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 hap...
Dec 15, 2023•14 min•Ep. 161
More than 70% of fraudulent banking transfers in India are KYC-linked scams. A senior official at the Financial Intelligence Unit, a national agency responsible for analysing data on suspect financial transactions informed The Ken that KYC frauds amount to over Rs 900 crore ($108 million) per year. One such fraudster who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity said, "“KYC is an easy trick to pull off. People have heard about banks freezing accounts due to non-compliance with KYC norms. So they...
Dec 13, 2023•14 min•Ep. 160
On Thursday last week, the Telecom Minister of India, Ashwini Vaishnaw, declared during a press briefing that mobile phone manufacturing worth $50 billion will take place in India in the current financial year. He also said that the total exports from the category will reach $15 billion. A significant portion of this growth has to do with what the govt did three years ago. It launched a PLI scheme that aimed to make India the hub of mobile phone manufacturing. The idea was to boost large-scale m...
Dec 11, 2023•17 min•Ep. 159
Recently, there was a study conducted by Hirepro called No résumés Please” where the firm went through 4 million CVs. They found nearly 85% of candidates were lying or exaggerating on their CVs in 2023. Employers and hiring managers are having a tough time dealing with it. Another study found that around 40% of HR professionals actually think using AI during the hiring process is a dealbreaker. And turns out, it's not very hard for recruiters to tell the difference between a CV written by the ap...
Dec 08, 2023•9 min•Ep. 158
Foodtech giant, Swiggy, wants to raise more than $1 billion through its public offering that is scheduled for mid-2024. For this it is going by its last funding round’s valuation of nearly $ 11 billion. But why now? Because it is watching its biggest rival Zomato’s stock price finally recover this year with back-to-back profitable quarters. Earlier this year, Swiggy CEO announced in a blog post that Swiggy’s food delivery business has finally turned profitable after 9 years of its inception. And...
Dec 05, 2023•11 min•Ep. 157
On Dec 1, 2023, Tata Consumer Products, Tata’s FMCG arm, announced a new CFO, Ashish Goenka. This hiring comes at a very interesting time because just about a month ago Tata Consumer Products or TCP approved the merger of 3 of its wholly owned subsidiaries—NourishCo Beverages, Tata SmartFoodz, and Tata Consumer Soulfull. Lately, the company has been on quite a roll. Its been launching out a whole bunch of new products by the dozens. And most importantly, its financials are looking quite good. In...
Dec 04, 2023•11 min•Ep. 156
Nearly a 100 million cards are in circulation in India as of now, a 12% year-on-year rise. This rise has a lot to do with the benefits customers get: tempting cash back deals and reward points that you can collect and redeem for anything from flight tickets to staycations at luxury resorts. Cashbacks though are pretty straightforward whereas availing reward points requires a lot of effort compared to cashbacks. And between the two, there’s one that banks actually don’t like. Tune in to find out....
Dec 01, 2023•10 min•Ep. 155
The State Bank of India controls the biggest chunk of India's debit card market:. It also had the largest network of ATMs and CRMs (Cash Recycling Machines) spread across the country. And ATM withdrawals make up more than 80% of annual debit transactions so SBI seems to be clearly winning. But being the market leader of debit cards in India is actually turning out to be a problem for the public lender. Debit cards might be ahead of credit cards in terms of circulation but they are dying a slow d...
Nov 29, 2023•12 min•Ep. 154
Tech platforms like Google, Meta, or even e-marketplaces such as Olx are increasingly becoming hotbeds of online advertising scams in India. People have been losing anything from a few thousands to even a few crore rupees to cyber crime syndicates who have proficient, tech-savvy members. The amount of money consumers have reported losing to fraud that originated on social-media platforms has skyrocketed since 2017. Last year alone, people reported losing more than $1.2 billion to fraud that star...
Nov 27, 2023•16 min•Ep. 153
In November 2021, *Paytm’s parent company One97 Communications went public with a $2.4 billion IPO. What followed was a bloodbath for the fintech giant. In a span of a year after the IPO, Paytm’s stock lost 75% of its market value. No other large IPO in the last decade had seen such a bad fall in stock value within the first year of listing. But last year, in a dramatic turnaround, Paytm saw its stock value go up by 90%. What could've Paytm possibly done to bring about this crazy turnaround? It ...
Nov 24, 2023•12 min•Ep. 152
On Monday, Physics Wallah fired over 100 of its employees and also announced it was going to hire more than a thousand more in the coming months. India's only profitable edtech unicorn is on a relentless expansion spree. So much so that its investors want it to slow down. From establishing itself as the leader of NEET-JEE test preparation, Physics Wallah (PW) wants to dip its toes in a bunch of other areas—from banking and defence to civil services now. Not to forget short-term skilling courses ...
Nov 22, 2023•12 min•Ep. 151
Varun Alagh, the CEO and co-founder the skincare company, Mamaearth, likes to think of his brand as an outlier. Just a day after Mamaearth’s parent company went public, on October 31, Alagh told The Economic Times that the company’s IPO was not going to meet the same fate as other new-age startups in the recent past. The public market has been quite hostile lately and investors are especially steering clear of digital companies and startups. But despite this Mamaearth went ahead with its plan an...
Nov 19, 2023•16 min•Ep. 150
More than 160 million people in five states will be deciding their political future this month in India. Out of them, two states, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, are set to go to poll today. In any democracy, the run up to the elections is a very sensitive period where misinformation can spread like wildfire. Take what happened recently in Madhya Pradesh for example. A video of the BJP CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan went viral where he can be heard saying that his party will lose the election this ti...
Nov 17, 2023•12 min•Ep. 149
PVR INOX posted a blockbuster quarter with triple the revenue from a year ago. Nearly 50 million Indians flocked PVR INOX theaters in the September quarter. A huge part of it is of course thanks to this year's big releases like Barbie, Oppenheimer, Gadar 2, and not to forget, the record-breaking performance of Shahrukh Khan’s Jawan. Just last Sunday, Salman Khan’s much-awaited Diwali release Tiger 3 also hit the big screen. However, even though PVR INOX successfully crossed pre-pandemic revenues...
Nov 15, 2023•15 min•Ep. 148
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 pat...
Nov 12, 2023•14 min•Ep. 147
Last Friday Apple reported the sixth straight record quarterly revenue from iPhone sales in India. Its FY2023 revenue from the country now stands at almost $6 billion. In fact, analysts say that by the end of this year, especially with the festive season around, it is very close to hitting $10 billion. Apple’s share in India’s smartphone market is now estimated to have touched 6%. CEO Tim Cook while speaking about Apple's performance called the Indian market extraordinary. But for over a decade ...
Nov 10, 2023•13 min•Ep. 146
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 j...
Nov 07, 2023•14 min•Ep. 145
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 ...
Nov 06, 2023•14 min•Ep. 144
Yesterday, November 2, 2023, was the final day of Mamaearth-parent Honasa Consumer's IPO. The digital-first D2C sailed through with the price band fixed at Rs 308-324 per share. With this, Mamaearth has become the first digital-first D2C company to take the public route. It is also the first unicorn company to do so it the last 18 months. From 2020 to 2022, Honasa saw its revenues double every yea and in 2022 it also became profitable. Compared to other established beauty and personal care brand...
Nov 02, 2023•13 min•Ep. 143
Vivo, the Chinese smartphone maker, was in the news earlier this month for arrests of its associates after it faced ED raids last year. Despite this, Vivo became no.1 in India’s smartphone market, even ahead of Samsung and Xiaomi in the quarter ended June. What’s more, unlike Xiaomi, which saw a sharp decline in its market share after raids in 2021, Vivo is still going strong. But it can’t celebrate the victory just yet. Why? Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken , India’s f...
Oct 31, 2023•12 min•Ep. 142
The introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s was one of the most significant events in the history of human society. It still left the burden of birth control largely on women. Now, however, things are changing. The demand for male contraceptives is on the rise. Last week, in a major breakthrough, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) finished clinical trials for the world's first injectable male contraceptive. The trial proved that it is safe and highly effective without any ...
Oct 30, 2023•11 min•Ep. 141
Delivery partners who work for Swiggy or Zomato are paid per order. The fee which includes variables like base fee, surcharge, etc, depends on how many kilometres they’ve travelled from pickup to delivery destination. These payments though, are never consistent and gig workers, who make our lives so convenient, struggle with earning a stable income. So when Zomato says on their bill under the delivery partner fee, ‘fully goes to them for their time and effort,’ we appreciate it thinking the mone...
Oct 30, 2023•14 min•Ep. 140
According to latest numbers, Ola Electric, the leader of two-wheeler EVs in India, is losing market share—from 40 per cent in July to just 29 per cent in September. Bajaj Auto, meanwhile, has gained the most market share. It started with just a 4% share in April and now it has gone up to 11%. Ola Electric maybe doing much better with more than 250,000 scooters sold so far but the discontent regarding its after sales services is getting louder. Bajaj, on the other hand, has had a more sustainable...
Oct 27, 2023•12 min•Ep. 139
Two days ago, on Tuesday, India’s most famous edtech was in the news again. Byju’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ajay Goyal quit the edtech barely 6 months after joining. It had taken Byju’s 16 months to find Goyal after its previous CFO PV Rao quit in December 2021 . Goyal was hired only in April this year and had a tough task cut out for him: to help improve the company’s financial compliance is what Byju’s has been in a lot of trouble for. Goyal was to finalize the FY22 accounts and and issue...
Oct 25, 2023•12 min•Ep. 138
On October 14, a Saturday, Disney Hotstar set a world record: it saw the highest number of simultaneous viewers tune in for any format of cricket ever. The ICC World Cup match between India and Pakistan was streaming and it drew in 35 million viewers. A week later, on Sunday, it broke that record too with the India-New Zealand match when 43 million viewers tuned in. The timing of this couldn't be better for the OTT giant which lost 21 million subscribers since last year when it lost the rights t...
Oct 24, 2023•12 min•Ep. 137
It's going to be a year since the Reserve Bank of India launched its very own Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC. In fact, just a few days ago, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das, who has been leading India’s transition into digital payments while speaking at an IMF event touted CBDC, popularly known as the e-rupee, as the currency of the future. Banks, and tech experts have said that it is an innovation that can drive financial inclusion, help digitise India’s economy, and simplify cross-border tr...
Oct 22, 2023•13 min•Ep. 136
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. Just last year in October, it acquired a 51% stake in Badshah Masala, one of the country’s leading spices companies. But how is the over-hundred years old company planning to reinvent? Tune in. Recommendation Dabur seeks Gen Z approval to shed boomer image Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken , I...
Oct 20, 2023•12 min•Ep. 135
BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) is becoming popular in India because it offers short-term financing options, financial flexibility, affordability, and smaller credit lines. In fact, the BNPL market expected to reach $35–40 billion by 2026 from $3.5–4 billion in 2021. But unlike credit cards, BNPL services lack security and many customers are left vulnerable to vishing (voice phising) scams. Most of them are via Olamoney and Mobikwik ZIP. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of cybercrimes in India are now o...
Oct 18, 2023•13 min•Ep. 134
In March this year, the world's largest coffeehouse chain, Starbucks, finally crossed the Rs 1,000-crore rupee revenue mark in India for the first time. So far, it has 350 outlets in India. Now, carrying a cup of Starbucks around has almost become like a lifestyle statement. In many ways, Starbucks entered the Indian market with a huge advantage because India's undisputed coffee leader, Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), was already declining at the time. But while Starbucks is looking at the bigger picture...
Oct 16, 2023•14 min•Ep. 133
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 X or Twitter. Recently, he claimed there is no point in taking multivitamins. He is a de-influencer and t...
Oct 13, 2023•15 min•Ep. 132
