Avsnitt
-
On January 29 of this year, Denta Water and Infra Solutions – a company that specialises in groundwater recharging projects – listed on the bourses.
Three weeks later, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, or BWSSB, issued a set of guidelines to address what has become pretty much inevitable every summer in the city – a full blown water crisis.
Now, those may seem like two completely random developments to you. But actually, there is a connection there. Because today, both the BWSSB and Denta Water have a vested interest in solving Bangalore’s water crisis. But one has had more luck than the other.
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 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
-
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
In January this year, nearly every single employee of the OG E-grocer Big Basket received an email from their CEO, Hari Menon. It was supposed to be a rallying cry. The Tata-owned e-grocery giant had finally—after much hemming and hawing—embraced quick commerce.
For a long time, Bigbasket didn’t care much for quick commerce. Menon himself dismissed it in April 2023 as unnecessary and “thrust upon” consumers.
But now the Tata board has had enough. Quick commerce isn’t just a fad anymore, it is the industry. Which is why, the pressure is on for Big Basket to make up for lost time and get back on the right track. And that’s going to take a whole lot more than just an email.
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.
-
Phonepe is all set to debut in the public market in the second half of FY26. That perhaps seems like the natural next step for the fintech giant. After all, it commands nearly half of the market share in UPI transactions today.
Between 2020 and now, it has gone from catering to one in five Indians to one in three. And yet, the path to its IPO isn’t quite as simple as you would think. In fact, it’s a tough road ahead for the company.
And that’s precisely because of the one thing Phonepe is best known for – payments. You see, as much as 96% of Phonepe’s topline in the last financial year was thanks to Phonepe’s payment business.
You’re probably wondering what’s wrong with that. After all, payments were what put Phonepe on the map. Fair point. But the thing is, being over reliant on payments could hurt Phonepe.
Think about it. If anything about the payments business were to go south, it would be almost impossible for Phonepe to pivot in time. Which is why the key is to diversify. And it’s not like Phonepe hasn’t tried. Five years ago it launched its own financial services arm – Phonepe insurance.
But unfortunately, today, there still isn’t much to brag about.
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.
-
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. -
Remember that time in 2022 when India’s top digital payments companies Phonepe, Paytm*, and Bharatpe were in a no-holds-barred turf war? Looking back, it seemed like there was news almost every other day about some tiff between the three market leaders. In fact, former managing director of Bharatpe, Ashneer Grover, has spoken on record about “street fights” between companies’ employees over QR codes.
A little more than two years later, there’s only calm. QR code scuffles are over. No one is beating each other up.
Both the peer-to-merchant and peer-to-peer payments space have settled down into a tripartite peace. Phonepe, Google Pay, and Paytm—in order of market share—are the clear leaders. This raises some interesting questions: How many UPI apps do you have on your phone? And do you have a favourite one? We may have multiple, but only one of them is ever really used. No amount of cashbacks or fancy user experiences make people want to switch to something else.
Is it brand loyalty that is preventing users from churning out of old platforms and into new ones? A former Paytm executive told The Ken, “There is zero brand loyalty for UPI payments apps…”
Well then, what is happening?
*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken
*This episode was first published on December 30, 2024Daybreak 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, why the fight between every Indian’s favourite namkeen brands Haldiram’s and Bikaji just got spicier;
second, the controversy around Urban company’s newest pet project;
and finally, the latest from Two by Two where our colleagues Rohin and Praveen discuss what the fourth wave of tech exports from India will look like.
Check out the stories and podcasts mentioned in this episode:
The latest edition of Long and Short
Why India's biggest employer of women gig workers refuses to listen to its own workforce
Two by Two: Ultrahuman and Kuku FM have broken out
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. -
Pharma is slow, complicated and tangled in regulatory approvals and compliances. But, consumer healthcare is fast moving, has far fewer rules and enjoys better margins. Under the umbrella of consumer healthcare you will find a plethora of categories and products – all of which claim to improve some aspect of health or well being. Think supplements, or over the counter medications like Crocin or Sanofi’s own Allegra, even things like protein bars.
These are products that you can toss into your shopping cart and purchase without the hassle of a prescription.
Last year, Sanofi India decided to demerge its consumer arm and list it as a separate entity – Sanofi Consumer Healthcare. Sanofi even gave it a shiny new label: FMCH, or fast-moving consumer healthcare. And this approach seems to be working out well for the French company. Sanofi Consumer Healthcare has been picking up some of the slack. By Q1 of 2024, it was already contributing 30 per cent of Sanofi SA’s total sales and -40 per cent of its operating profit.
But Sanofi didn’t invent this move. Zydus Lifesciences figured it out back in 2008 when it created Zydus Wellness, the entity behind Sugarfree and Glucon-D. And after that, we saw giants like GSK and Johnson & Johnson follow suit. But here’s the thing about Sanofi. Unlike Zydus, which clearly separates its pharma and consumer-health businesses, Sanofi blurs the line. A lot of its pharmaceutical products are being recategorized and sold as consumer care.
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. -
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.
-
Private schools across the country are going through quite a crisis right now.
Just last month, The Ken reporter Atul Krishna saw this play out first hand at a budget private school called Blossoms in Bangalore. During a visit to its campus, he learnt that its once packed classrooms are now thinning down year after year. From 1,5000 students about five years ago, the count is less than half od that now. And unfortunately, the school’s principal Shashi Kumar predicts that that number will only drop further.
Blossom’s is just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Between 2023 and 2024 alone, overall school enrolments across the country registered its steepest drop in five years. The enrolment numbers dropped by…wait for it…10 million. And funnily enough, private schools, which make up less than one third of all schools in the country, saw a drop of over 2.2 million student enrolments.
That begs a rather obvious question – Where have all the children gone?
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. -
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.
-
In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from The Ken newsroom.
We will talk about Reliance and Airtel’s latest deal with Space X’s Starlink Internet; how Dhan, the stock broking underdog, is defying all odds; and finally, we discuss the market for treating farmed animals humanely.
Stay tuned
Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode:
Dhan is the stock-broking underdog that Chryscapital and Hornbill are after. But why?
How big is the market for treating farmed animals humanely? -
If there’s one thing urban Indians love to do, it is delegate. Today there’s all manner of apps for anything even vaguely resembling a chore. Need someone to deep clean your house? Or a stand-in for the driver that called in sick? Well, there’s an app for it.
The Ken’s deputy editor Seetharaman G recently pointed out how all of this is possible only because of an ever-growing army of gig workers constantly whizzing around cities and towns across India for wages that are abysmally low.In many ways it is a never ending loop. As stable jobs continue to vanish, millions of young Indians are turning to odd jobs instead. They are fuelling a booming gig economy, where startups – both big and small – are turning even the smallest chores into business opportunities.
Naturally, venture capitalists can’t get enough. They have been pouring tens or billions of dollars into gig driven startups. They are directly and indirectly betting big on this endless supply of underpaid workers to keep these business models afloat.
The stats are pretty alarming. Today, 13 per cent of all tech funding is fueling this vast eco system of odd jobs on demand. It all paints a pretty dismal picture. Because it’s starting to seem like the future work is taking care of everything you don’t want to do.
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.
-
When the Bengaluru-based Cloud kitchen operator Curefoods went ahead and acquired the distribution rights for the American donut and coffee brand Krispy Kreme in December last year, a lot of people were naturally quite surprised.
Given the company’s roots in the fitness startup Cult fit, you would assume that it would be in Curefood’s best interest to promote all things “healthy”. Even its flagship brand up until now, Eatfit, is popular on delivery platforms for its healthy, clean food options.
But turns out, that’s not the path this cloud kitchen operator wants to walk down anymore. It is now dead set on expanding its menu beyond just salads. And the only way to do that is by giving people what they really want — junk food.
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. -
After years of being associated with powerful politicians and menacing goons thanks to Bollywood films, SUVs are now undergoing a makeover. At car dealerships across the country, they are now being positioned as the ultimate family car — a fortress that can keep your loved ones safe on treacherous Indian roads.
The word on the street, according to multiple sales executives and industry insiders, is that Indian carmakers are deliberately positioning these vehicles as rolling citadels. And it's working. SUVs are now outshining hatchbacks in annual sales.But this love for SUVs among buyers is like the inexplicable craze around skinny jeans—no one likes them except the manufacturers and the ones in them. Simply put, more SUVs on the road mean more worry for everyone else.
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. -
When the much-awaited Swiggy IPO took place in November last year, many HNIs make put in their money into the company. Some made smaller investments of more than Rs 2 lakh and the others who bought stocks for over Rs 10 lakh. But they weren’t buying stocks because they believed in the real value or long-term potential of these shares. They bought them because they assumed someone else will buy them at an even higher price.
The Ken reporter Suprita spoke to a VP of a Bengaluru-based unicorn. They told him that they just though they were getting a good deal at a discounted price. They even sold off some of their SIPs and even their Zomato shares. When many HNIs buy unlisted stocks before a company's IPO, they drive up the stock price. But once the pool of these HNI buyers dries up, the bubble bursts.
It is the theory of greater fools and it played out during Swiggy's IPO when brokers pitched Swiggy shares as a piece of India’s hottest food-delivery and oldest quick-commerce giant, that too at a discount.
But a discount to what?Because Swiggy’s market capitalisation is right now stands at under $9 billion as compared to its listing valuation of $13 billion.
So what happens to HNIs like the unicorn VP who bought Swiggy shares before its IPO?
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.
-
In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from The Ken newsroom.
We’ll talk about the latest development in the Byjus story; how Reliance’s Campa is taking on the Coke-Pepsi duopoly; and finally, the battle between YouTube and streaming companies to be the next television.
Stay tuned.
Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode:
The latest edition of Ed Set Go
Pepsi’s biggest bottler is pouring more cola to fight Reliance’s CampaTwo by Two
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. -
This year the JSW MG Windsor became the highest selling electric car in India. It recently even managed to outperform Tata’s most popular offerings like the Nexon and Punch EV. It recorded total sales of over 10,000 units in a single quarter, beating all the models from Tata, Mahindra, and Hyundai.
The obvious question here is – what did MG do differently? And the answer is simple – by doing for EVs what Reliance did for cell phones in the early 2000s.
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. -
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.
-
Up until recently, for most enterprises the default choice ended up being ChatGPT maker Open AI's models. That was mainly since for a long time there were no serious alternatives.
Then, in came Deepseek R1. It proved that other models could compete and even win against OpenAi, that too at a fraction of its price. So now its the one that’s nudging enterprises to think twice before paying OpenAi for its services.
And as a byproduct of that, over the last few months, the entire AI ecosystem has been moving from the one size fits all approach to picking the best tools for the job. Basically that means getting multiple models to work together.
There is a huge opportunity here. Not for consumer-AI startups that were once dominating funding charts, but instead for LLMops businesses. These are companies that glue together large language models or LLMs and optimise hardware and software to speed up computation processes. In the near future, these companies could potentially grow faster than ever before.
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.
- Visa fler
