Four years ago, India set up a new body to fix medical education. It was called the National Medical Commission (NMC) and it was meant to replace the Medical Council of India and bring reforms in this sector. The goal, at the time, was to bring some order to the chaos. But so far, it seems like the body has only been able to do the opposite. Between vacancies, a series of poor decision and a general lack of coordination — the laundry list of criticism from people in the medical fraternity is onl...
Dec 02, 2024•13 min•Ep. 372
For the last five years, India’s new-found love for plastic has been pretty visible. More than 100 million credit cards had been issued by banks by Feb 2024. Banks, as we all know, are in a rush to sell more and more credit cards. To do this, they use a whole gamut of attractive offers. For example, free access to airport lounges became all the rage for the longest time. The footfall at these lounges went up significantly till banks slowly realised it was getting a bit too expensive. Which is wh...
Dec 02, 2024•10 min•Ep. 371
A decade ago, when platforms like Urban Company entered the scene, they were seen the beacon of hope for thousands of women like Selvi and Nisha, two beauticians based in in Bangalore—finally, an avenue that offered them the financial independence and support their families without the cost flexibility. Now, over one third of the platform's workers are female making it the largest employer of women gig workers in India. But in the last few years, the same workers have been raising their voices a...
Nov 29, 2024•29 min•Ep. 370
For more than two decades, India’s jewellery industry has been dominated by one name and one name only – Tanishq. The Titan-owned brand has managed to become the go-to jewellery store for people across the country. Some may even call it the gold standard, literally. But since last year, things have been changing. Tanishq’s dominance is being challenged. Not by some massive international player or any other pan-India brand. Nope. Instead, it is regional players that are starting to dim Tanishq’s ...
Nov 27, 2024•17 min•Ep. 369
Bloomberg recently published a damning report about Byju’s according to which Byju Raveendran, the edtech’s founder, allegedly tried to convince an American businessman to leave the country so he wouldn't have to testify in a federal court about the suspicious activities he saw while working for the edtech. However, William R Hailer, the businessman, filed a declaration in the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, where he said: ““Raveendran arranged a ticket for me to Dubai on Emirates out of Chicag...
Nov 27, 2024•11 min•Ep. 368
In the June quarter of 2024, Honasa Consumer, the maker of Mamaearth, decided to launch this new project called Project Neev. The idea was to bring about a foundational change in the way the company operates, especially distribution. For context, Mamaearth hit the bourses in October last year when everyone else who had IPO plans had decided to hold them off for a bit. But Varun Alagh, the CEO and co-founder of Mamaearth, was of the firm opinion that the timing was perfectly ripe. Things seemed t...
Nov 25, 2024•13 min•Ep. 367
Regular CBSE schools just don’t cut it anymore for the aspirational middle class parents in India. But considering how the annual fees at most of these schools can range anywhere between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 25 lakh, sending a child to one of them is no joke. Almost 90 per cent of parents who take the step can’t afford to pay the full fees up front. In fact, for most, even paying half the fee in one go is not an option. In come the fintechs. Companies like Grayquest, Jodo and Leo1 are partnering with...
Nov 24, 2024•14 min•Ep. 366
The world of cyber fraud has gotten even murkier thanks to a slick new tech service that is streamlining fraud for scammers and making them even harder to track down. This new concept is called ‘Mule-as-a-service’ or MaaS. It’s kind of like a plug-and-play fraud tech where service providers are able to deploy an army of mules on behalf of cybercriminals. These mules are people who lend their bank accounts to move dirty money for cybercriminals. The scary thing is this mule network is getting sma...
Nov 22, 2024•29 min•Ep. 365
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,...
Nov 20, 2024•18 min•Ep. 364
In many ways, electric vehicles today are where mobile phones were in the early 2000s. It’s December 2002. Mobile phones have entered the market, but the average Indian is still pretty sceptical. Cell phone connections are patchy and more importantly expensive. Devices themselves were unwieldy, limited and again…expensive. Basic services like sending a text, or a voice mail, or call waiting were considered ‘add-on services’ and they needed to be purchased separately. So most people thought it ju...
Nov 19, 2024•13 min•Ep. 363
Cloud, streaming, generative AI… while all of these are increasingly becoming hot topics of discussion, data centres—the large, boxy buildings that house high-powered computers—are looking for innovative solutions to stay cool. The advent of GPU processing has opened an opportunity for a handful of foreign companies to throw their hat into the ring. Their proposition? Liquid cooling. So far, air cooling has been the preferred way to keep data centres cool. Like its name suggests, it is the proce...
Nov 18, 2024•13 min•Ep. 362
Hurun India began curating rich lists a decade ago. Now, it has moved up ahead of ranking giants like Bloomberg and Forbes with 17 lists so far. It has a Global 500 list, similar to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. In fact, at this point, its safe to say that it has replaced Forbes as the most trusted choice for bankers and wealth managers. Hurun has managed to turn showing it off into a cultural trend despite the fact that wealth is often wrapped in secrecy in a country like India. So what's real...
Nov 18, 2024•12 min•Ep. 361
Last Sunday, the Daybreak team joined a run club! Why, you ask? For research, of course. We wanted to understand the recent run club renaissance, that has taken social media by storm since the beginning of the year. Run clubs, in the traditional sense, have been around for decades now. But now, something has shifted. The new generation of runners is younger, less experienced, and relentlessly social. Young people are looking for new avenues to meet people in real life and to connect offline. Thi...
Nov 14, 2024•31 min•Ep. 360
On November 13, food delivery giant Swiggy made its public debut. It listed with a 8% premium over its IPO price of Rs 390 on NSE at Rs 420 and was oversubscribed by nearly four times. While it's a bit early to comment, investors are not making strong bets on it yet. Hust to give you context, when Zomato went public, its IPO was oversubscribed by 38 times. This could be because the company is still posting losses on a consolidated level and is expected to be 2-3 years away from reaching profitab...
Nov 14, 2024•10 min•Ep. 359
For quite a while now, the Indian startup ecosystem has really been feeling the pinch. People in the know call it the funding winter. These are periods of tremendous financial insecurity for startups, particularly now. You see, for the last five years ago, the startup funding culture here in India was like a rollercoaster that was only going up. But now the scenario has changed considerably. After a dream run, big-ticket equity funding has slowed down and once sky high valuations are very quickl...
Nov 13, 2024•10 min•Ep. 358
Last year, Nykaa decided to reshuffle its marketing structure after the company’s previous Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) exited the company. Instead of immediately filling the spot, Nykaa decided to break the role apart and have two marketing heads. One to look at performance marketing – the more technically, data-driven side of e-commerce, and another as the head of organic marketing – the creative, freewheeling stuff. The move sent out a clear message: a singular CMO is no longer necessary. Th...
Nov 11, 2024•15 min•Ep. 357
Last month, in October 2024, the government of India launched the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, a health insurance coverage for all senior citizens aged 70 and over, regardless of income. This is big news for healthcare in India because for the longest time, this is exactly the age group that has pvt insurance companies have been ignoring. To give you a clearer picture, a person aged over 60 years pays anything between Rs 30,000–50,000 as annual premium for coverage as low as...
Nov 10, 2024•13 min•Ep. 356
Ever since the pandemic, the world of skincare has witnessed nothing short of a revolution. Almost overnight, that jar of Ponds cold cream that had stood the test of time on dressing tables across the country was replaced by elaborate six-step skincare routines. The legacy brands we grew up with – the likes of Loreal, Ponds, Johnson and Johnson – were dethroned almost overnight. In their place came an explosion of new brands. Today, everyone wants some skin in the game. Traditional FMCG companie...
Nov 07, 2024•27 min•Ep. 355
Lately, new breed of millionaire heirs have been dabbling with family offices in India . These are entities that exist solely to manage the fortunes of these ultra-rich families. While these offices have been around in some of the world’s biggest financial capitals for a long time now, in India, they are catching on now . What’s really interesting is that these single and multi family offices haven’t just been popping up in big metro cities, they are also gaining popularity in tier 2 cities like...
Nov 06, 2024•31 min•Ep. 354
Here’s a riddle inspired by true events. We all know that pay TV subscribers have been declining for a while now. But at the same time, overall TV viewership has only been increasing. How can that be? Well, for that we have Youtube to thank. In the first half of 2024, Indians spent 8 trillion minutes watching videos. More than 90% of this was on Youtube. Now, generally when someone says the words ‘watch on youtube’ you imagine a mobile phone or a laptop right? That seems to be changing as a lot ...
Nov 05, 2024•11 min•Ep. 353
Last month, India’s second largest automaker – Hyundai – went public. But this was not your run of the mill IPO. This was widely speculated to be the largest public listing ever seen in the Indian stock market. So there was naturally a lot of hype around it. But on October 17, just hours before Hyundai’s public issue was set to close, most stock market circles across the country were stumped. There was a growing sense of disbelief. Panic even. Because only half of the nearly Rs 28,000 crore offe...
Nov 04, 2024•11 min•Ep. 352
A new generation of designers is on the rise. These designers are expected to be a lot more than just “one trick ponies”. The new-age ‘Designer X’ is expected to bring a little bit of everything to the table. They understand the basics of sustainability, how their designs would impact things like climate change and culture. And they would also generally know a little bit of coding too. And that is because the whole perception of design has shifted. Just last month, IIT Delhi announced a new cert...
Nov 03, 2024•10 min•Ep. 351
* This episode was originally published on July 12, 2024 Have you ever heard of a 'f*** off fund'? Or better yet, do you have one? For the uninitiated, it is a sum of money that women should ideally set aside to get out of a difficult situation – think toxic job, abusive relationship or family situation, you get the drift. The term was coined by freelance writer, Paulette Perhach, in 2016. We recommend that you read her powerful essay on financial independence. The idea is for it to give you eno...
Oct 31, 2024•37 min•Ep. 350
In the 2024 financial year, Apple sold products worth $8 billion in India. This was a third more than the previous year. But how did a premium company like Apple that hates giving discounts sell products worth 8 billion dollars in a country as price sensitive as India? Apple obviously knew that its phones were unaffordable for most people in India? It found an answer was easy financing. After the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, Apple made financing tie-ups with banks a mainstay. And one of the most i...
Oct 30, 2024•9 min•Ep. 349
For a whole decade, Ola and Uber dominated the cab-hailing market. But cut to 2024 and that scenario is shifting. Both these companies are drifting. And a third contender – Rapido – is making the most of it. Both homegrown Ola and US-based Uber are dealing with a unique set of problems. The whole ride-hailing business seems to have taken a backseat for Ola, which is now knee deep in the electric vehicles business. Meanwhile, for Uber, the problem is stagnation. And those factors combined have ta...
Oct 29, 2024•13 min•Ep. 348
Welcome to the world of luxury-lifestyle management, where firms like RedBeryl, Indulge Global, and Quintessentially play the role of concierge for their ultra-wealthy clients, making the impossible possible. Now this sort of thing has become even easier for the rich. Because their wealth managers are also taking care of some of these requests. It isn’t a one -off thing. Companies like RedBeryl, Indulge GLobal, Quintessential – all of which play the role of concierge for their ultra wealthy clie...
Oct 28, 2024•11 min•Ep. 347
Zomato planning to raise 8,500 crore rupees again. This comes just three years after its grand IPO where it had raised almost the same amount. The company's stock prices have doubled in the last ten months. Interestingly, this fundraise is going to be through a qualified investment placement or QIP when a listed company raises capital from domestic markets without the need to submit any pre-issue filings to market regulators. Only qualified institutional investors are allowed to participate in t...
Oct 28, 2024•10 min•Ep. 346
If all the women of the world had a collective wallet where we could put in a penny for every time we heard the words “your biological clock is ticking,” we could move to Venus and run our own planet. But as unfair as it may be, it is true. There is an ideal time period in a woman’s life when she can have a baby. Or when she is the most “fertile.” Unlike men who are biologically not limited by such constraints, women are born with a limited number of eggs. And turns out, this number of eggs sees...
Oct 24, 2024•45 min•Ep. 345
For a country that boasts of its digital public goods infrastructure like Aadhar and UPI, it is a wonder why telecom has been so ignored. After nearly 1500 crore rupees of was reportedly lost to digital fraud in the financial year 2024, the govt’s Trai is finally scrambling to catch up with CPAN or the Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) service, its own version of Truecaller. Truecaller, the Swedish call-screening company, meanwhile, has been holding the fort for a while now. Users count on it to ...
Oct 24, 2024•25 min•Ep. 344
Late last month, the Supreme Court made a very strong statement about NRI quotas at medical colleges. It essentially said that the whole thing was a fraud. But the thing is, since the Supreme Court called it out, the practice has only gotten murkier. So The Ken reporter Alifiya Khan conducted an investigation. She scoured several social networking sites only to find countless posts promising seats in medical institutes to aspirants who scored way below the required cutoff and even those who were...
Oct 22, 2024•10 min•Ep. 343
