From giving an extra month for “good-faith” negotiations a little over two years ago, to accusing Zee of breach of contract…the Sony Zee merger deal has seen its fair share ups and downs. It was supposed to be the country’s biggest entertainment merger worth $10 billion—two media behemoths were coming together. Now though, the deal is buried six feet under. On Monday, Sony officially released a statement announcing the termination of the agreement. The next day, Punit Goenka, Zee’s CEO, was seen...
Jan 24, 2024•9 min•Ep. 176
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...
Jan 22, 2024•10 min•Ep. 175
It was 20 years ago when doctors first used the help of a robot in India to carry out a complicated heart surgery at Fortis Escorts, New Delhi. Ever since, more than 100,000 robot assisted surgeries have been performed in the country. Patients are embracing these type of surgeries now than never before and why wouldnt they? Who wouldn't want a less painful procedure, a shorter hospital stay, and most importantly lesser cuts? But they cost more than 3 or 4 times than normal surgeries. And it was ...
Jan 19, 2024•10 min•Ep. 174
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 ...
Jan 17, 2024•13 min•Ep. 173
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. T...
Jan 15, 2024•12 min•Ep. 172
Earlier this week, India’s biggest winemaker, Sula, saw its share price reach historic high. The winemaker controls more than half of the market share of India's domestic wine industry. When it went for an IPO at the end of 2022, it was successfully subscribed by almost two and a half times. So you might think the jump in the share price makes sense. Afterall, Sula dominates the wine market in India. But you see, India is not a wine drinking country in general. The share of wine in the country's...
Jan 12, 2024•12 min•Ep. 171
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...
Jan 10, 2024•11 min•Ep. 170
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...
Jan 08, 2024•13 min•Ep. 169
Ever since it started, Rapido, the bike taxi company has consciously stayed away from venturing into the cab business. It was happy to stay in the bike taxi lane and beat Ola and Uber there even though that it managed to do it at the expense of customer safety. Now, though, eight years later, Rapido has finally launched its own cab hailing service. Over the last six months or so, it ran a pilot project in Hyderabad and ended up with almost a 25% share of the city’s cab hailing market so last mon...
Jan 05, 2024•10 min•Ep. 168
In 2023, more than 70 million new users downloaded the online shopping app Myntra. India’s leading fashion e-retailer owned by Flipkart has been on quite the discount giving spree lately. And we are not just talking about the year end and festive discounts. Since July, Myntra has 22 sales days every month. Its biggest rival, Reliance owned Ajio has no more than 14. So you might think, Myntra must be raking in some crazy numbers in sales right? Not quite. From onboarding hundreds of sellers a mon...
Jan 03, 2024•11 min•Ep. 167
For the last week of December, we are taking you back to some of the most popular Daybreak episodes of 2023. We'll be back with regular programming from January 3, 2024. For a people who were quite averse to the whole concept of credit, Indians really seem to be developing a new found love for the piece of plastic and banks have been happy to ride the wave. But lately they’ve been left quite baffled because they are being being beaten at their own game. A growing community of people are constant...
Dec 29, 2023•11 min•Ep. 166
For the last week of December, we are taking you back to some of the most popular Daybreak episodes of 2023. We'll be back with regular programming from January 3, 2024. For the longest time public sector banks, as we know them, have been very reluctant about study abroad loans. And it was for good reason. They’ve suffered greatly because of education loans going bad. Meanwhile, its a whole different story that was going on with non-banks. Study abroad loans accounted for about US$4 billion in t...
Dec 27, 2023•11 min•Ep. 165
More than a year after the communication minister Ashwini Vaishnav had introduced a the draft version to the public, on Thursday, the Rajya Sabha passed the new Telecom Bill. Many hopes were pinned on it considering it was meant to replace the three archaic laws that had been governing India’s telecom sector. The journey until here, however, was far from smooth. The draft version of the bill had left the industry divided and it actually received a record 900 comments. After many revisions, the b...
Dec 22, 2023•11 min•Ep. 164
Two years ago, Sony’s India unit, Sony Pictures Networks, announced a merger with rival Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. It was supposed to be the country’s biggest entertainment deal. The combined entity would own more than 70 TV channels, two video streaming services and two film studios. Ever since, Sony Liv’s subscriber base grew from 18 million to over 33 million. With good original stories and unique non-fiction shows, alongside a strong partnerships strategy, Sony has been able to close...
Dec 20, 2023•14 min•Ep. 163
A few days ago Karthik Ayyar, the founder of an IIT Madras-incubated company that developed India’s first indigenous mobile operating system, BharOS, said his company is considering providing this technology for routers. BharOS is being launched as an alternative at a time when the tech giants like Google are under the scanner for anti-trust practices in India. However, this is not the first time India is trying to develop an indigenous operating system, both for mobile and computer devices. The...
Dec 18, 2023•14 min•Ep. 162
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
