In this episode we fill you in on four standout stories from the past week. First, a quick look at how the Venezuela crisis is benefiting Reliance and ONGC; Next, why the quick fashion promise stands on shaky ground; Third, how AI has been filling up Indian shopping carts; And finally, why the discourse about Grok AI is starting to sound a little lopsided. Tune in. Read The Ken's story on quick fashion here . Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only busine...
Jan 08, 2026•18 min•Ep. 660
10-minute delivery has quickly gone from novelty to expectation. In this episode, through conversations with delivery workers and the gig workers’ union leader, host Snigdha Sharma argues how the 10-minute delivery model intensifies existing problems in gig work. Is it is a promise we really need to be kept for us? 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 busines...
Jan 07, 2026•12 min•Ep. 659
Apollo 24/7 has bled money for five years. But its loyalty program, Apollo Circle, might be the cure. For 299 rupees yearly, members get free teleconsultations, priority access, and discounts—locking them into Apollo's ecosystem of hospitals, pharmacies, and diagnostics. The strategy is working: average orders doubled, losses shrank, and Apollo Health Co turned profitable. Now the company wants Circle to drive breakeven next year while funneling customers away from neighborhood clinics into its ...
Jan 06, 2026•13 min•Ep. 658
India wants to generate 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047. As of now, it produces less than 9 GW. For decades, nuclear energy in India was built, owned, and run only by the state. That is now changing. In December, Parliament passed the Shanti Bill, opening the sector to private players. And an American nuclear company, Holtec International, wants to build 200 small modular reactors across India, mostly close to industrial hubs. Supporters say smaller reactors can be built faster and closer to dem...
Jan 06, 2026•16 min•Ep. 657
India's largest airline crisis made headlines for weeks. Last month, Indigo cancelled nearly 4,000 flights over 10 days, forcing the government to cut 10% of its schedules until March. The culprit? A severe pilot shortage that the airline had two years to prepare for. While Air India doubled its pilot strength ahead of new flight duty rules, Indigo ended up with fewer pilots than before. The airline's response has been less than encouraging. Cut leaves, slash night allowances, and even telling u...
Jan 04, 2026•13 min•Ep. 656
This episode revisits one of The Ken's most consequential stories from 2025. When journalist Anand Kalyanaramn started investigating unusual patterns in India's options market, he uncovered alleged manipulation on a massive scale. Someone was controlling market movements to guarantee profits—making billions while regular traders lost everything. SEBI identified Jane Street as the culprit; and the firm is appealing the allegation. Today, Anand explains how the alleged scheme worked, why India was...
Jan 01, 2026•20 min•Ep. 655
Teaching at India’s public universities no longer offers the certainty it once did. Permanent jobs have become scarce, while short term contracts have quietly filled the gap. Many teachers are now hired semester by semester, paid per lecture, and required to reapply for their jobs again and again. This shift has reshaped academic careers and changed how universities function day to day. What caused this shift? And what does it say about the future of higher education and university teaching as a...
Jan 01, 2026•12 min•Ep. 654
Property prices across Indian cities have gone through the roof, up by nearly 30% in the last two years. This along with ever increasing rent and general cost of living has made planning for the future quite challenging for those in their 20s and 30s. So has the idea of home ownership changed among the younger generations, like in many Western countries where more and more people are choosing to rent rather than buy? Or are we still attached to the idea of owning a home? And what’s behind these ...
Dec 30, 2025•33 min•Ep. 653
This episode is a look back at four Daybreak, The Ken stories that stayed with us in 2025. After three years of making the show, a few episodes each year stand out because they captured something shifting beneath the surface. These four did exactly that. Host and producer Snigdha Sharma revisits a conversation feat. Waterfield Advisor's Soumya Rajan about why even India’s wealthiest women still fight for financial control, how China’s rare earth dominance exposed the fragility of India’s EV push...
Dec 30, 2025•15 min•Ep. 652
Private equity is reshaping India’s schools. A relaxed New Education Policy and rising demand for international curricula have opened the doors for global operators to buy up chains across the country. The promise is scale, better infrastructure, and tighter governance. But the reality looks a little different—lean budgets, shrinking salary hikes, and a growing focus on cost-cutting. And the fallout? Increasing staff attrition, decreasing academic quality, and schools trading their founder-led e...
Dec 29, 2025•12 min•Ep. 651
AI is changing how people learn languages and India is where the shift is showing up first. Duolingo has scale here but very little conversion. At the same time AI tools now offer practice, feedback, and even conversation for free, while Indian platforms focus on jobs, exams, and real outcomes. In this episode, we look at how language learning is being reshaped in India, why translation is no longer the whole story, and what Duolingo is really defending. Tune in.
Dec 25, 2025•12 min•Ep. 650
From the very public Ambani family feud to the private struggles of the Raymond family, the transfer of wealth and power has often been messy. With over 850,000 millionaires in India, and many of them looking to transition their wealth in the next decade, there's a growing, yet largely unaddressed market for a specific type of expert: the succession coach. Part mediator, part therapist, part strategist—they do more than just advise. They keep dynasties from tearing themselves apart. Tune in. * T...
Dec 25, 2025•10 min•Ep. 649
In this episode, we bring you two reported stories from The Ken's newsroom that stayed with us this year. The first, reported by Nuha Bubere, looks at Flipkart at a moment of pressure and at how its CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy is running the company as competition intensifies and expectations remain high. In the second, Atul Krishna tells us about India’s decision to allow foreign universities to set up campuses in the country, and what that shift says about the state of higher education and public...
Dec 23, 2025•17 min•Ep. 648
Buried deep in Amazon's app is a partnership with Orange Health Labs for at-home diagnostics—it's third healthcare experiment in India after pharmacy and telemedicine. The strategy? Target existing customers with zero advertising spend, keeping the bet low-risk while competitors like Bigbasket and Blinkit capture other categories. With its U.S. healthcare playbook built on insurance infrastructure that doesn't exist in India, Amazon is playing a cautious waiting game. The question: is this genui...
Dec 22, 2025•13 min•Ep. 647
Traditional case competitions are boring theater—companies toss out fake problems, students present cookie-cutter solutions nobody uses. The Ken flipped the script. It revealed something interesting: no company is safe anymore. Students attacked more than a 100 incumbents—from McKinsey to temple economies—and built working prototypes showing exactly how they'd do it. The insight? AI hasn't just lowered the cost of building to near-zero; it's fundamentally changed who can be a disruptor. Even est...
Dec 22, 2025•23 min•Ep. 646
The consumer-robotics graveyard is littered with well-funded American startups. Moxie, Jibo, Anki—all raised millions, then collapsed under cloud costs and thin margins. Enter Miko, a Mumbai company selling AI companions to American kids. With Indian manufacturing cutting costs to one-fifth of US production and subscriptions driving recurring revenue, Miko has advantages its rivals never had. Yet it's still losing money—120 crore rupees last year. Now, as the company hits 500,000 units in annual...
Dec 19, 2025•13 min•Ep. 645
Uttar Pradesh now makes more than half the smartphones produced in India. Big electronics companies have set up factories in and around Noida. A place once known for small industries is suddenly part of a global supply chain. In this episode, we look at how that happened. What changed after the pandemic. Why policy, infrastructure and geography mattered. And why almost all this growth is packed into a small belt near Delhi. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s firs...
Dec 17, 2025•13 min•Ep. 644
India has the engineers, the users, and the ambition to be an AI superpower. But as OpenAI floods the market at ₹399/month, Google invests $15 billion, and global giants harvest Indian data, a critical question emerges: Will India settle for being the world's largest AI user, or can it become a builder that matters? From DeepSeek's $6M shock to the race for AI sovereignty, we connect the dots on India's AI moment—and what could be next. Tune in. Episodes mentioned: Deepseek: Spotify | Apple | Yo...
Dec 16, 2025•13 min•Ep. 643
The Indian government is losing patience with consumer-tech platforms using dark patterns or manipulative design tricks. In late May 2024, Consumer Affairs Minister, Pralhad Joshi, gathered the country’s biggest internet companies, Amazon, Google, Zomato, Ola Electric, etc to give them an ultimatum: clean up your user interfaces by September 5 or face the consequences. From hidden fees on Amazon to guilt-inducing pop-ups on Indigo, these tactics push users into spending more money, sharing more ...
Dec 16, 2025•11 min•Ep. 642
Youtube launched Shopping in India in October 2024, and within a year, 40% of eligible creators adopted it. The platform is betting on high-intent audiences who research before buying—unlike Instagram's impulse-driven model. By building shopping infrastructure in-house and partnering with Flipkart and Myntra, Youtube offers creators high commissions. The shift is democratizing income for micro-creators, while affiliate GMV exploded from Rs 10 crore to Rs 300 crore in two years. Youtube isn't try...
Dec 14, 2025•15 min•Ep. 641
In this episode we fill you in on three standout stories from the past week. First, a deeper look at this year's latest Wealth Inequality Report; Next, what the Netflix-Paramount fight for Warner Brothers means for Indian players; And finally, why and how Indigo has started to behave. 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....
Dec 11, 2025•16 min•Ep. 640
Lenskart is now a public company, and its first real market test just arrived. The shares fell a little over 3% on December 8 as the shareholder lock-in expired, putting the company back in the news and making it a good moment to revisit how it got here. Lenskart ended FY25 with a ₹297 crore in profit and nearly 40 % of that now comes from its 656 stores outside India. That global reach is unusual for an Indian consumer brand, especially when others like Zomato and Ola struggled overseas. The co...
Dec 10, 2025•10 min•Ep. 639
India's Atal Incubation Centres promised to be the backbone of government innovation. With 500 crore rupees in initial funding and support from Niti Aayog, these 72 centres were supposed to nurture startups with grants, mentors, and infrastructure. Nearly a decade later, the results are sobering. Of 3,500 incubated startups, fewer than 5% have raised external capital. Most centres lack basic websites or outcome metrics. No external audits. No unicorns. Now the government wants to double down—all...
Dec 09, 2025•12 min•Ep. 638
Yesterday, the Economic Times reported that JioStar has told the ICC it wants to exit its India media rights deal for cricket events, even with two years still left in the cycle. The company also doubled its provisions for expected losses suggesting the rights may cost more to deliver than they can earn back. It all started in late 2024 when Jio came in and flipped the script by streaming cricket tournaments for free and leaning towards a more ad-heavy model. For viewers, it felt like progress. ...
Dec 08, 2025•10 min•Ep. 637
Manoj Kumar Tiwari had a tough job: transform the Tata Institute of Social Sciences into something that looks more like a management school. In his two year term? Mission accomplished. TISS now uses the same entrance exam as IIMs. It's hiring faculty from business schools instead of NGOs. Management courses are in, social science programs are struggling to fill seats. Over 100 staff were laid off in 2024. This isn't just about TISS. It's part of a larger pattern where institutions like JNU and I...
Dec 07, 2025•14 min•Ep. 636
IndiGo had one of its worst weeks ever with hundreds of flights cancelled across major airports. New pilot rest rules kicked in on November 1, 2025 and the airline’s tight schedules and lean crew planning could not absorb the change. Thousands of passengers were stranded. What really happened and why did India’s biggest airline struggled so suddenly? In this episode, we look at what this means for the country’s fast growing aviation system. Because when one rule change can bring the busiest carr...
Dec 04, 2025•13 min•Ep. 635
Physicswallah grew with almost no funding kept most of its ownership and built a huge following around its founder Alakh Pandey. Then it shifted gears and started buying companies expanding offline and spending more to grow faster. The numbers changed the risks changed and the company itself changed. Investors still showed up for the IPO but the real question is what comes next. What happens when a company built on frugality and founder energy suddenly tries to scale like a giant? Take this surv...
Dec 03, 2025•11 min•Ep. 634
The Indian government quietly mandated that all smartphones sold in the country must come pre-installed with Sanchar Saathi, a state-owned cybersecurity app that users cannot delete or disable. The app tracks lost phones and blocks stolen devices. But it requires deep permissions. It can read messages, access phone data, make calls, and view photos. Privacy advocates warn these permissions could be expanded overnight to scan for banned apps, flag VPN use, or monitor SMS patterns. The directive w...
Dec 03, 2025•12 min•Ep. 633
Zepto is getting cheaper and everyone has noticed. But the real story is what the company is trying to fix behind the scenes. Aadit Palicha wants Zepto to feel like Dmart for quick commerce: lower prices, better availability, and more value each time you open the app. But this shift comes with big questions. The company is burning more cash. Competitors are calling it out. Senior leaders are leaving. And the IPO clock is ticking. Today, we look at why Zepto is changing its strategy now and what ...
Dec 01, 2025•12 min•Ep. 632
India wants 50,000 electric buses on the road by 2030. It's a clean mobility revolution that should clear the air in crowded cities. But there's a problem: the power grid wasn't built for this. Cities are plugging bus depots into the same 11kV lines that serve homes and corner shops. In some areas, the strain is already showing: voltage drops and flickering lights in residential areas. So, the country is racing to electrify its transport without electrifying the infrastructure beneath it. What h...
Nov 30, 2025•13 min•Ep. 631
