Pharma is slow, complicated and tangled in regulatory approvals and compliances. But, consumer healthcare is fast moving, has far fewer rules and enjoys better margins. Under the umbrella of consumer healthcare you will find a plethora of categories and products – all of which claim to improve some aspect of health or well being. Think supplements, or over the counter medications like Crocin or Sanofi’s own Allegra, even things like protein bars. These are products that you can toss into your sh...
Mar 20, 2025•17 min•Ep. 450
About three years ago, the government decided that it wanted India to become a global powerhouse in cell manufacturing. So it went ahead and dangled a very juicy carrot for companies to produce batteries locally. It promised over Rs 18,000 crore in subsidies for anybody who would help it make its battery dreams come true by the end of this decade. Cut to now, three years later, and those dreams are very quickly losing charge. You see, by now the government should have technically already disburs...
Mar 19, 2025•13 min•Ep. 449
Private schools across the country are going through quite a crisis right now. Just last month, The Ken reporter Atul Krishna saw this play out first hand at a budget private school called Blossoms in Bangalore. During a visit to its campus, he learnt that its once packed classrooms are now thinning down year after year. From 1,5000 students about five years ago, the count is less than half od that now. And unfortunately, the school’s principal Shashi Kumar predicts that that number will only dr...
Mar 18, 2025•10 min•Ep. 448
IV drip therapy has gone from being a fad among celebrities like the Kardashians, to becoming the wellness treatment for the uber rich. There is a growing consumer interest in quick, customisable wellness solutions and plush clinics across the country are cashing in on it. Whether you are looking to treat a hangover, get glowing skin, lose weight or simply optimise your overall well being – there is an IV infusion for you. The catch, of course, is that these treatments can cost anywhere from Rs ...
Mar 17, 2025•14 min•Ep. 393
In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from The Ken newsroom. We will talk about Reliance and Airtel’s latest deal with Space X’s Starlink Internet; how Dhan, the stock broking underdog, is defying all odds; and finally, we discuss the market for treating farmed animals humanely. Stay tuned Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode: Dhan is the stock-broking underdog that Chryscapital and Hornbill are after. But why? How big is the m...
Mar 13, 2025•17 min•Ep. 446
If there’s one thing urban Indians love to do, it is delegate. Today there’s all manner of apps for anything even vaguely resembling a chore. Need someone to deep clean your house? Or a stand-in for the driver that called in sick? Well, there’s an app for it. The Ken’s deputy editor Seetharaman G recently pointed out how all of this is possible only because of an ever-growing army of gig workers constantly whizzing around cities and towns across India for wages that are abysmally low. In many wa...
Mar 12, 2025•11 min•Ep. 445
When the Bengaluru-based Cloud kitchen operator Curefoods went ahead and acquired the distribution rights for the American donut and coffee brand Krispy Kreme in December last year, a lot of people were naturally quite surprised. Given the company’s roots in the fitness startup Cult fit, you would assume that it would be in Curefood’s best interest to promote all things “healthy”. Even its flagship brand up until now, Eatfit, is popular on delivery platforms for its healthy, clean food options. ...
Mar 11, 2025•12 min•Ep. 444
After years of being associated with powerful politicians and menacing goons thanks to Bollywood films, SUVs are now undergoing a makeover. At car dealerships across the country, they are now being positioned as the ultimate family car — a fortress that can keep your loved ones safe on treacherous Indian roads. The word on the street, according to multiple sales executives and industry insiders, is that Indian carmakers are deliberately positioning these vehicles as rolling citadels. And it's wo...
Mar 11, 2025•12 min•Ep. 443
When the much-awaited Swiggy IPO took place in November last year, many HNIs make put in their money into the company. Some made smaller investments of more than Rs 2 lakh and the others who bought stocks for over Rs 10 lakh. But they weren’t buying stocks because they believed in the real value or long-term potential of these shares. They bought them because they assumed someone else will buy them at an even higher price. The Ken reporter Suprita spoke to a VP of a Bengaluru-based unicorn. They...
Mar 09, 2025•10 min•Ep. 442
In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from The Ken newsroom. We’ll talk about the latest development in the Byjus story; how Reliance’s Campa is taking on the Coke-Pepsi duopoly; and finally, the battle between YouTube and streaming companies to be the next television. Stay tuned. Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode: The latest edition of Ed Set Go Pepsi’s biggest bottler is pouring more cola to fight Reliance’s Campa Two by T...
Mar 06, 2025•12 min•Ep. 441
This year the JSW MG Windsor became the highest selling electric car in India. It recently even managed to outperform Tata’s most popular offerings like the Nexon and Punch EV. It recorded total sales of over 10,000 units in a single quarter, beating all the models from Tata, Mahindra, and Hyundai. The obvious question here is – what did MG do differently? And the answer is simple – by doing for EVs what Reliance did for cell phones in the early 2000s. Tune in Daybreak is produced from the newsr...
Mar 06, 2025•13 min•Ep. 440
Over the past few years, public universities here in India have been stuck in a rather difficult position. For decades, they were almost entirely dependent on state funding to keep the lights on. But now the state funding has steadily been drying up. So now, they have no choice but to fend for themselves. But legacy institutes like IIT Bombay, IIT Madras and IIT Delhi have found a workaround. They are all taking a page out of the Ivy league playbook and setting up their own endowment funds. In t...
Mar 05, 2025•11 min•Ep. 439
Up until recently, for most enterprises the default choice ended up being ChatGPT maker Open AI's models. That was mainly since for a long time there were no serious alternatives. Then, in came Deepseek R1. It proved that other models could compete and even win against OpenAi, that too at a fraction of its price. So now its the one that’s nudging enterprises to think twice before paying OpenAi for its services. And as a byproduct of that, over the last few months, the entire AI ecosystem has bee...
Mar 04, 2025•12 min•Ep. 438
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...
Mar 03, 2025•11 min•Ep. 437
In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from around the world. We’ll talk about US President Donald Trump’s trade war threat and what it means for India and why Meta is suddenly doubling down on its Indian market. Finally we will take you through some of our favourite offerings from The Ken’s newsroom this week. Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode: Netradyne made a $1.3B business out of surveilling drivers. Now, it must focus on...
Feb 28, 2025•19 min•Ep. 436
Ten years in the business and the custom furniture maker Wooden Street has left its older peers far behind. If you ask the company’s founder and chief executive Lokendra Singh Ranawat, he will tell you that the Covid pandemic was when the company's fortunes changed. Within two years of the pandemic, the company’s top line nearly quadrupled to Rs 130 crore. It also claims to have closed the 2024 financial year with a revenue of Rs 340 crore. The company has also managed to attract global investor...
Feb 27, 2025•12 min•Ep. 435
By now, we are all aware of the WeWork story. We know how the company grew to become synonymous with coworking spaces thanks to its lavish network of offices around the world. How these offices were once packed with young techies playing pool and sipping beer. And how, eventually, it all came crashing down. The company, once valued at 47 billion dollars, was brought to its knees. But here in India, the WeWork story has been playing out drastically differently. The workspace provider’s India busi...
Feb 26, 2025•10 min•Ep. 434
How do you sell diamonds to the ultra rich? Well, Zoya, the luxury jewellery brand from Tata-owned Titan Company can give you a masterclass. The Zoya playbook isn't focussed solely on designing and selling premium jewellery. Turns out, it’s all about the experience. From champagne brunches, to luxury cruises — the brand stops at nothing when it comes to nurturing its client relationship. For 15 years, Zoya, the ultra-luxury jewellery brand from Tata-owned Titan Company, wasn’t so much a business...
Feb 25, 2025•13 min•Ep. 433
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 5 lakh rupe...
Feb 24, 2025•13 min•Ep. 432
In November 2024, one of India's biggest FMCG companies, Hindustan Unilever, started getting a barrage of complaints from its consumers, who said they were seeing the same Dove and Surf Excel ads repeatedly on OTT platforms during a single watch session. Some of them were shown the same ads as many as 150 times within a week. Now, with the IPL around the corner, HUL—which spends nearly Rs 4,000 crore on ads annually—couldn’t afford to ignore these complaints. So what followed was a series of inv...
Feb 21, 2025•18 min•Ep. 431
Back in 2009, Tata launched an egg-shaped four seater hatchback that it was convinced would redefine mobility for the masses, Tata Nano. Initially priced at just Rs. 1 lakh, it was designed as the dream ride for the lower middle class. It was a bold and ambitious that unfortunately didn't quite take off. Auto experts say it was because of a combination of factors. But perhaps the biggest learning from the Nano fiasco was that car ownership in India isn’t just about wheels. It’s about status. Now...
Feb 19, 2025•13 min•Ep. 430
The global fashion industry is shifting dramatically. Brands like Zara that once ordered a minimum of 6,000 pieces per style, have dramatically reduced their orders to about 600 pieces. And it isn’t just a quantity thing, production timelines have shrunk from 150 days to less than half of that. The result? Well, fresh designs every two weeks. This shift in the industry was made possible because of middlemen like Groyyo, who get small factories to manufacture clothes in small batches in record ti...
Feb 19, 2025•13 min•Ep. 429
It has been a confusing year so far for the payment processor, Juspay. On the upside, it is one step closer to unicorn status thanks to a possible 150 million dollar funding round. But at the same time, it has also been getting the cold shoulder from several fintechs that once were a core part of its business. It all began just a few months ago, in December, when the Walmart-owned payment aggregator Phonepe said it would discontinue support from all third-party payment orchestration platforms. S...
Feb 17, 2025•12 min•Ep. 428
Last year’s heatwave was great for the AC business—demand was over the roof and inventories were wiped out. Voltas, which sells the most room air conditioners in India, saw revenue jump 60% in the March quarter. Contract manufacturers like Blue Star, Amber Enterprises, and PGEL made 50–100% more money. This year too is going to be a long, hot summer. Air-conditioner makers know this. But they also know that, despite all their efforts to prepare this time, they might run out of air conditioners b...
Feb 17, 2025•10 min•Ep. 427
Desi dating apps are vying for parental approval. And their strategy seems to be working. A couple months ago, Agrima Srivastava, a 29-year-old media professional from Lucknow, had an awkward conversation with her mother. She wanted to know if Agrima had ever heard of Indian dating apps, Aisle and Better Half. That was the first time Agrima had an open conversation with her mother about her love life. She told her that she was on dating apps, but homegrown ones like Aisle and Better half, were "...
Feb 13, 2025•31 min•Ep. 426
Last month, Netradyne, the logistics AI startup, became India’s first unicorn of 2025 after it raised 90 million dollars in series D funding. You see, it did not take it long to realise that its sweet spot is the long-distance trucking segment. It serves over 3,000 customers across eight countries, including the likes of Amazon, Shell, Indian Oil and Greenline Mobility. And it all began with one rather primitive prototype. Of course, now it has morphed into a compact device with a built-in GPU, ...
Feb 13, 2025•13 min•Ep. 425
It’s 2025 and the idea of “masculinity” has undergone a complete overhaul. You see, after several product life cycles, the men’s grooming business has reached a stage where brands aren’t just formulating shampoos and body washes exclusively for men. They are also coming up with compacts and concealers, and a bunch of other makeup products targeted at men. In fact, in the last decade or so, India has actually become the biggest market in the Asia Pacific region for beauty products for men. And ye...
Feb 11, 2025•11 min•Ep. 424
Over the next three to five years, Zepto wants to be known as the startup that created the most multimillionaires. Which is why these days, the standard pitch that people applying for VP-level roles at the startup get is as follows: "Would you like to create generational wealth? Think 50-100 crores in just four years." That’s what Zepto HR has been promising these applicants. They’ve been making it seem like bagging a job at Zepto is like winning a lottery ticket. And it’s not just bravado. By “...
Feb 10, 2025•12 min•Ep. 423
Indian startups are making the most of the increasing demand for surveillance 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 these surveillance startups to do a fair bit of monkey balancing. Ho...
Feb 10, 2025•11 min•Ep. 422
Nvidia’s dominance in the AI market is forcing Big Techs like Microsoft to produce chips of their own. So, the software giant is changing its tack in hiring from Indian colleges. The Ken reporter Abhirami G joins host Rahel Philipose in this episode. Tune in. Listen to 'One Billion in 10 Minutes', our new mini series based on The Ken's inaugural case competition. The Ken app Apple Podcasts Spotify...
Feb 06, 2025•15 min•Ep. 421
