the perfect example of the China manufacturing playbook. It is what propelled China to emerge as the world’s manufacturing hub. It’s pretty simple – Foxconn and companies like it build these large facilities, pack millions of migrant laborers into dorms near their facilities, and get them to work long hours, in often tough conditions. 

But now things are changing. More and more global companies are adopting a China-plus-one strategy. And India is becoming a favoured alternative. 

And  as the focus shifts our way, manufacturers in India are pretty much replicating the same China labour model. But this model has an indigenous problem.

Tune in

**This episode was first published on September 26, 2024.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

It’s 2025 and the idea of “masculinity” has undergone a complete overhaul. You see, after several product life cycles, the men’s grooming business has reached a stage where brands aren’t just formulating shampoos and body washes exclusively for men. They are also coming up with compacts and concealers, and a bunch of other makeup products targeted at men. 

In fact, in the last decade or so, India has actually become the biggest market in the Asia Pacific region for beauty products for men.

And yet, nothing much has changed about how these brands pitch their products to men.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

We are now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Healthify saw immense success during the pandemic. Its revenues more than doubled in FY 2022. And it adds up when you think about it. With millions of people stuck at home and gyms shut, Healthify’s virtual fitness and nutrition plans were pretty ideal. 

But once gyms reopened, home workouts didn’t cut it anymore. And unfortunately, Healthify really bore the brunt of it. The following year, revenue growth slowed down considerably and losses began to soar. 

But the company's leadership seems undeterred. In fact they want to expand business to the United States, where it will be up against established healthtechs like Noom and MyFitnessPal.  

The company seems to be pinning its hopes on the US market as somewhat of a hail Mary pass. 

If all the women of the world had a collective wallet where we could put in a penny for every time we heard the words “your biological clock is ticking,” we could move to Venus and run our own planet.

But as unfair as it may be, it is true. There is an ideal time period in a woman’s life when she can have a baby. Or when she is the most “fertile.”

Unlike men who are biologically not limited by such constraints, women are born with a limited number of eggs. And turns out, this number of eggs sees a drastic decline after the age of 37. And when we say drastic, we mean drastic.

But in the 1980s, scientists figured out how to freeze women's eggs. They developed a process called oocyte cryopreservation. It took thirty years for the procedure to become widely available. Today, a growing number of women are opting for the procedure. 

Most people assume that women freeze their eggs so they can buy time to achieve professional success. Women who freeze their eggs are often envisioned as 'career-driven', 'power hungry', and ambitious. But, egg freezing is an intense process. It is invasive, it is painful. It takes a toll on women not just physically but mentally as well. Plus, it is expensive.

So why do women freeze their eggs?

Hosts Snigdha and Rahel went to Dr Marcia Inhorn, a professor at the University of Yale and author of Motherhood on Ice to find out.

Tune in.

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

India’s nutraceutical market is estimated  to be worth $4-5 billion and the government expects it to be worth almost five times more in the next two years. As important as it is to monitor the rapidly growing market, regulations have not really kept up. In a post-pandemic world where preventive healthcare has become all the rage, a dangerous situation is being created. Health supplement makers are flouting RDA guidelines and consumers have been paying little attention.

Now, the health ministry of India is planning to move nutraceuticals from under the ambit of FSSAI, the food regulator to CDSCO, the drugs regulator. According to reports, the Ministry has also proposed forming a committee chaired by the Secretary of Health to address overlapping concerns between Nutraceuticals and Drugs. 

Tune in to find out more.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories

*This episode was originally published on July 12, 2024

Have you ever heard of a 'f*** off fund'? Or better yet, do you have one?

For the uninitiated, it is a sum of money that women should ideally set aside to get out of a difficult situation – think toxic job, abusive relationship or family situation, you get the drift. 

The term was coined by freelance writer, Paulette Perhach, in 2016. We recommend that you read her powerful essay on financial independence. The idea is for it to give you enough power, confidence and control to literally be able to say “f*** off” and walk away. 

You are probably thinking, ‘great in theory, but how do I actually build one for myself?’. We have got you covered. In this special episode of Daybreak, Chaitra Chidanand, the co-founder of Salt, a financial services platform for women, demystifies f*** off funds and how you can get one. 

Tune in

Suggested reading

A F*** Off Fund: the most important female prep, Reddit

"The FOF has saved me and my kids a few times.  Health crisis. Unemployment. Violence.  S**t happens.  But just as important—having a FOF means you can act from a position of power, not fear, not subservience."

Warren Buffett Invests Like A Girl? Forbes

"Buffett has always said that it’s temperament--not intellect--that makes you a great long-term investor. When you look at studies that have been coming out in the last 10 years about how men and women invest, what you see is that women tend to naturally have this temperament that creates long-term investing success."

For Women With Money Issues, an A.D.H.D. Diagnosis Can Be Revelatory, NYT

'But because activities like planning or budgeting don’t usually give people with A.D.H.D. a dopamine hit, they can find it harder than neurotypical people to get started or stick to accounting activities. This results in extra costs — paying cancellation fees for missed appointments or late fees for not opening a bill on time, or losing refunds because we missed the deadline for returning an unwanted purchase.'

For feedback, write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

A couple years ago, quick commerce platforms were the place to be for up and coming brands across the country. Just a little sliver of real estate on a rapid delivery app was enough to put them on the map.

But now, many of these brands are very quickly realising that success on a Blinkit or a Zepto is a double edged sword. With it comes high commissions, marketing fees, and the constant pressure to never run out of inventory.

Some brands have now had enough.

How did it get here? The Ken reporter Nuha Bubere explains.

Tune in.

 Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

For nearly two decades, Abhishek Ganguly worked as the managing director of Puma, the German athleisure brand in India. In that period alone, the brand’s revenue shot up from Rs 20 crore to close to Rs 4,000 crore. Under Ganguly, Puma even managed to beat its longtime rival Adidas to become a market leader. 

In 2023, Ganguly decided to quit and start his own venture called Agilitas Sports with two of his colleagues from Puma, Atul Bajaj and Amit Prabhu. Within a year, Ganguly’s company has managed to rack up more than Rs 700 crore in revenue. 

The way Ganguly and his co-founders got to this point is interesting. Instead of doing the obvious thing and launching their own sneaker brand, Ganguly did something quite odd. Something, that even the biggest sportswear brands in the world – Nike, Reebok, Adidas – have never even attempted. 

Last September, Agilitas bought India’s largest sportswear contract manufacturer, Mochiko shoes. This is the company that manufactures shoes for international brands like Adidas, Puma, New Balance, Skechers, Reebok, Asics, Crocs, Decathlon  – the works. Ganguly’s logic behind owning the factory is simple – he wants whole  pie and not just a slice of the margin. 

He told The Ken's DVLS Pranathi that having the additional manufacturer’s margin in a price-sensitive market like India is worth its weight in gold. But there is a reason giants like Puma and Adidas don’t go down this road—taking care of manufacturing in-house is a logistical nightmare. That’s why most brands outsource to companies that are equipped to do it, like Mochiko. 

But Agilitas is dead set on bringing the entire operation in-house. It’s convinced it can work and has also managed to convince VCs that there is merit in controlling both manufacturing and distributing. 

Investors are betting on the Ganguly-Bajaj-Prabhu trio to pull off another Puma-sized victory. 

But will the other shoe drop? 

Tune in.

**The host mistakenly said a decade instead of two decades when referring to Abhishek Ganguly's stint at Puma. The error is regretted.

Fill in Akshaya's Happiness Survey here

DAYBREAK UNWIND RECCOMENDATIONS FOR COMFORT FOOD SPOTS

Rahel: Kappa Chakka Kandhari, Bangalore,
           Unnamed food truck at Utorda Beach, South Goa

Snigdha: Alu Dum from Bari's tuck shop near Loreto Convent, Darjeeling
                Thukpa at Kunga's, near Planter's Club, Darjeeling
                 Ghee Podi Dosa from Umesh Refreshments, Indiranagar, Bangalore

Satyam: Litti Chokha, Jai Mata Di Food Stall, HSR Layout, Bangalore

Shayanika: Dosa and Puliyogare Rice at 3 Trees Cafe, Upper Dharamkot, Dharamsala

Rahul: Egg fried rice at Tenzin Kitchen, Koramangala

Akshaya: Okonomoyaki and fried tofu sushi at Dahlia, Chennai

Indians have really been warming up to credit cards lately. More than a 100 million credit cards are in circulation in India as of now. And this rise has a lot to do with the benefits customers get: cash back deals and reward points that you can collect and redeem for anything from flight tickets to stays at fancy resorts.

But between the two, cashbacks are a more straightforward method of making the most of your credit card. Availing reward points, on the other hand, requires a combination of skill and patience. 

And between the two, there’s one that banks actually don’t like.

Tune in to find out.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

The world of cyber fraud has gotten even murkier thanks to a slick new tech service that is streamlining fraud for scammers and making them even harder to track down. This new concept is called ‘Mule-as-a-service’ or MaaS. It’s kind of like a plug-and-play fraud tech where service providers are able to  deploy an army of mules on behalf of cybercriminals. These mules are people who lend their bank accounts to move dirty money for cybercriminals. The scary thing is this mule network is getting smarter about leaving no money trail for authorities to follow.

More often than not, these mules are ordinary people from low income groups who sign up to make a quick buck, without realising just how dangerous the whole business is.

Daybreak hosts Snigdha and Rahel are joined by The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan and Dhiraj Gupta, co-founder of the fraud-protection firm MfilterIt, about how this network works and why regulators have been struggling to keep up. 

Tune in.

Subscribe here to listen to the full episode of Two by Two

Listen to the free version of Two by Two here:
Apple
Spotify

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Freshworks, one of the most successful SaaS companies that was listed on Nasdaq in 2021, wanted to hit $1 billion in annualised revenue by 2023. What made it stand out was also its employee-first approach.

That it took the company just 5 years to climb from $1 million in ARR in 2010 hit $100 million indicated that the target could've been achieved. but it's 2023, and Freshworks is only halfway towards the goal.

How is the company planning to pursue its profit goals?

Tune in to fine out.

Recommended reading: How Freshworks is going from being a ‘people-first’ to a ‘profits-first’ company
Subscribe to The Ken for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

ZestMoney, the BNPL platform, is in the final stages of being acquired by online-payments giant PhonePe. 

But ZestMoney has been unable to get enough scale online. Even after going offline, it failed to manage risks. It saw its losses shoot up by 3X in the last financial year.

PhonePe, meanwhile, has ambitions to expand by venturing into lending.

Can ZestMoney's loss be PhonePe's gain?

Tune in to find out.

A new generation of designers is on the rise. These designers are expected to be  a lot more than just “one trick ponies”. The new-age ‘Designer X’ is expected to bring  a little bit of everything to the table. They understand the basics of sustainability, how their designs would impact things like climate change and culture. And they would also generally know a little bit of coding too. 

And that is because the whole perception of design has shifted. Just last month, IIT Delhi announced a new certificate course in design thinking. It quoted multiple reports explaining why aspirants should take it. One of them was a 2023 Deloitte report that said companies that integrated design thinking in their innovation process brought new products to market 50 per cent faster than others and saw 2.5 X more revenue growth.

The latest batch of design generalists are the products of a new era of design education that has been sweeping through India’s universities. As of now, about a dozen have started their own design schools. Some of these universities are leaning into the industry’s demand for a well-rounded designer.

But now that more universities have entered the picture and generalist designers are becoming a dime a dozen, landing good jobs is going to get tougher as the job market matures. 

Tune in.

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Back when it was launched in 2020, Bajaj Finsev Health had a clear plan: it wanted to provide a complete healthcare package to its consumers. 

And it did that by happily playing a supporting role in India’s booming healthcare industry. 

Here's what Bajaj Finserv Health does. It is essentially a health management platform. So it facilitates things like doctor consultations and health checkups to its 400-odd corporate clients. Simple enough. 

But four years later, the company’s vision has evolved. They want to take things to the next level. It’s clearly sick of playing a supporting role. So it has decided to step into the spotlight. The first step was to acquire 22-year-old Vidal Healthcare, which is a third party administrator.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

PS. While you're here, here's the happiness survey for the season finale of The First Two Years. 

Tata Motors' EV subsidiary, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Limited (TPEML), is prepping for a potential IPO in the next year or so. It wants to raise $1-2 billion. In the first half of 2023, Tata Motors dominated 75% of the passenger EV market share in India despite relentless competition from the likes of Mahindra & Mahindra and other newer rivals. 

The auto-maker's revenue for FY23 stood at almost $8 billion. The not-so-secret secret behind this success Tata Motors' its Xpres-T EV sedan—the go-to for cab companies and fleet operators that are looking to switch to greener alternatives.

Xpres-T could easily to capture the cab market except Tata Motors maybe deliberately downplaying this bit of its success so far.

Tune into find out why.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Bengaluru is best known for two things: great weather and terrible traffic. The Silcon Valley of India is the sixth slowest city in the world! How come no one has come up with some innovative tech-based solutions?

Actually, they have.  But you’ll be surprised to know that one the key reasons why the city's traffic troubles never end is because the focus has mostly been only on tech driven efforts.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories

Things were going really well for Paisabazaar, until the Reserve Bank of India stepped in and hit it where it hurts. The RBI told banks to clamp down on the unsecured loan segment – which happens to be Paisabazaar’s bread and butter.  

The regulator has discouraged lenders from small-ticket collateral free loans. And of course lenders know better than to ignore the RBI’s directive. 

So for Paisabazaar that meant its lending partners started shying away from unsecured loan leads. After a dream run, growth started slowing down. The company knew it had to do something and fast. 

Tune in 

Just like every Lok Sabha election in the last 72 years, millions of people will vote for a new government over the next couple of weeks.  

But there is one thing that really sets this election apart. Never before have political parties actively used Generative Artificial IntelIigence at this scale. It is a turning point in India’s electoral evolution. 

Some AI startups in India have been developing hyper-personalised voter experiences for political parties. This comes at a time when Gen AI tools like deepfakes have become very sophisticated — to the point where even experts often  struggle to tell what is real and what is not. 

In the run-up to the election, when you are being bombarded with political content, videos and images, this can be very dangerous. Yet, there are barely any rules in place to regulate the use of this technology during the election process. 

What does this mean for the world’s largest democracy? 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

In the year that ended in March 2022, Apple saw its India revenue shoot up to an all-time high by 45%. But for the longest time Apple's growth in India was sluggish.

What's making Apple's fortunes in India turn around so drastically?

Tune in to find out.

For more on this, read this report by Soumyajit Saha: Indians’ love for the iPhone is stronger than ever. But Apple retailers are not happy

One of the largest deals to acquire a D2C brand took place last week. India’s largest manufacturer of consumer good, Hindustan Unilever acquired the skincare company Minimalist, a 90% shareholding for nearly 3000 crore rupees.

Homegrown startup beauty brands have been on a roll in India. Scores and scores of new age skincare brands have cropped up since the pandemic and all of them harp on the science of it. And their whole appeal is transparency. Transparency about the ingredients that go into each of their products.

Among all of them, Minimalist is the one that really stands out. It is an active ingredients based skincare company that sells things like niacinamide, retinol, Vit C, glycolic acid, and salicylic acid. It launched around the end of 2020, and within a span of eight months, it built a 1000 crore rupee  business. What’s even more surprising that the brand has remained in the green, meaning profitable, from the very first month itself.

For years, legacy brands like, HUL, Ponds, and Loreal have been selling products with similar ingredient--the only difference being they either didn't launch them in India or the kept the names hidden away in tiny fonts at the back of the bottles.

It was Minimalist that came around and broke that mould.

And now, seeing the success of brands like Minimalist, legacy brands are rethinking their strategy.

Case in point: Hindustan Unilever

The company’s has been wanting to turn its beauty and well-being portfolio into a “high-growth" premium category for a while now and the acquisition of Minimalist is a big step in that direction.

But how did Minimalist manage something that a giant like HUL couldn't?

Tune in.

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

 Here’s the thing about the Indian carbonated beverage market – for decades now it has been a two, sometimes three horse race dominated by everyone’s favourite black coloured colas. Pepsi, Coca Cola and Thums Up. 

But in the last year or so, a 160-ml bottle of cumin-flavoured soda has managed to do what very few bottled beverages could. It has challenged the Indian beverage industry’s holy trifecta – the Coca-Cola-Pepsi-Parle Agro trio. 

The crazy thing is, this isn’t some massive global brand that has just entered the Indian market. It’s a seven year old desi brand launched by three cousins in Punjab that was largely unknown until about a year ago. We are talking about Lahori Zeera. 

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

A few months ago, multiple Hotstar executives had told The Ken the same thing. “IPL or no IPL, cricket is going to be the platform’s most important customer-acquisition funnel this year.” It seems Disney Star is holding on to that strategy. The Asia Cup is going to be streamed for free on Disney Hotstar from today onwards.

Even after losing the IPL's digital streaming rights, Disney+Hotstar is the leader of the Indian OTT space in terms of subscriber numbers. But OTT is a complex business and just having the largest subscriber base is not really enough, at least not in India.

In fact, Disney has been on quite the downturn in India. And the way its headed, it almost seems like its making space for Jio to come take its crown.

Tune in.

Free Read

Project Manager is dead. Long live the Product Manager 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

2023 turned out to be a landmark year for UPI (Unified Payments Interface) with the number of transactions crossing the 100-billion mark for the first time, according to the latest data released by the NPCI. The month of December alone saw more than 12 billion transactions. These numbers are testament to how UPI has revolutionized the way we use money. 

As of now, there are more than 300 million users in India are using UPI to freely carry out their financial transactions with each other.  

But did you know that your bank can block your account without a warning or any explanation based on your UPI transactions? And what's worst, you could even come under the radar of law enforcement authorities like the cyber crime police. Anyone who unknowingly makes a transaction, directly or indirectly, with a fraudster can be considered suspicious by authorities.  

Meanwhile, banks and law enforcement agencies still haven't managed to figure out a standard operating procedure in dealing with such matters. This had led them to adopt a ‘block first, ask questions later’ approach that's been making the lives of innocent victims of financial crimes even harder. 

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.   

The Indian Met Dept has predicted that 2023, especially between March to May, is going to be unusually hot for most parts of India. Air conditioners and electric fans account for nearly one fifth of the total electricity used in buildings around the world today.

Naturally, electricity bills have skyrocketed and it's only going to get worse.

Meanwhile, a fascinating technology has emerged that can save 30 to 40% in energy consumption but it's not being adopted as fast as it should be. Energy transitions are proving to be much more difficult than a smartphone upgrade.

Tune in

The golden age of the Indian shopping mall is over.

There are at least 400 malls across the country. But a growing proportion of them are either dead or on life support. A report by real estate consultant firm Knight Frank found that the number of ghost malls in the country rose from 57 in 2022 to 64 in 2023. That’s about 1 in almost six malls. The report estimates that between 2022 and 2023, the loss of value due to the rise in ghost malls was around 800 million dollars, so that’s close to 7,000 crore rupees. 

In this episode, Daybreak host Rahel Philipose is joined by Gulam Zia, senior executive director at Knight Frank and Abhishek Bansal, the Executive Director of Pacific Development Corporation to understand the ins and outs of the mall business — why some succeed and others fail.

Tune in. 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

Beets are a superfood today. Tomorrow it'll be lemons. The internet is rife with misinformation especially about food and health related stuff. There are hundreds of influencers on your feed telling you what’s good for you.

But who’s telling you what’s bad and what doesn't work?  Maybe a keto diet worked for your friend but not for you. Take Dr Cyriac Abby Philips who goes by The Liver Doc on Twitter. Recently, he claimed there is no point in taking multivitamins.

He is a de-influencer and there are many like him who work towards breaking down myths. Often they're faced with legal action and threats, yet most of them continue their work.

But what is really fuelling de-influencers?

Tune in.

Recommendation

The wild finfluencer party is finally coming to an end

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Bluestone and Caratlane set out with the same dream. They both wanted to sell everyday fine jewellery online.

This was a pretty alien concept in a country like ours, where gold and diamonds are seen more as an asset rather than just an accessory. And for a lot of people, buying gold and diamonds online is completely out of the question, even today. 

But both these companies were committed to the idea that there was space for fine jewellery online. And turns out they were right. Today, pretty much any major jeweller you can think of is selling their jewellery online. 

But somewhere along the way, they went on completely different trajectories. 

It has been about four months since Minutes, Flipkart's all new quick-commerce service was launched in Bangalore. But Flipkart isn’t doing e-commerce the old fashioned way. It’s not taking on the likes of Blinkit or Swiggy Instamart directly by promising speedy grocery deliveries. Instead, its big focus is electronics. 

It is a space that quick-commerce giants like Blinkit, Swiggy and Zepto – have all dipped their toes in. But Flipkart wants to take things to the next level. Like one Flipkart manager told The Ken, the company is trying to increase the width rather than the depth of the electronics category. The idea is to give more options to customers, but in limited quantities. 

But while it may not be taking on Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart directly, Flipkart does have another major challenger – Croma, India’s second-largest electronics retailer. And courtesy a partnership with Big Basket, Croma is also getting into the quick commerce business. 

However, building the capability to deliver large electronics, that too in volume, is not an easy task. So how do they plan to do it? 

Tune.

Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

For quite a while now, the Indian startup ecosystem has really been feeling the pinch. People in the know call it the funding winter. These are periods of tremendous financial insecurity for startups, particularly now. 

You see, for the last five years ago, the startup funding culture here in India was like a rollercoaster that was only going up. But now the scenario has changed considerably. After a dream run, big-ticket equity funding has slowed down and once sky high valuations are very quickly coming back to Earth. 

These startups still need the money, obviously. But they have realised that raising a round of funding may not be as easy as it once was. 

But they have found their knight in shining armour. In comes ‘venture debt’. These are essentially loans that go to VC-backed startups. A lot of the startups in the Indian ecosystem are thirsty, and venture debt is increasingly proving to be the refreshing splash they needed amid this funding drought.

But there's a catch. 

Tune in.  

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

About three years ago, the government decided that it wanted India to become a global powerhouse in cell manufacturing. So it went ahead and dangled a very juicy carrot for companies to produce batteries locally. It promised over Rs 18,000 crore in subsidies for anybody who would help it make its battery dreams come true by the end of this decade. 

Cut to now, three years later, and those dreams are very quickly losing charge. You see, by now the government should have technically already disbursed Rs 2,700 crore to beneficiaries. 

But in reality, not even 1 per cent of that has reached any of them. Merely Rs 24 crore has been spent by the government this far, and most of it has gone towards paperwork, site visits and tender process. That's it. What's going on? 

Tune in. 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

The Ken is hosting its first live subscriber event! Join two long-term and contrarian CEOs, Nithin Kamath of Zerodha and Deepak Shenoy of Capitalmind, as they discuss the mental models, decision making frameworks, and potential outcomes related to a very real possibility: an extended stock market winter that lasts 24 months or more. Click here to buy your tickets. 

Back in 2009, Tata launched an egg-shaped four seater hatchback that it was convinced would redefine mobility for the masses, Tata Nano. Initially priced at just Rs. 1 lakh, it was designed as the dream ride for the lower middle class. It was a bold and ambitious that unfortunately didn't quite take off. Auto experts say it was because of a combination of factors. But perhaps the biggest learning from the Nano fiasco was that car ownership in India isn’t just about wheels. It’s about status. 

Now, almost two decades later, Tata Motors has managed to dethrone India’s largest passenger carmaker, Maruti, to officially become the public’s favourite. And it’s all because of how it has positioned itself since the Nano. Take one of its most successful models, Tata Punch, for example. Last year, this compact SUV became the country’s best selling car. It managed to beat the iconic Maruti Wagonr and Swift which previously took the top spot for several years now.  

So how did Tata Motors get here? In this episode we dive into its journey from the Nano to the Punch. 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

The government of India launched Digiyatra, a contactless, facial-recognition-based passenger-entry system, in December last year. The idea is for those who sign up on the platform to avoid the tedious process of getting their ID and flight tickets checked by  CISF personnel at airports.

But lately, stories of passengers being forced to sign up for the app are surfacing on social media. Meanwhile, airlines, which are important stakeholders to make the entire endeavour successful are unable to see any benefits for themselves. Airports though see it as a great opportunity. In fact, multiple sources close to the implementation of Digiyatra told The Ken that the whole idea of Digiyatra came from airports themselves.

What's in it for them?

Tune in.

Recommendation

What airports really want to do with Digiyatra

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

IV drip therapy has gone from being a fad among celebrities like the Kardashians, to becoming the wellness treatment for the uber rich. There is a growing consumer interest in quick, customisable wellness solutions and plush clinics across the country are cashing in on it. Whether you are looking to treat a hangover, get glowing skin, lose weight or simply optimise your overall well being – there is an IV infusion for you. 

The catch, of course, is that these treatments can cost anywhere from Rs 2,500 to Rs 80,000 per session. But the exorbitant prices of these treatments has hardly been a deterrant for its target audience. In fact, if anything, it’s only shot up to fame. 

The Ken reporter DVLS Pranathi spoke to multiple cosmetic clinics – from Kaya, to others like Reviv, Elixir Wellness and Kosmoderma. All of them see IV treatment as their key to tapping into India’s steadily growing health and fitness industry. In fact, today, some of these clinics are doling out thousands of IV drips every month. 

But in a country where the cost of healthcare is through the roof, and regulations around IV drips are still in the grey, this treatment is just as controversial as it is aspirational.

*This episode was first published on January 2, 2025

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

The Ken is hosting its first live subscriber event! Join two long-term and contrarian CEOs, Nithin Kamath of Zerodha and Deepak Shenoy of Capitalmind, as they discuss the mental models, decision making frameworks, and potential outcomes related to a very real possibility: an extended stock market winter that lasts 24 months or more. Click here to buy your tickets. 

When it entered the quick commerce scene for the first time in 2021, Zepto was a disruptor. Now, it is the third largest company in the market after Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart. Recently, it secured its biggest funding ever at a US$3.6 billion valuation, mainly from its existing investors.

Venture Intelligence, a data provider told The Ken that the US$660 million funding is largest bet made by VCs in Indian startups this year. And now, The Ken's sources say that Zepto is planning to raise another round from “top-tier global VCs” at a US$5 billion valuation.

What did Zepto do to get all this attention from investors?

Tune in.

Also listen to:

Daybreak: Why we date, marry, or breakup with Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, Zepto & BigBasket

TFTY: How to get people to listen to you when you have no authority or title?

There’s a running joke at Hindustan Unilever's Mumbai Headquarters. If a new hire is assigned to the ice cream division, it’s immediately clear that they aren’t in the company’s inner circle. But if you’re handed Surf Excel, Brooke Brond, or Glow & Lovely, it means you are in the big leagues.

Right now, that pecking order is clearer than ever. Just last month, the FMCG giant went ahead and decided to demerge its ice cream business. The decision has already received in principal approval from the company’s board. Assuming that it clears all the other approvals and procedures, it would mean that refrigerator staples like Magnum, Cornetto and Kwality Walls will all come under a separately listed entity.

This at a time when the ice cream space has been heating up…not literally of course. New age players like Hocco, NIC and Noto have all entered the market and collectively contributed to a sort of ice cream renaissance. So, shouldn’t HUL be focussing on growing its ice cream business rather than isolating it?

Tune in.

Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

It has taken Swiggy almost ten years and a whole lot of strategically planned moves to become the indispensable app that it is for us today.

But decisive moment for the delivery giant came three years ago in 2020 with the pandemic. Swiggy’s core food delivery business took quite the hit . It had no choice but to adapt quickly and branch out. It decided to build on its delivery experience and launched Instamart for groceries and Swiggy Genie for intra-city couriers.

The company is now valued at just under $8 billion dollars and has seen its revenue double to almost $600 million in the year ended March 2022. Putting itself on the fast lane to growth while delivering  convenience to the urban consumer has really worked out for the company. Or at least so it seems.

Because in doing all of this, Swiggy might have forgotten the most important part of the equation- its 350,000 delivery partners.

Tune in.

Recommended background read:

How Zomato, Swiggy, and Co can refill their delivery-rider tank

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Young independent doctors in India are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Take F M, a 32-year-old psychiatrist who has a clinic in South Mumbai. She’s spent a third of her life slogging through medical schools and internships to finally earn her super-specialised degree. But two years into her private practice in a posh South Mumbai area, she wonders if being a doctor is really worth it.

Nearly 50% of the total medical seats in India are in private and deemed medical colleges, which don’t come cheap. Sheetal Shrigiri, gynecologist and counselor at a coaching center for medical-entrance exams told The Ken an MBBS degree at a private college costs anything between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore.

Apart from the financial burden of the degree itself, once they become doctors, there is increasing competition from hospital chains and also the pressure of having a social media presence and to deal with.

Tune in.

Why do women freeze their eggs? Take the survey here.

Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

When the govt of India came up with the budget, taxpayers were given 2 options: move to the new tax regime or continue with the old one. The tax rates in the new regime were clearly lower.

But despite this, most chose to stick to the old regime. Even with comparatively higher tax rates the old tax regime has remained popular amongst Indian taxpayers.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.   

After buying the digital rights for IPL for an eye-popping amount last year, Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema wants to change the way Indians watch cricket. It wants to replace TV viewing with online streaming.

In order to pull it off, it came up with an almost disruptive move. It decided to make IPL streaming free

While viewership is expected to hit half a billion and ad impressions to quadruple after this, advertisers are skeptical about a host of unknown factors.

What are they?

Tune in to find out.

In 2015, the current government set an ambitious target. It said we would have 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022 and 40% of it would come from rooftop solars or RTS. Back then, the country’s solar capacity was just 3.7 GW.   

But as of October 2022, this capacity rose to only a little over 60 GW. 

The main reason for this is the slow adoption of RTS. High transaction costs and lack of data about the long-term performance of RTS make it difficult to access loans for small-scale solar installations.

Tune in to find out more.

The lure of appearing on the popular reality show on national television is so strong that even startups that already have been funded by VCs and institutional investors want to get on Shark Tank. In fact, investors themselves are asking their founders to go on the show.

Money or funding is not the goal for these startups. It's the marketing opportunity they want.

But Sony, the producer of the Shark Tank is trying its best to make sure that the show doesn't lose its real purpose: to be an investment platform.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

P.S. Daybreak episodes drop daily now:)

More than 100 Indian startups wrote to TRAI a couple of months ago urging it to maintain its unwavering support for net neutrality principles. This a tug of war began between tech companies including OTT platforms on one side and telecom companies on the other, began years ago.

Telecom and internet service providers believe that content and tech companies should pay them for disproportionate traffic. But tech and content companies argue that this would violate the principles of net neutrality.

Tune in to find out about this battle between telcos and content companies and how it affects net neutrality.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.   

India's tuition republic came into the picture to fill the gaps in the education system. First and foremost: they promise to get you into the college of your dreams. That simple but powerful promise has made this a Rs 58,000 crore industry. 

But there is a flip side to this. It puts traditional schools in a rather precarious position. Students start trickling out of the system after class 10. Their parents transfer them to junior colleges or schools with integrated coaching models so they can focus on cracking competitive exams. 

One school has had enough of this. It's tackling attrition by taking on these coaching centres directly. The first step? Hiring 200 IITians. 

Tune in. 

If you've been wondering what The Ken is all about and why our subscribers love us, here is your chance to find out. Check out our special 30-day trial curated just for you.

To apply for the latest job openings in The Ken's podcast team, click here.

Jupiter, the Mumbai based neobank, went from a $70 million valuation in 2019 to a $700 million valuation in just two years. Venture capitalists, along with fintech founders, continue to believe in neobanks. A report by Statista predicts that the transaction value across neobanks in India is will cross $150 Bn by 2027.

Jupiter, a leader in the space, quadrupled its user base to two million in just a year in 2022. Thanks to its efficient user experience to access banking products like savings accounts or fixed deposits, many 20- and 30-year-olds are drawn to Jupiter. They use the platform to park their money, make small transactions, and invest with features like a sub-account to park funds for different saving goals or flexi-SIP payments.

But RBI clipped its wings, like it did for other fintechs. Since Jupiter realised the regulator also doesn’t like startups calling themselves a “bank” in any form unless they are licensed to be one, it began the journey of itself from a neo bank into a non-bank. And Jupiter had been trying to get its non bank license from RBI ever since it started operations but it only got last year.

But building its own loan book is turning out to be an expensive affair. And in the process of getting its finances in order, Jupiter may just about become another annoying bank app.

Tune in.

Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two, 'Is Zepto a gold medalist or a bronze medalist?' here.

The government of India launched a $3 billion dollar production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for automobiles to boost manufacturing, especially EV manufacturing, within India in 2022.

It was a win-win for both—EV makers had been eagerly waiting for beneficial subsidies and the government could use it to push domestic private investments and create jobs in the sector.

But more than a year has passed and the funds remain untouched. Not a single company selected under the scheme has qualified for the incentives, let alone received them.

Tune in to find out what's going on.

Recommended reading: Rajiv Bajaj has the last sigh on EV subsidies

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform.Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

When Tata acquired the e-grocer, BigBasket, at a reported valuation of $2 billion in mid-2021, the company was loss-making. For those at BigBasket, it was an opportunity to shift their focus back to the company’s core business: doorstep grocery delivery.   

While it was a bit too late when Tata realised its new acquisition was left out from the quick commerce game, there is one game that BigBasket seems to be clearly winning.

Tune in to find out.

Recommended reading: Torn between growing competition and Tatas’ ambitions, $3.2B BigBasket is at a crossroads

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Yesterday, Netflix announced that it will be starting password sharing restrictions in India. The OTT giant will only allow users on the same internet connection to access a particular account. Anybody who is not a part of what its calling "Netflix Household" will not be able to access  content.

While move did not come as a surprise since Netflix has already implemented it in many countries like the USA already, that it is using the same strategy in India, a market it has been struggling with for a while, is interesting.

Will this new move help Netflix get more subscribers in India?

Tune in.

Recommendations

Netflix’s last growth market

Spotify adopts Indian habits to avoid the ‘Netflix problem’

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

For an Indian university, a spot on the QS Rankings list could change everything. It would mean they belonged to the same elite club as the Cambridges and Oxfords of the world.

But to nab that spot, universities are stopping at nothing — from admitting more foreign students, to paying top dollar to hire consultants and purchasing seats at conferences. But in the process some fear these universities are neglecting their bread and butter — academics.

How did we get here? What's behind this growing obsession with climbing up the global ranking ladder?

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

When you think of the average unicorn-status startup, PocketFM — a homegrown audio streaming platform — is somewhat of an anomaly. Its main claim to fame? Very dramatic, borderline NSFW Hindi fiction audio series’. 

Its content can best be described as ‘masala’ entertainment. And yet, millions of listeners tune in every day to listen to stories like ‘I love you monster’, or ‘Karan Arjun reloaded’, or ‘Millionaire Ghar Jamaai’. While all this may not be your cup of tea, it has really worked for PocketFM. So much so that the company is now just inches away from a $1 billion valuation. 

Ever since it was launched in 2018, PocketFM has taken some pretty risky business decisions. Like in late 2021, when it decided to enter the US market. 

But even though most of its big, bold bets paid off overseas, there is one thing PocketFM has been struggling to do. And you’ll surprised to hear this: Despite such an enviable user base, and investors buzzing around it, in India, PocketFM is struggling to get users to actually pay for its content.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Losing IPL rights last year to Jio and then dropping HBO content has cost Disney+ Hotstar at least 21 million subscribers in just a year.

The streaming giant though, decided that IPL or no IPL cricket is going to be its biggest customer acquisition funnel in 2023. And it looks like they are holding on to that strategy. The Asia Cup was streamed for free on Disney Hotstar. Now, the ICC Cricket World Cup is on and it's  available on Disney Hotstar too. The OTT giant is offering free live streaming of the event to its mobile users.

But a lot of the new survival strategy, put together by the Disney Hotstar's head honchos, depends on how India does in the tournament.

Tune in.

CORRECTION: In the episode, the host mistakenly refers to the ICC Cricket World Cup as ICC T20 Cricket World Cup. The error is regretted.

Free Read:

What airports really want to do with Digiyatra

Also listen to:

Disney leaves Jio the keys to the kingdom

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories

Back in the day, being from one of India’s prestigious boarding schools – the likes of Doon or Mayo – was the ultimate stamp of honour.  Most of these schools were established close to a century ago, during British rule. And for the longest time, they were infamous for taking that legacy pretty seriously. 

In fact, that was exactly why they remained the go-to destination for India’s elite. But now, things are changing. In the recent past, the likes of Doon and Mayo have had to change their approach. They are now fighting to stay relevant. And the reason for that is the exponential growth of international schools and foreign boarding schools across the country. 

Tune in. 

Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Fertility rates in India are not looking good. In fact, it has fallen below the necessary replacement fertility level, which is basically the total fertility rate at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, without migration. 

So to nip the issue in the bud, state governments are now stepping in to offer what private equity-backed fertility centres would otherwise charge lakhs of rupees for: IVF treatment for free. 

If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. 

Tune In. 

The sexual wellness industry has long been shrouded in taboo. But now, thanks to quick commerce, getting a stamina supplement or a massage wand has become as effortless as ordering a packet of milk.

In the process, the long standing dominance of the old guard – the likes of Durex, Manforce and Score – has also been challenged. That's because these quick commerce platforms shone a light on the many upstarts that have entered the market in the last few years. These brands are breaking the long held taboos associated with sexual wellness and entering the mainstream by doing what others never could.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Starting April, major non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), including Avanse Financial Services, Aditya Birla Finance, and Fullerton India, which lend to Byju’s’ customers, suspended loans for the edtech. These play an important role in allowing Byju's to make its sales to its customers via zero-interest EMIs. 

With sales slowing down, the edtech desperately needs these financing options because its one year courses range from anything between Rs 20,000 to Rs 1.4 lakh. Not all its customers can afford to pay it all in one go. This is why Byju’s tied up with these NBFCs in the first place. 

But now that the non-banks have left the building, what is the ailing giant doing to survive?

Tune in.

Recommendations:

Byju’s has one escape route 

Indian lenders cut off Byju’s air supply by not lending to its users

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Since last year, the edtech giant is facing the wrath of a group of creditors who had given it a $1.2 billion loan. They wanted it to immediately repay part of the loan.

On Friday, a Delaware judge in the US concluded that the lenders had properly cited the default on loan when taking over control of a unit of Byju’s. Basically Byju’s lost the case.

 What could’ve triggered this lack of confidence amongst the creditors of the Edtech giant?

FREE READ

Job hunt was once a skill test. Now, it’s a patience test too

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Last month, Unacademy did something very unsusal. It introduced a new policy, restricting how much its educators can engage online.
Ever since, Unacademy has either suspended or sent show cause notices to at least 50-60 of its teachers.

But Unacademy relied on its teachers to bring in students. It wanted them to be popular so it encouraged its teachers to work on methods to hack social media. It made them its sales force.

What made it make this U-turn and restrict the personal social media accounts of teachers? Many think the Karan Sangwan incident must've something to do with it but there is much more to it than what meets the eye.

Tune in.

Recommendation

Unacademy stifles tutors after giving them free rein

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Have you noticed how easy it has become to get loans? Whether you want to buy a whole house or you want to buy a pair of shoes, you can take an EMI for whatever you want.

And of course, in India, an aspirational country, this means we finally have a way to attain the standard of living we have dreamed of. In the year that ended in March 2023 household debt saw its second-highest surge since independence. It now makes up almost 6% of the country’s GDP. 

But as indebtedness is rising, so are cases of harassment by recovery agents. In fact, now, it's come to a point where it is giving rise to a unique type of mental health crisis–unique enough for mental health professionals to take up courses on the basics of banking and finance.

Tune in.

Also listen to: How Mahindra Finance dealt with the RBI curb on recovering loans via third party agents

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.   

In this episode we fill you in on three standout stories from the past week. 

First, we talk about the unravelling of Blusmart, India's first EV ride hailing platform; 

Next, the private banking and wealth management boom in India; 

And finally how India’s ad agencies got raided over alleged price-fixing three days before country’s biggest marketing event, the IPL.

Check out the stories and podcasts mentioned in this episode: 

Everyone’s looking for a private banker. Have you seen one?

An IPL Whodunit 

In the last decade, the number of people covered by health insurance has more than doubled. 

Of course, big hospitals – both the state funded ones and the private ones that look a lot like five-star resorts – are making the most of it. They are really raking it in. 

But there is a sizeable chunk of the healthcare system that is left out. The small, private hospitals that make up nearly 85 per cent of the industry. This is the ‘missing middle’. It’s disorganized and severely underfunded. It’s also stuck in a bureaucratic maze of claims and reimbursements. 

The patients that rely on these facilities are  very often stuck between subsidised schemes and private insurance. But here’s the thing – where there is chaos there is also huge opportunity. 

Opportunity that a new crop of health fintechs have identified. Enter Gmoney, Digisparsh, Healthcred, and Carepay. All of them are waiting to disrupt the ‘cashless insurance’ space. 

They’re coming to the rescue with plans to connect the dots between insurers, hospitals, and patients. 

Tune in.

P.S The Ken's podcast team is hiring! Here's what we're looking for.

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

If you’ve been watching the ICC Cricket World Cup, youve definitely seen the PhonePe one too many times. The payments giant paid Rs 150 crore to get these advertising rights. It is the biggest UPI payments company in the country with a 49% of the market share.  

But why is a payments giant selling insurance and why health insurance to be specific?

You see, as big as the PhonePe might be, and even with a giant like Walmart behind it, profit margins in the the payments business are pretty slim. And with a possible IPO in the works, PhonePe had no choice but to diversify and so it did.

It launched its insurance vertical in 2020. However, three years have passed now and PhonePe’s insurance business has contributed just 1% to the company’s consolidated revenue for FY2023.

And yet PhonePe continues to pour money into it, mainly on health insurance part. Is it a conscious choice or is it because it has no choice?

Tune in.

FREE READ for 24 hours:

How an Indian IVF chain became a global giant

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

It has been a confusing year so far for the payment processor, Juspay.  On the upside, it is one step closer to unicorn status thanks to a possible 150 million dollar funding round. But at the same time, it has also been getting the cold shoulder from several fintechs that once were a core part of its business. 

It all began just a few months ago, in December, when the Walmart-owned payment aggregator Phonepe said it would discontinue support from all third-party payment orchestration platforms. Soon after, Razorpay and Cashfree followed suit and severed ties with Juspay.

So now merchants have to decide – do they stay the course with Juspay or jump ship? The stakes are at an all time high. Because their decision could reshape the very structure of the payments industry.

Tune in.

Listen to 'One Billion in 10 Minutes', our new mini series based on The Ken's inaugural case competition.

The Ken app 

Apple Podcasts 

Spotify

Paytm*, the fintech giant that was last valued at $16 billion would've never been able to get where it is now without its field agents. Field agents are to fintech payments companies, what delivery partners are to Zomato, Swiggy: their backbone.

Out of the 70,000 odd fintech field agents in India, Paytm has about 35000 of these  all around the country. The fintech giant boasts of nearly 40 million registered offline merchants now thanks to the work of its agents.

But things are changing now. It's become very challenging for them to onboard new merchants, especially in urban areas, where there are barely any businesses left to tap. As for rural areas, which have a bigger share of untapped merchants, fintechs think its too expensive. Plus the growing competition amongst fintechs has made merchant loyalty difficult to maintain.

The market has become saturated and of course, who could be feeling the most pressure but these agents.

But what do fintechs expect them to do?

Tune in.

(*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken)

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.   

There was once a time, not very long ago, when every company wanted to be a fintech. Food delivery, ride hailing, e-commerce – companies that you would not otherwise associate with financial services. 

And when you think about it, it does add up. A couple years ago, fintech was where the money was at. Indian fintechs received nearly 9 billion dollars in funding in calendar year 2021. It was one the hottest sectors in the country. 

The inside joke among venture capitalists was how founders could raise a round of funding just by mentioning “financial services” in their pitch deck. What were earlier standalone businesses would now exist as mere features on their apps. People in the industry came up with a catch-all term – fintech-as-a-feature. Take Ola for instance. 

Zomato seemed to be going down that path too. In 2022, it had applied for a non-bank financial company or NBFC licence with the Reserve Bank of India. 

But since then, things have changed. From 2022 onwards, the amount of money being raised by fintechs has dipped considerable. In 2022, they raised about 5.4 billion dollars, then in 2023, this amount fell to 2 billion. 

What's going on?

Tune in to find out.

P.S The Ken's podcast team is hiring! Here's what we're looking for.

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Google has been facing fines totalling billions of dollars for abusing its dominance not just in the Indian market but around the world. So the antitrust investigations launched against it in India last year didn't really come as a surprise for the tech giant.

The Competition Commission of India found Google guilty in two antitrust cases and asked it to pay close to $300 million in fines. More than half of this penalty was for exploiting its dominant position in the market for Android, which happens to power 97% of smartphones in India. 

Google did manage to get a breather in June this year when the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) quashed some key directives from the CCI. Google then approached the Supreme Court of India for the second time asking for all of CCI's directives to be withdrawn. While the case is still ongoing, Google lost a major anti-trust case in the US on Monday against Fortnite creator, Epic Games.

Experts believe this could the outcome of the anti-trust investigation in India.

Tune in.

P.S New Segment on Epic vs Google starts at 8:17.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Since November 2022, when Paytm shares dropped to an all-time low, the fintech giant has been on a steady recovery path. If all goes well, its share price may cross Rs 1000 soon.

But what's even more interesting is the sharp jump in its loan distributions in FY23. In the March quarter of the same year, Paytm distributed nearly 12 million loans worth over 1.5 billion dollars.

And last Friday, Paytm’s parent company even announced a partnership with Shriram Finance, an NBFC that's known for its deep understanding of risk and more importantly, its collections capabilities. 

What's driving this prolific growth and how is Paytm growing its loan business in the post-FLDG era?

Tune in.

**Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken  

Recommendation

Paytm’s results hint at a turnaround. But loan-collection hacks drive it by Gaurav Noronha, Arundhati Ramanathan

Paytm IPO tells, and tells a lot, but doesn’t show by Arundhati Ramanathan

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Licious, the online meat delivery platform, was India’s first direct to consumer company or D2C that achieved the unicorn status.  It was valued at $1.4 billion two years ago and it had enough money to grow to Rs 100 crore of revenue per month, but its revenue has remained flat from the last two years.

Licious follows the premium pricing strategy. Its products are priced higher price than the average market but its customer base is ready to pay that extra amount because of the quality Licious delivers. But Licious is not being able to expand its user base to the larger meat eating population because of this very premium pricing strategy.

But it needs to deliver on a growth rate worthy of its billion dollar plus valuation.

Tune in.

Recommendation

Why India won’t see a $100 billion internet company anytime soon

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories

Earlier this month, CRED, released its financials for the year ended March 2024 at a press conference. Cred claims to have about 13 million monthly active users. For the financial year ended March 2024, it saw revenue rise more than 60% to nearly $300 million, and losses shrink by around 40% to about U$70 million. Plus, its monthly transacting users grew by more than 30%.
 
Shah said how it's the top 10% of households who drive 60% of consumption. Even with UPI, he said, it was the top 30–40 million that drove billions of UPI transactions. And out of that target audience, Cred claims to have about 13 million monthly active users.

But Cred says it does not present the option to take a loan for many of its users. And while a little more than a third of them are qualified to borrow, only about 10% have taken on a loan. According to Shah, Cred has taken a deliberately conservative approach here, which is what makes Cred unusual and 'popular with the chief risk officers of banks in India.'

Tune in.

We are now on WhatsApp at +918971108379! Text us or send us a voice note to tell us what you thought of this episode.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Lenders are flouting every rule in their books to cater to the rising gold-loan demand. 

Thanks to the collusion between lenders and borrowers at some of the branches, one in ten gold loans every month is sanctioned through malpractices—like tweaking weight and misreporting purity of gold, said two industry executives.

In this episode, we delve into the murky world of gold loans and what often goes wrong when borrowers seek them out. 

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.

Last month though, things went crazy in Delhi NCR's real estate market. A DLF penthouse property in Gurgaon, a little over 16,000 square feet in size, sold for a mind-blogging Rs 190 crores. Just the stamp duty was Rs 13 crores, apparently.  

What really shocked the internet though was the per-square-foot price—Rs 180,000. When The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan first came across it, he immediately forwarded the news article to some of his friends who are planning to buy flats to give them a sense of the madness out out there. But his frinds, he says, pulled off a UNO reverse.

Because they told him something else about India’s real-estate space that was even more intriguing. An increasingly common sinister pattern in home loans that he has since confirmed with two bankers and two insurance industry executives. 

Tune in!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

A few years ago, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had set a target of 40% growth across all categories for Flipkart. But in 2023, it was still stuck at 20%. So the company is now on a mission. It wants to push growth, gain market share, and turn a profit.

So in January this year, Flipkarts top execs along with the CEO came together for a meeting to outline a roadmap for 2024. Krishnamurthy wanted Flipkart to introduce a loyalty programme for top spenders, give out more incentives to ensure customer loyalty, push up transaction numbers and average order sizes, and also focus on brands.

In the same meeting he also admitted that the company had faced quite a few hurdles the previous year but he was sure they’d make a comeback and hit profitability before the IPO.

But here’s the thing, prepping for an IPO often has long term effects on a company’s culture. And the cracks are already beginning to appear inside Flipkart.

Tune in.

Also listen to: What Swiggy's IPO prep means for its employees

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

When it comes to debit cards and ATM networks, no one can beat the State Bank of India. But being the market leader of debit cards in India is actually turning out to be a problem for the public lender.

With Indians becoming more open to credit cards and UPI swamping the market, debit cards are dying a slow death. In fact, a lot of industry experts agree that debit cards, in their current physical form, may actually become obsolete in the coming decade. And by being the biggest player in this market that is fading away, SBI is also taking the largest beating from its decline.

But instead of cutting its losses, SBI is still doggedly trying to save this dying product.

Why?

Tune in

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

P.S. -- Tell us your stories of great friendships at work here!

In this episode, we talk about the global trade war that stopped before it started.

First, we talk about US President Donald Trump's decision to reverse the "reciprocal tariffs" on almost every country in the world, except one.

Next, we talk about why India had little choice but to offer concession after concession to the US.

Finally, we unpack the long term and short term impact of the tariffs on the Indian economy.

Check out the newsletters and podcasts mentioned in this episode:

The latest edition of The Nutgraf by Praveen Gopal Krishnan — India is the mark 
Two by Two feat Mohit Satyanand — Are Trump's tariffs a crisis or an opportunity for India?

Every two years, SBI Cards, India’s only listed credit card company, valued at $9 billion, appoints a new CEO. This time, it's going to be Salila Pande, a career banker who has been with SBI for over 30 years. On the 1st of April, she will take the reigns from her predecessor, Abhijit Chakravorty.

However, it is going to be a tough few years for her. And the reason is like an open secret amongst SBI Cards executives.

They just don’t get along with any of their CEOs in general.

Tune in to find out why.

Tell us what you thought of this episode on WhatsApp at +918971108379

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Not so long ago, Birkenstocks were considered the antithesis of high fashion. For the longest time, the 250-year-old German brand’s characteristic chunky sandal was seen as nothing more than an orthopedic shoe meant for hippies and old people. 

And then, everything changed. In the last decade or so, Birkenstock had a major glow up. It all started with the brand deciding not to settle for being just another comfortable but cringey sandal anymore. 

So to make Birks cool the brand began collaborating with high-end fashion designers like Rick Owens, Valentino and Dior.  Very quickly celebrities and influencers caught on. They were suddenly being spotted walking out of the gym, or a cafe with a pair of birks on. 

And just like that, a trend was born. The orthopedic sandal, built more for comfort than for style, was the new it-shoe. 

Now, the Birk craze has found its way to India.

Tune in.

This episode was originally published on July 16

Why do women freeze their eggs? Take the survey here.

Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

About two months ago, something pretty bizarre happened at the India office of Great Place to Work. At about 2:30 am on May 28, the board of the organization was summoned for a Zoom call. 

But the timing of the Zoom call wasn’t what was so alarming. At one point during the conversation, the founder, Prasenjit Bhattacharya, asked everyone to leave the call. 

Everyone except for Yeshasvini Ramaswami, the chief executive of the company. Just a few moments later, Prasenjit told her that she was being fired. 

You see, this isn’t the first time a CEO has been fired. But the way that this particular incident played out went against everything that Great Place to Work has stood for for so long.

What's going on? 

Tune in 

With a dipping market share and no leader in India, many in the industry say Google Pay is losing its agility in the country.  

While the reasons range from slow roll-out of new features to overlooking merchants, one has played a big role in Google Pay's current position.  

And it has a lot to do with the relationship it shares with its banking partners.  

Tune in

From September 2, IDFC Bank’s credit card customers will only have to pay 2% of the total bill amount every month instead of the earlier 5%. The bank has reduced the minimum amount due (MAD). Even Axis Bank did this last year in November.

This means for customers, there are lesser chances of being tagged as a defaulters which hurts their credit score.  Why are banks doing this?

Two bankers told The Ken that the main reason why banks or lenders are reducing MAD is because of rising defaults. India has been warming up to the idea of credit. In fact, now its come to a point where debit card usage is declining. Online credit card spending in India rose by 20% in the last one year to reach more than ₹1 lakh crore in March this year. But for banks or lenders this also means that the associated non-performing assets (NPAs) have started to become a cause for concern. This is why lowering the limit for defaults will help banks. 

But for customers, there is more to it than meets the eye.

Tune in

No other payment aggregator has been able to pull off what Phonepe has in less than a year. 

Its nearly 50 per cent market share is obviously a huge draw for new merchants. And in the last couple years, its been able to onboard some pretty big names like Bharti Airtel and IRCTC. 

But the bigger the client, the more ruthless their demands. At the end of the day, they are only loyal to the aggregator that promises them the lowest prices and highest success rates. 

So how does PhonePe make sure that it stays on top? And where does that leave everyone else? 

Tune in.

Correction: The host mistakenly referred to NPCI as NCPI towards the end of this episode. We apologise for the error.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

P.S. Daybreak episodes drop daily now :)

As 2024 draws to a close, Daybreak hosts Snigdha and Rahel look back at some of their biggest hits and misses this year.

Check out the episodes that made it to their round up.

Hits —

Rahel's choice: Successful Women are Freezing Their Eggs and That's on men
Snigdha's choice: Why India's Biggest Employer of Female Gig Workers Refuses to listen to its own workforce
Audience choice: What do women really want? A F*** off fund

Misses —

Rahel's choice: Are run clubs like rehab for the chronically online?
Snigdha's choice: Why aren't we scared of chemicals in our skincare anymore?
Audience choice: How India's 40-somethings are redefining career longevity?

And that's a wrap! We will be back with new episodes next year.

Stay tuned!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

In today’s special Friday episode, The Ken’s Praveen Gopal Krishnan (aka PGK) joins hosts Snigdha and Rahel to talk about India’s complicated relationship with 10 minute delivery apps. They talk about how these apps are shaping our economy and society at large, and more importantly how we, as users, are shaping them.

Why do we pick a particular app, what makes us switch to another one and what makes us abandon them all together?

PGK asked his readers just that in a recent survey he carried out in his weekly newsletter, The Nutgraf. You can check it out here.

You can also check out the Bangalore floods edition Snigdha mentioned, here.

Listen to Kabir Biswas talk about Dunzo and the quick delivery business on First Principles.

If you're curious about the time everyone except Zepto assumed quick commerce was dying, click here.

P.S Tell us what you thought of this episode.
a) Was the subject interesting enough for you?
b) Did you enjoy the conversation?
You can write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Bloomberg recently published a damning report about Byju’s according to which Byju Raveendran, the edtech’s founder, allegedly tried to convince an American businessman to leave the country so he wouldn't have to testify in a federal court about the suspicious activities he saw while working for the edtech.

However, William R Hailer, the businessman, filed a declaration in the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, where he said: ““Raveendran arranged a ticket for me to Dubai on Emirates out of Chicago Illinois to avoid testifying and to be out of the country as an excuse if required to testify.”  

Now, if you’ll remember, in Sept this year, the highest court in Delaware, USA had upheld a ruling by a lower court that said the edtech firm Byju’s had indeed defaulted on infamous $1.5 billion loan. Which basically meant , that the lenders could demand full repayment, and take control of Byju’s US entity Byju’s Alpha Inc, and also appoint Timothy Pohl, Alpha Inc’s court-appointed CEO, as its sole director.

In this episode based on the latest edition of The Ken's newsletter Ed Set Go, we delve into the latest twist in the Byju's saga.

Tune in.

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

This isn't your usual Daybreak Friday episode.

Considering it's the end of the year, we thought we’d ask the reporters in our newsroom to talk to us about the stories they liked best. This week, we have Rounak Kumar Gunjan and Aakriti Bhalla on the show.

They share two of their favourite stories — The first is a fascinating story by Rounak about how a tiny discount caused an uproar inside IRCTC or the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation. The second is by Aakriti about how Pepsico managed to make Sting the energy drink of India.

Tune in.

P.S. We want to know how and where you shop. When was the last time you went to a shopping mall? What did you buy? Write to us on WhatsApp. Our number is 8971108379

Curious about the story Rounak mentioned on the show? Check it out here.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

A damning investigative report about Swiggy recently revealed how the foodtech giant has been depriving its delivery workers of their health insurance coverage if their ratings fall. 

It comes at a time when the company is prepping to make its stock market debut to raise more than a billion dollars. Earlier this week, Swiggy  also got the official green flag for the IPO from its shareholders.

But so far, only its food delivery business is profitable. So now, the company is running on overdrive to hit profitability before it goes public. 

And Swiggy employees are bearing the brunt. 

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

The prime minister will be inaugurating the newly constructed Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh today. It's quite the event. In fact, PVR INOX, has even collaborated with a news channel to broadcast the ceremony live in more than 150+ cinemas in more than 70 cities across India. The who’s who of business, from Adani, Ambani, Tata, to Bollywood celebrities and sports stars like Tendulkar and Kohli are expected to attend the inauguration.

I dont think we have ever seen anything like this before and neither has the stock market.

The state govt of Uttar Pradesh has set aside about $10 billion for a decade-long redevelopment plan of the town. Ever since, it's almost like a gold rush amongst investors for stocks in big or small companies associated with Ayodhya. From Taj Hotels and IRCTC to Praveg, a small luxury tent company–some in the stock market believe these companies are in all set to become some of the biggest beneficiaries of this Ayodhya gold rush.

But experts are warning investors against this kind of blind faith. According to them, buying into event-related market swings does not make for a sound long-term investment strategy.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.   

In Mumbai last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India was entering the bid to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2036. Yup, bidding happens more than a decade before the actual event. Because that’s how long it takes to prep a city for the Olympics. At the same event, PM Modi said hosting the games India is the “age-old dream and aspiration of 140 crore Indians”.

You see, the prestige associated with hosting the Olympics is undeniable…many would say, it is priceless. If you think about it, for a developing country, is the ultimate flex, right?

But in the end, is it really worth it? Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist does not think so. He has devoted much of his career to exposing the dark underbelly of the Olympics.

Tune in.

P.S. The Ken podcast team is looking for a talented podcast producer and an audio journalist. If you fit the bill or know someone who does, please apply! 

Over the past few years, public universities here in India have been stuck in a rather difficult position. For decades, they were almost entirely dependent on state funding to keep the lights on.

But now the state funding has steadily been drying up. So now, they have no choice but to fend for themselves. But legacy institutes like IIT Bombay, IIT Madras and IIT Delhi have found a workaround. 

They are all taking a page out of the Ivy league playbook and setting up their own endowment funds. In this episode we delve into what that means and why it isn't as easy as it may sound.

Stay tuned.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

As fitness studios exploded across Indian cities after the Covid pandemic, Cult.fit rose to prominence on the back of its fun, accessible classes that appealed to sedentary urbanites.

Meanwhile, doctors noticed a sharp rise in workout-related injuries. Majority of those injured fell in the "most vulnerable" 35-45 age bracket.

What's going on? The Ken reporter DVLS Pranathi explains.

Tune in.

Question for listeners:
Whose responsibility is it to make sure you don’t suffer from any injuries when you start your fitness journey? Is it yours or Cult's? Or do you think it's both?

You can send in your answers to our Whatsapp number 8971108379. Also if you have any questions for Pranathi, you can send them on the same number as a voice note or a text message.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

More than 53 lakh NDTV shares were tendered when Adani's open offer ended on Monday. But many of NDTV’s public shareholders sold their shares to Adani Enterprises at a price lower than the current market rate. Why?

Tune in to find out.

Also, read this edition of Ka-Ching by Anand Kalyanaraman: The puzzling case of NDTV investors selling shares below market price.

Category managers have shifted from routine e-commerce roles to powerful decision-makers in quick commerce. They now manage the limited shelf space in dark stores and decide which products get visibility on platforms like Instamart, Zepto, and Blinkit. 

Naturally, brands are aggressively courting them, with over 30,000 requests every month for just 150 slots. From hosting parties to taking them out for drinks, brands are pulling out all the stops. 

Meanwhile, category managers are urging brands to invest more in ads and marketing to stay competitive.

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

The Indian Railways exclusively provides travellers a 10 lakh rupees worth insurance cover on booking train tickets online for less than half a rupee. Despite this, a large majority of Indian travellers are not covered by any form of travel insurance.

Just a little more than 30 crore lives were covered by general and health insurers for domestic travel, according to the annual report of India’s insurance regulator IRDAI. 

Why?

Tune in

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

There is something really concerning happening to India’s 200-million strong workforce. Nearly half of them, who are above the age of 45, have reached a point in their careers where they may have to retire much earlier than they planned. Against their will.

In a nutshell, the usual career span that would last anything between 40 to 50 years even has been slashed by half almost….. to just 20 or 25 years. 

But this isn’t something that a lot of 40 and 50 year olds are taking lying down. They are figuring out ways to hack the system so they can stay “forever employable”. And in the process, conventional career trajectories are starting to change. 

Like one 38-year-old CXO put it, “Growth—be it in a profession or in life—is not equivalent to moving up a single, well-defined ladder.” 

Daybreak hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to The Ken reporter Vanita Bhatnagar about these new career trends. 

Tune in.

With increased competition within the country, the world leader of Ayurveda brands, Dabur, is looking to acquire and expand. It wants to change its story and focus on a new target consumer.

For example, the company's toothpaste brand Dabur Herb'l Charcoal recently collaborated with Disney for its Star Wars franchise and hired Darth Vader as its chief innovative officer. Just last year in October, it also acquired a 51% stake in Badshah Masala, one of the country’s leading spices companies. 

But why is the over-hundred years old established company trying so hard to change its narrative? 

Tune in.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Desi dating apps are vying for parental approval. And their strategy seems to be working.

A couple months ago, Agrima Srivastava, a 29-year-old media professional from Lucknow, had an awkward conversation with her mother. She wanted to know if Agrima had ever heard of Indian dating apps, Aisle and Better Half.

That was the first time Agrima had an open conversation with her mother about her love life. She told her that she was on dating apps, but homegrown ones like Aisle and Better half, were "just too serious". Funnily enough, the very reason Agrima was hesitant to get on an Indian dating app is why her mom approved of it.

And Agrima's mom isn't alone. Many Indian dating apps have positioned themselves as the perfect stop gap between casual dating and marriage. It allows people the autonomy to choose their own partner without their parents getting involved, while also connecting them with a pool of potential partners from similar communities and upbringings. It's like parent-approved dating.

How do they work? And do Indian dating app users need them? We speak to Chandni Gaglani, the head of Aisle and three dating app users to find out.

Tune in.

P.S. while you are here, why don't you check out The Ken's early careers podcast, The First Two Years. You can listen to it here. 

Back in 2016, the government launched a scheme called UDAN. It stands for Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik, which roughly translates to every ordinary citizen will fly. This was a scheme that promised affordable, hassle free air travel to tier-2, 3 and 4 cities across the country. 

But eight years later, flying in and out of smaller towns and cities could not  be more cumbersome. Direct flights are rare, and cancellations and delays are constant. So, that prompts the question – where did Udan go wrong? 

A report by the Comptroller Auditor General shows that more than half of the 770 odd approved flight routes under the scheme had not even commenced operations by March 2023. This largely had to do with two things – inadequate airport infrastructure and the lack of flights. 

But now the government is trying to fix it. 

Tune in. 

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

We are now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!

70% of Metro AG’s business in India is made of kirana or mom and pop stores.

But despite being Metro’s core customer base in India, kirana stores are actually turning out to be the straw that's breaking the German retailer’s back.

Tune in to find out why.

With inputs from Aayush Agarwal