For nearly a decade, Swiggy and Zomato have fed our hunger and dominated prime real estate on our phone screens, leaving very little room for any serious challengers. Most who tried to break in got their fingers burnt before they even got started. But now, a new player has decided to throw its hat into the ring. This is a player that has some experience taking on titans, though the last time around it was in a completely different space. Rapido – the Bangalore-based startup that quietly muscled ...
Jun 12, 2025•14 min•Ep. 510
The luggage industry seems to have undergone quite a makeover in the last few years. Back in the day, VIP and Safari were synonymous with the plain black and grey suitcases. But now, luggage is as important as the clothes you wear–it’s part of the whole airport look. Startups like Mokobara, Nasher Miles, Assembly, and Uppercase have turned luggage into an aspirational lifestyle product with smart social-media marketing and a vibrant aesthetic. Also, important to note is that travel changed after...
Jun 12, 2025•12 min•Ep. 509
Last month, The Ken set out on a quest to understand how deep AI’s roots have grown in Indian companies. We asked India’s employees across industries and experience levels the extent to which they were using AI tools on a day to day and how it had changed workplace dynamics for them. Nearly 500 people took our survey. Nine out of 10 of them said they had begun using AI tools, even if it meant paying for them out of their own pocket. Once we got a sense of how employees were feeling about AI, we ...
Jun 11, 2025•10 min•Ep. 508
The Indian wealth-management industry is booming and everyone wants a piece of the action. But here’s the twist: as the industry explodes, the people managing all that wealth have become the real prize. In a business that caters not just to the top 1%, but the top 0.01% of India’s elite, having the best wealth managers on your roster isn’t just important—it’s everything. And one four-year-old upstart got that memo early. Neo Group has been on an aggressive hiring spree, planning to add at least ...
Jun 09, 2025•12 min•Ep. 507
Elon Musk’s Starlink is just months away from launching in India. Amazon’s Kuiper will follow in 2026. The satcom green light is finally here — the regulator’s long-awaited guidelines are out, and the Department of Telecom has drawn up its strict new rulebook. Surprisingly, the satellite players aren’t blinking. Even more surprising? After years of resistance, Jio and Airtel have suddenly struck deals with Starlink. But here’s the twist: behind the scenes, neither telco seems eager to actually s...
Jun 09, 2025•12 min•Ep. 506
Like much of the world, India is heavily reliant on China for its rare earth supplies. In FY25 alone, we imported 870 tonnes of rare earth magnets, worth over ₹300 crore. China controls about 60–70% of global rare earth production and around 90% of the world’s refining capacity. Decades ago, while other countries hesitated over environmental and social costs, China made a ruthless, calculated bet — sacrifice land, people, and air to dominate the rare earths future. Now we are in that future and ...
Jun 05, 2025•15 min•Ep. 505
Protein is having a moment in India. Once reserved for gym-goers and bodybuilders, it’s now showing up in everyday foods like idli, rotis, chips, lassi, even kulfi. And consumers are buying in. Behind this craze is a $1.5 billion strategy that’s reshaping how India eats. Food brands saw a gap in a country where nearly two out of three households are protein deficient. And they turned it into a goldmine. Now, protein is everywhere, and the market is only getting bigger. But here’s the twist: whil...
Jun 04, 2025•13 min•Ep. 504
Indian finserv is no koi pond. It's a shark tank. And now, some of the biggest sharks in the tank – payment aggregators like Phonepe, Razorpay, Cashfree and Paytm – are all narrowing in on the aggregator of aggregators, Juspay. In this episode, we go behind the scenes of one of the biggest fintech standoffs of the year. On one side are the aggregators, who power payments for millions of online merchants. And on the other side is “aggregator of aggregators” Juspay, who’s worked as an extension of...
Jun 03, 2025•11 min•Ep. 503
Of the 5,000 graduates offered jobs in 2022—the majority of whose joining was delayed by two years—755 have been laid off so far for failing to clear tests. The assessments this time were tougher than usual, said five trainees and ex-employees The Ken spoke to. The threshold for passing was raised from 50% to 65%. On top of this, new material was added, and the number of questions was increased. Then again, the times are changing. India’s IT-services industry has been a driver of economic growth...
Jun 03, 2025•18 min•Ep. 502
Tesla’s story in India has been more like a stalled engine than a roaring electric debut—despite years of headlines, high-level meetings, and hopeful tweets. While the Indian government did slash import duties on premium EVs from a staggering 110% to a friendlier 15%, it wasn’t enough. Because for Tesla, this isn't just about taxes. It is about suppliers, standards, scale, and most importantly, timing. But India wants Tesla. Prime ministers have courted the company. Officials have tweaked polici...
Jun 02, 2025•11 min•Ep. 501
In this special episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose are joined by Soumya Rajan, founder and CEO of Waterfield Advisors, India’s largest multi-family office and wealth advisory firm. The conversation begins with a simple but important question: what does financial empowerment actually mean for women with wealth? Over her decades in the world of wealth management, Soumya began noticing a consistent blind spot—traditional financial systems weren’t designed with women’s realities in mi...
May 29, 2025•56 min•Ep. 500
Electric two-wheeler maker, Ather Energy, listed on the bourses on earlier in May, but its IPO was subscribed just 1.4X—a modest showing for a company once seen as a premium EV pioneer. The lukewarm response reflected investor fatigue, sparked by Ola Electric’s volatile stock performance, the Blusmart funding controversy, and global supply chain headwinds. Despite a strong product portfolio and a reputation for in-house innovation, Ather faces an increasingly crowded market and mounting pressure...
May 29, 2025•14 min•Ep. 499
Pyng, launched on 15 April, is quite a departure from Swiggy’s core food-focused business. The service marketplace, uncharted territory for Swiggy, is offering services of “verified professionals” (think therapists, chartered accountants, and even energy healers). No, it’s not a modified version of Urban Company. At least, not yet. For one, the latter offers standardised services comprising blue collar workers. But why exactly is Swiggy, a company with a market capitalisation of over Rs 80,000 c...
May 28, 2025•9 min•Ep. 498
The landscape is pretty bleak. In the race to produce more Ivy League-worthy students, Indian schools are selectively opting to teach IB. Teachers, in turn, find themselves shifting between the Cambridge and IB syllabi, often trying out things they aren’t trained for. Students and parents, meanwhile, are running in circles trying to find an able tutor after spending Rs 5–20 lakh on their child’s education. It helps no one that there are just a handful of dedicated, IB-trained teachers in the who...
May 27, 2025•15 min•Ep. 497
When Rohan, a 35-year-old software engineer, signed up for a Rs 1 trial on a learning app called Seekho, he thought he had nothing to lose. He cancelled the subscription within weeks but money was still being deducted from his account months later. UPI Autopay, the rising star of India’s subscription economy is quietly letting apps to keep charging users long after they think they've cancelled. From overlooked SMS alerts to sneaky terms hidden in fine print, we find out how widespread this probl...
May 26, 2025•11 min•Ep. 496
Nearly a decade ago, Hotstar, Netflix, and Amazon Prime entered the scene and positioned themselves as the anti-TV. No fixed showtimes. No endless ad breaks. No re-runs you had to sit through just because nothing else was on. For the first time, we were in control. TV became personal. It became on-demand. And best of all—it was ad-free. It felt like there was no going back. But now something has shifted. Subscriber growth is stalling, and that’s making streaming platforms nervous. Really nervous...
May 22, 2025•39 min•Ep. 495
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...
May 22, 2025•12 min•Ep. 494
For decades, the whole process of getting a loan approved was infamously painful and long winded. But now things have changed. Getting a loan is a whole lot faster than before. And that’s because of the disruptor to end all disruptors — artificial intelligence. A bunch of companies have entered the scene with specalised AI tools to speed up different aspects of the loan-approval process. In fact, Indian AI startups have managed to raise nearly 750 million USD in 2024 and the banking and financia...
May 20, 2025•15 min•Ep. 493
Family offices—the ultra-rich who used to hand over their money to VCs and wish them well—are now wondering why they ever bothered. Why did they pay someone to do what they could do themselves, on their terms? Their primary gripe? The funds are not returning money. Of course, the so-called middlemen in this scenario aren't too pleased. After all, they are losing a substantial amount of business in the process. But it all boils down to one thing – who’s running the money. Tune in. Daybreak is loo...
May 20, 2025•19 min•Ep. 492
At first glance, things seem to be really looking up for India’s very own budget-friendly hotel chain Oyo. It’s had some pretty big wins in the last few months. So why then is its eventual IPO still the subject of such widespread speculation? The Ken's Deputy Editor Seetharaman G put it quite well in the latest edition of his newsletter on the Indian stock market, ‘Long and Short’. He said – ‘few companies are as good as Oyo Hotels at not going public’. Its listing has been a few years in the ma...
May 18, 2025•8 min•Ep. 491
Just two days after the Pahalgam terror attack, alarm bells went off inside India’s financial system. A stern message from an HDFC Bank executive summed up the mood: “They may come for us now.” The national security tragedy triggered a sudden and sweeping crackdown on India’s digital payments ecosystem. Behind closed doors in Delhi, top officials from the Finance Ministry, Home Affairs, and the Reserve Bank of India launched a coordinated push to track suspicious merchant activity online like ga...
May 15, 2025•14 min•Ep. 490
Zara and Tata’s retail arm, Trent, have been partners for 15 years. But that relationship might be coming to an end because Zara’s not pulling its weight anymore. Its share of Trent’s overall sales has dropped from 28% to just 10% in six years. Its rivals like H&M and Uniqlo have moved faster, reached more cities in a much shorter time span. Meanwhile, Trent’s been busy. It used what it learned from Zara and built something better. Zudio, its budget fashion brand, just hit $1 billion in sale...
May 14, 2025•10 min•Ep. 489
One clear sign that Angel One—India’s third-largest discount broker—is serious about reversing its fortunes is that it bought itself a front-row seat at India’s most expensive distraction: the Indian Premier League. That’s ambitious. Especially for a company that just flunked its latest earnings test. Between fiscal year 2020 and 2024, Angel One proudly nuked its full-service past—no more phone calls, no more reports, no more advisers—and became a pure-play discount broker. Just an app, an order...
May 13, 2025•11 min•Ep. 488
In March this year, a software developer that goes by Pea Bee online published a blog rather ominously titled ‘Everyone knows all the apps on your phone’. He found that several Indian app-based startups are flouting rules of Google Play—Android’s app store—to access people’s data. In particular, some apps use a workaround to scrutinise the names and usage patterns of other apps on people’s phones. In real time. Now, the fact that apps have a lot of your data may not be a surprise to you. We’ve b...
May 13, 2025•13 min•Ep. 487
Physics Wallah’s brand new initiative, the PW Institute of Innovation, was pitched as an alternative to the tough IIT route that didn’t compromise on quality or career prospects. It even came with a scholarship, a residential campus in Bengaluru, and a shot at a good job after graduation. On paper, it looked like the perfect deal. However, students who signed up had to juggle a confusing mix of courses, keep up with a changing curriculum, and struggle through administrative chaos. Even basic thi...
May 12, 2025•14 min•Ep. 486
Eyestem, a 14-member biotech startup from Bengaluru is turning heads in global pharma circles. With just $10 million and a modest 1,200 sq ft office, it has developed a promising cell therapy for dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD)—a condition that leads to blindness and has no cure. Early trial results are not only encouraging, they’re outperforming billion-dollar competitors in the West. But this isn’t just about scientific innovation. It’s about doing more with less. Eyestem’s founders...
May 09, 2025•10 min•Ep. 485
Nagpur-based Counter Cyclical Investments doesn’t waste time with handholding. The six-year-old firm has a reputation for being quite cut and dry with its clients. Consider some gems from the ‘who should invest with us’ long-list. “Those who won’t disturb us by calling us for reassurance everytime the market falls.” “We don’t have any provision for a relationship manager. Once you have taken an informed decision to invest in our PMS, please avoid calling us. Those who are looking for regular cor...
May 08, 2025•12 min•Ep. 484
Four months ago, food delivery giant Zomato decided to run an experiment. If you are a regular patron of the app, you may have noticed a tab called ‘Quick’ appear, that promised 15-minute deliveries in a bunch of metropolitan cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi NCR. Now, the company’s founder and CEO made an interesting statement last year that explains why it would choose to try out this experiment. He was asked a question about how quick commerce has changed customer expectations around fo...
May 06, 2025•45 min•Ep. 483
Thanks to AI, economic disruptions, mass layoffs, and a bunch of other fun things, the 40-year career is no longer something you can take for granted. And that fundamentally changes the nature of our careers. No one embodies that change more than the Gen Z workforce. Young employees are now seeking a job, not a career. They don't join organisations to retire from them. Instead they see them merely as a step along the way. Which is why, the most rigid companies, known for being forts of loyalists...
May 06, 2025•16 min•Ep. 482
The world’s “most respected” test of school education—the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA—began this March. 90 countries are on the list including China, Vietnam and some of the poorest nations in the world. But India? We’re sitting this one out. In fact, India hasn’t touched PISA in 16 years! The last time it did, in 2009, India ranked 72nd out of 73 countries. Only Kyrgyzstan did worse. Ever since, the country has been quietly working behind the scenes to fix its educati...
May 04, 2025•12 min•Ep. 481
