India's biggest quick commerce players — Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto — are on a mission. They are frantically hunting for properties they can convert into dark stores. Dark stores are an integral part of any quick commerce strategy. Especially now, that the lines between quick commerce and e-commerce are very quickly blurring. People aren't just ordering pantry staples anymore. They are also placing orders for high value goods like headphones and full blown air conditioners. So, dark stores ha...
Sep 30, 2024•12 min•Ep. 327
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 co...
Sep 29, 2024•13 min•Ep. 326
In this episode of Daybreak, hosts Snigdha and Rahel try something new — instead of the usual monologue or interview, they cover three of the biggest social media stories from around the world. The first is Brazil's ban on the Elon Musk-owned microblogging platform, X. The feud between Musk and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes traces back to April, when the judge ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation. Musk refused to comply and the row that ...
Sep 27, 2024•31 min•Ep. 325
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 manufac...
Sep 26, 2024•25 min•Ep. 324
Back in 2022, e-commerce giant Flipkart’s 35 billion dollar universe was left with a gaping fintech hole after the payments app Phonepe was spun off. There a brief period, after that, when it wasn’t clear whether Flipkart would ever try to dip its toes in consumer payments play again. But then again, this is Flipkart. Here is a company that has a finger in every pie – from online travel, fashion, quick commerce, logistics, even medicine delivery. Some may say it was only a matter of time before ...
Sep 24, 2024•11 min•Ep. 323
Half of the world’s electric cars are on China’s roads, thanks to a wave of smart incentives for both consumers and manufacturers, such as tax breaks and purchase subsidies. The payoff is tangible: the smog that once shrouded some major cities has lifted, and road noise has dropped significantly. But it brought unexpected costs and challenges that nobody saw coming. Tune in Don't forget to s end us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “ your favourite opening line...
Sep 23, 2024•11 min•Ep. 322
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 2024, Flipkart's 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...
Sep 23, 2024•10 min•Ep. 321
Meet Shaik Salauddin, a 38-year-old cab driver from Hyderabad, who is fighting for the rights of eight million gig workers from across the country. While India's gig economy is burgeoning, the workers on whose backs it is built barely enjoy any rights or legal protections. Salauddin realised this early on and in 2019, after five years of relentless pursuit, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) was born. With over 25,000 members working for aggregators like Uber, Amazon, an...
Sep 19, 2024•26 min•Ep. 320
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 manage...
Sep 18, 2024•28 min•Ep. 318
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. Th...
Sep 18, 2024•13 min•Ep. 317
Subway, the globally popular sandwich-eatery chain, is now grappling with sweeping changes in India—and not for the better. For one, the world’s largest quick-service restaurant (QSR) brand is moving away from the franchise model it has operated under for the past 25 years. In doing so, it’s also shedding the very thing that made it popular in the first place: choice. Tune in. Don't forget to s end us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “ comfort food at your fav...
Sep 16, 2024•13 min•Ep. 316
Last month, a Twitter post a Bengaluru-based IT professional about getting a laptop delivered from Flipkart went viral on social. The reason? Flipkart’s quick delivery arm called Minutes that went live in select cities had delivered it to him at a Starbucks cafe in 13 minutes. But Minutes is Flipkart’s third attempt at quick delivery. And the real test is actually around the corner when the Big Billion Days sale goes live at the end of this month. During the sale, daily order volumes usually go ...
Sep 16, 2024•11 min•Ep. 315
Back in the late 2000s when Byju's was founded, it was best known for teaching students how to 'hack' competitive examinations like the CAT. They taught students how to work backwards from the answer and use a bunch of shortcuts to get the highest score possible. The art of 'hacking' examinations was something that the company's founder, Byju Raveendran, was the master of. Or at least that's how the Byju's origin story goes. It all started back in the early 2000s when Byju, an engineer from a sm...
Sep 12, 2024•42 min•Ep. 314
The real-estate market of Delhi-NCR is an anomaly. The Ken spoke to a bunch of potential homebuyers who are looking for premium apartments with budgets of up to 2.5 crore rupees. Real-estate experts are telling them to give up on their dreams. Lately, the national capital has been facing an acute supply crunch of new housing projects, especially in the mid-premium segment (80 lakh to 2 crore rupees) depending on the city. Delhi NCR has witnessed the sharpest fall in inventory in this segment in ...
Sep 11, 2024•21 min•Ep. 313
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 foc...
Sep 11, 2024•13 min•Ep. 312
On Independence Day this year, just six days after it went public, Ola Electric launched three new electric motorbikes. This was a bold move, especially considering that electric vehicles haven’t really clicked with the Indian audience yet. The exception to that rule has been electric two and three wheelers, which had some unexpected success in tier-2 India. But motorcycles are not scooters. People still prefer their 125cc ICE bikes. So, it’s a difficult space to break into. But if there is one ...
Sep 10, 2024•14 min•Ep. 311
Three days ago, Rapido, the bike taxi company, became India’s latest unicorn after it raised $200 million at a valuation of over $1 billion. The funding round which was led by WestBridge Capital also saw new investors put in their money into the company. In an interview to the ET , CEO Aravind Sanka said that the funds will be used to expand Rapido's newly launched four-wheeler taxi service, which competes with Ola and Uber. But here’s the thing. Ever since it started, Rapido has consciously sta...
Sep 08, 2024•13 min•Ep. 310
"Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly." Last month, Judge Amit P Mehta of of US District Court for the District of Columbia delivered a historic ruling against one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Google was accused of abusing its dominance by paying the likes of Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to make its search engine the default option on their smartphones and browsers. It is being called the biggest antitrust case of the century. And ...
Sep 06, 2024•49 min•Ep. 309
Dunzo, the Reliance Retail-backed quick delivery company, let go off 75% of its workforce in fresh round of layoffs earlier this week. But for the longest time, Dunzo has been an anomaly. Its a small company that has managed to make its name a verb. Like Google but Google is a giant. Its revenue was just $7 million dollars in the year that ended in 2022. For perspective, Zomato made more than 70 times that amount in the same period, But it did not matter. Because it changed our lives and it beca...
Sep 04, 2024•28 min•Ep. 308
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 ra...
Sep 04, 2024•9 min•Ep. 307
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 ...
Sep 03, 2024•11 min•Ep. 306
For a while now, some of the biggest players in India’s third-party logistics industry have been riding on the success of e-commerce unicorn Meesho. As of 2023, it accounted for over half of the 2.5 billion shipments that were being handled by third-party logistics players. Companies like Delhivery and Ecom Express happily rose to the occasion and partnered with Meesho to handle all its order deliveries. For logistics companies this was a dream come true because most of the other major e-commerc...
Sep 01, 2024•14 min•Ep. 305
When it comes to electric vehicles, China is the crownless king. Nothing new there. But what was news to us was when Bhavish Aggarwal recently announced at an event that his company, Ola Electric, is the world’s largest electric two-wheeler manufacturer and the fourth-largest EV company in the world. It left everyone scratching their heads for a few seconds until they noticed the fine print at the bottom of the powerpoint slide — marked with an asterisk, in tiny lettering, it said excluding Chin...
Aug 29, 2024•45 min•Ep. 304
A big reason when we choose to buy online instead of going to a store depends on how easy the e-commerce company makes it to return stuff. So far, with most companies, all you have to do is ask for a return on the app or website and someone comes to your doorstep and picks it up. While e-commerce companies have been wooing you with the option, in reality they hate returns because reverse logistics are a costly affair for them. Which is why e-commerce platforms like Ajio and Myntra are changing t...
Aug 29, 2024•25 min•Ep. 303
There was once a time, not too long ago, when you could walk into a young working professional’s rented home in a tier-1 city, and all the furniture would look pretty familiar. About a decade ago, everyone and their uncle was renting furniture from the two OG rental platforms Rentomojo and Furlenco. It just made sense. When Rentomojo and Furlenco were launched about a decade ago, they were like an answer to a lot of people’s prayers. It was a great deal – your fridge, washing machine, king sized...
Aug 28, 2024•11 min•Ep. 302
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 , In...
Aug 27, 2024•15 min•Ep. 301
If you’ve ever taken a loan from a non bank or an NBFC, the EMI is usually auto-debited from your account every month. But if you missed a payment, you know what usually goes down. You are inundated with phone calls from your lender and maybe agents even start visiting your home. Not an ideal situation for you or your lender. But now, your lender can just monitor your account and deduct the money as soon as it comes into your account…all thanks to that auto-debit permission you granted. Earlier,...
Aug 25, 2024•12 min•Ep. 300
The pandemic disrupted everyone's travel plans. But now, everyone is travelling with a vengeance and it's really overloading the systems. With visa appointment slots hard to come by, travel agents have turned securing visa dates into a profitable business. Meanwhile, embassies and consulates are trying hard to limit the wait list. And at the center of this anxiety-inducing maze is one company called VFS global that handles the visa application process for more than 150 of the world’s 195 countri...
Aug 22, 2024•26 min•Ep. 299
What really makes UPI successful? The number of transactions. In FY2024, for example, more than 130 billion transactions were carried out through UPI. But it's not enough. UPI needs more and more to the point where now it has become a transaction-hungry monster. And NPCI National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), government body that runs UPI has to constantly come up with ways to feed this ever-hungry monster. Its latest offering is delegated payments. Earlier this month, Reserve Bank of In...
Aug 22, 2024•10 min•Ep. 298
Many thought the fall of WeWork – as quick and public as it was – was the final nail in the coffin for the fledgling coworking space business. But a few years later, the pandemic is over and people are finally making their way back to their workplaces. The end of work from home has given the coworking space a new lease on life and one Delhi-based startup in particular is really standing out. Awfis, a nine-year-old flexible workspace company, is breaking pretty much every rule in the coworking sp...
Aug 20, 2024•10 min•Ep. 297
