No one was surprised by Vishal Mega Mart’s stellar market debut last week. After all, institutional and retail investors oversubscribed 27X to the Rs 8,000 crore IPO. So when it listed at a considerable premium, most people saw it coming. But, how did the 23-year-old value retailer get to this point? Well, in the last few years, Vishal, which has 70 per cent of its stores in tier 2 and smaller cities, has managed to outpace its rivals in the same space, such as Vmart and V2 Retail. Today, it peg...
Dec 23, 2024•11 min•Ep. 387
For most Indians, a cup of good chai is a comfort that’s accessible. Coffee chains, on the other hand, are mostly premium. And it all adds up when one considers the fact that Indians consume 20 cups of tea for every cup of coffee. But we live in a time when opulence and luxury makes us go google eyed. In the Indian consumer market, premiumisation is no longer a choice. Even chai cafes chains don’t really have an option but to take the premium path. But Chaayos, the largest tea cafe chain in Indi...
Dec 23, 2024•8 min•Ep. 386
This isn't your usual Daybreak Friday episode. Considering it's the end of the year, we thought we’d ask the reporters in our newsroom to talk to us about the stories they liked best. This week, we have DVLS Pranathi and Shristi Achar on the show. They share two of their favourite stories — First, Pranathi tells us about an unconventional new homegrown footwear company started by three former Puma executives. Next, Shristi speaks to us about why Karnataka’s EV battery making ambitions are stuck ...
Dec 19, 2024•40 min•Ep. 385
Category managers have shifted from routine e-commerce roles to powerful decision-makers in quick commerce. They now manage the limited shelf space in dark stores and decide which products get visibility on platforms like Instamart, Zepto, and Blinkit. Naturally, brands are aggressively courting them, with over 30,000 requests every month for just 150 slots. From hosting parties to taking them out for drinks, brands are pulling out all the stops. Meanwhile, category managers are urging brands to...
Dec 18, 2024•13 min•Ep. 384
Back in 2016, the Internet and Mobile Association of India set up an all new club for what was then a very small cohort of digital leaders in corporate India. It was called the all-India Chief Digital Officer club. Back then, there were only about five-six CDOs that were members. The point of the initiative was to give legitimacy to this new, emerging role. But soon enough, the initiative fizzled out. Not because the role didn’t take off or anything. Actually, the opposite. The initiative became...
Dec 17, 2024•12 min•Ep. 383
Back in 1949, XLRI introduced India to management studies. Since then, it has managed to become one of the most sought after B-schools in the country. For decades, it was like the dependable elder statesman of Indian management education. But now, XLRI wants to be anything but just another business school. In the last two decades, there has been an explosion of MBA seats across the country. Now, XLRI doesn’t want to simply add more management seats mindlessly. It wants to introduce programmes it...
Dec 16, 2024•11 min•Ep. 382
India can't get enough of surveillance technology. Indian startups, meanwhile, are making the most of this trend by securing high visibility government contracts. But while these can boost a startup's profile, government projects are unpredictable and often difficult for smaller startups to win. As a result, there is a shift underway — private clients are becoming increasingly crucial for profitability. This divide between public and private contracts is forcing India’s surveillance startups to ...
Dec 15, 2024•11 min•Ep. 381
The golden age of the Indian shopping mall is over. There are at least 400 malls across the country. But a growing proportion of them are either dead or on life support. A report by real estate consultant firm Knight Frank found that the number of ghost malls in the country rose from 57 in 2022 to 64 in 2023. That’s about 1 in almost six malls. The report estimates that between 2022 and 2023, the loss of value due to the rise in ghost malls was around 800 million dollars, so that’s close to 7,00...
Dec 12, 2024•26 min•Ep. 380
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...
Dec 12, 2024•14 min•Ep. 379
A couple years ago the biggest challenge for an organic food brand was convincing consumers that their products were worth the premium they were paying for them. It was naturally a gargantuan task, particularly in a price sensitive market like India. But for the brands that stood their ground, believing that the Indian market would one day come around to organic eating, well, their moment has finally arrived. And how. There is a growing market for organic products, here in India. This space is a...
Dec 10, 2024•11 min•Ep. 378
It really isn’t a great time to be a smartwatch brand in India. Pun intended. You see, the market for smartwatches in India has gone from seeing dizzying highs to depressing lows, all within the span of one year. Just last year in September, at least 17 million people had placed orders for smartwatches across the country. Everyone seemed to want to get their hands on one. And the two brands that were largely credited for this new craze were Boat and Noise. But now, a little over a year later, al...
Dec 09, 2024•12 min•Ep. 377
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...
Dec 09, 2024•12 min•Ep. 376
This isn't your usual Daybreak Friday episode. Considering it's the end of the year, we thought we’d ask the reporters in our newsroom to talk to us about the stories they liked best. This week, we have Rounak Kumar Gunjan and Aakriti Bhalla on the show. They share two of their favourite stories — The first is a fascinating story by Rounak about how a tiny discount caused an uproar inside IRCTC or the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation. The second is by Aakriti about how Pepsico man...
Dec 05, 2024•30 min•Ep. 375
It has been about four months since Minutes, Flipkart's all new quick-commerce service was launched in Bangalore. But Flipkart isn’t doing e-commerce the old fashioned way. It’s not taking on the likes of Blinkit or Swiggy Instamart directly by promising speedy grocery deliveries. Instead, its big focus is electronics. It is a space that quick-commerce giants like Blinkit, Swiggy and Zepto – have all dipped their toes in. But Flipkart wants to take things to the next level. Like one Flipkart man...
Dec 04, 2024•13 min•Ep. 374
There’s a running joke at Hindustan Unilever's Mumbai Headquarters. If a new hire is assigned to the ice cream division, it’s immediately clear that they aren’t in the company’s inner circle. But if you’re handed Surf Excel, Brooke Brond, or Glow & Lovely, it means you are in the big leagues. Right now, that pecking order is clearer than ever. Just last month, the FMCG giant went ahead and decided to demerge its ice cream business. The decision has already received in principal approval from...
Dec 03, 2024•12 min•Ep. 373
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
