What if the smartest money move you ever make… is doing less? In this episode of Daybreak , host Snigdha Sharma sits down with Megha Jose, CEO of Fortune Wealth Management and founder of Thryve , an investment advisory firm, to explore the idea of “Lazy Girl Investing.” Can women really build wealth without the burnout? And does the real rebellion lie beyond hustle culture? From confronting financial shame to finding your “North Star” and rethinking how you see the stock market, Megha breaks dow...
Oct 16, 2025•35 min•Ep. 600
Silver is having a moment, and not in the way you might think. Once hoarded by billionaires, now sought after by AI and clean energy — the world is experiencing a historic silver crunch. Jewellers are refusing orders, mutual funds are freezing ETFs and Diwali shopping just got a lot more expensive. The thing is, silver supply has been trailing demand for years now. And now, the gap is finally showing. What's behind this sudden shift? Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, In...
Oct 15, 2025•12 min•Ep. 599
Across India, many heirs are stepping away from running their inherited businesses to run family offices instead. They see investing as more flexible, more global, and less tied to daily operations.Their parents built factories but they are more interested in managing portfolios. It’s a practical shift but one that’s changing how old wealth works and what it values. What’s driving this change and does India’s next generation of uber-rich business owners still want to build anything at all? Tune ...
Oct 14, 2025•13 min•Ep. 598
Launched last year with the promise of 10 million internships, the Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme was meant to bridge the gap between young graduates and India’s job market. A year on, the numbers tell a different story. Fewer than 9,000 interns have joined so far, even as top companies like TCS and Reliance came on board. Behind the slow start lie deeper problems — poor funding exacerbating a mismatch between corporate expectations and student realities. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from t...
Oct 13, 2025•11 min•Ep. 597
OpenAI’s latest classroom experiment is starting in India. A deal with the Arise school network gives 10,000 free ChatGPT licenses to teachers but the fine print has schools on edge. But between NDAs, data collection, and new privacy laws, India’s educators are asking what OpenAI really wants from their classrooms. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical busines...
Oct 12, 2025•11 min•Ep. 596
Six months after launch, Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro is already India’s second-biggest pharma brand, ahead of antacid Pan and just behind antibiotic Augmentin. Days later, Eli Lilly announced a $1 billion investment and a new Hyderabad hub. The timing is no accident: India has one of the world’s largest obese and diabetic populations, Ozempic’s patent expires in 2026, and local pharma giants are gearing up with cheap GLP-1 generics. In this episode of Daybreak, host Rachel Varghese unpacks how this lan...
Oct 09, 2025•11 min•Ep. 595
When Deloitte refunded part of the A$439,000 it was paid by the Australian government for a report riddled with AI-generated errors, it seemed like the perfect moment to slow down. Instead, the firm doubled down and announced a global rollout of Anthropic’s Claude to nearly half a million employees. That decision captures the strange new logic shaping the Big 4 consulting companies. PwC, EY, KPMG, and Deloitte are no longer just using AI, they are performing it. Audit and tax work has slowed, re...
Oct 08, 2025•11 min•Ep. 594
Founded by the Patel brothers, Vini Cosmetics built Fogg into the country’s top deodorant brand with its no-gas formula, and high-margin pitch. In 2021, global giant KKR swooped in with a $600 million deal, valuing Vini at $1.2 billion—the biggest private equity play in Indian FMCG. But the partnership never clicked. The founders refused to fully step back, while KKR struggled with the quirks of a brand-led business in a market it didn’t quite understand. Advertising budgets were slashed, rivals...
Oct 07, 2025•12 min•Ep. 593
Even as markets wobble and trading volumes shrink, one online broker has raced ahead. Dhan, a four-year-old broking startup, managed to grow rapidly, post profits, and raise $120 million at a $1.2 billion valuation—all in the middle of a market correction. In this episode, we look at Dhan’s journey from a niche platform for power traders to one of India’s newest unicorns. What's making investors so bullish on Dhan when the rest of the industry is slowing down? Tune in. Correction note: In this e...
Oct 06, 2025•12 min•Ep. 592
Humantic AI is changing up IT services sales. Founded by serial AI entrepreneur Amarpreet Kalkat, the 24-person startup has built what it calls “buyer-first intelligence”—using AI to decode a client’s personality, communication style, and preferences from public data. Humantic wants to give sellers an instant human edge in billion-dollar deals. But challenges loom. Enterprise buyers are wary of bloated sales stacks, and Humantic will have to prove it’s more than just another disposable add-on in...
Oct 05, 2025•11 min•Ep. 591
Phonepe is stepping into the public markets with a $15 billion IPO. For Walmart, which has pumped billions into the payments firm, this is both a chance to cash in and a test of its India strategy. Unlike Paytm’s disastrous, hype-heavy listing in 2021, Phonepe is going in with steadier financials, fewer regulatory scrapes, and the scale to back its story. Yet, the timing isn’t without risk: subsidies are shrinking, UPI share caps are on the horizon, and investor appetite has cooled since 2021. H...
Oct 02, 2025•10 min•Ep. 590
India’s packaged-food bigwigs ignored spices for a long time. Not anymore. Since 2020, everyone from ITC to Tata Consumer Products, from Dabur to Wipro, has been scrambling to cement their place in this essential corner of the Indian kitchen. They’ve pounced on spice brands, sometimes paying top dollar for them, all while their investors cheered them on. In fact, the stocks of Tata Consumer and ITC have both outperformed the S&P BSE FMCG index over the last five years. Turns out, this was al...
Oct 01, 2025•12 min•Ep. 589
It takes 150 crocus flowers to make just one gram of saffron. For comparison, a spice like cumin, gets you hundreds of kilos per acre whereas saffron yields barely two. Despite getting a prestigious GI tag from the Indian government and even a National Mission dedicated to its revival, Kashmir’s saffron production has plummeted:from 8 tonnes in 2011 to just 2.7 tonnes in 2024. So what’s going wrong? And can India learn something from Iran, which currently dominates 90% of the global saffron mark...
Sep 30, 2025•13 min•Ep. 588
India’s soda shelves have changed almost overnight. Coke and Pepsi now sell zero-sugar versions of their drinks at prices as low as 10 rupees. The move came after Reliance launched Campa Cola with its own budget zero-sugar option. Now, they are taking over in big cities and small towns alike. But what looks like a health trend is really a business strategy. What is really inside those bottles? And what does it mean for consumers? Tune in. Compete in India's first and only case competition . Dayb...
Sep 29, 2025•9 min•Ep. 587
Swiggy, once the dominant force in India’s quick-commerce market, is now struggling to keep pace. Since its IPO, Instamart’s share has slipped to about 25%, well behind Blinkit’s commanding over 50%. To engineer a turnaround, CEO Sriharsha Majety is driving sweeping changes at the company—fuelled by a wave of ex-Flipkart hires, including Amitesh Jha as Instamart’s new chief. The shake-up marks a cultural pivot from Swiggy’s meticulous “doc culture” to a harder-edged “move fast, fail fast” ethos....
Sep 28, 2025•19 min•Ep. 586
What happens when a woman writes the cheques in venture capital? In India fewer than 5% of VC partners are women and Archana Jahagirdar, founder of Rukam Capital, is part of that rare group. Since 2019, she has backed Sleepy Owl, Burger Singh, Pilgrim and Beco—bets that reveal how India’s middle class eats, shops and aspires. In this episode Archana talks to host Snigdha Sharma about why copying Silicon Valley often fails here, how VCs shape culture, what she looks for in founders, and why consu...
Sep 25, 2025•36 min•Ep. 585
Blinkit now controls more than half of India’s quick commerce market, a sector long thought too competitive, too crowded, and too expensive for anyone to dominate. From its ever-expanding network of dark stores that powers its 10-minute deliveries to the recent, bold pivot toward an inventory-led model, Blinkit’s rise is built on a mix of speed, scale, and risk. But rapid expansion also brings higher costs and greater exposure. Has Blinkit created a sustainable advantage, or has it built a fragi...
Sep 24, 2025•10 min•Ep. 584
Vinfast, Vietnam’s ambitious electric vehicle maker, is making its last-ditch global play in India after racking up billions in losses in the US and Europe. But its strategy is unlike anything the market has seen before. Instead of competing with giants like Tata and Mahindra in big metros with flashy showrooms, Vinfast is starting in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities like Coimbatore and Shimla—using car workshops as sales hubs. It’s betting on a country that is invested in EV adoption, rising middle cla...
Sep 23, 2025•13 min•Ep. 583
For decades, every Amazon meeting began in silence with employees reading six-page memos that shaped the company’s biggest innovations like Prime and Alexa. Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint in 2004 to build a culture of truth-seeking through crisp writing and messy discussions. Now, that tradition faces disruption as internal AI tools like Amazon Q and Cedric draft, summarise and analyse documents in minutes. Some employees are embracing the speed while others fear a loss of originality and rigour. ...
Sep 22, 2025•10 min•Ep. 582
IRMA was never just another B-school. Born out of Verghese Kurien’s (the father of Operation Flood movement) mind, it built a one-of-a-kind management program for rural India—training managers for cooperatives, NGOs, and grassroots institutions, far away from the IIM playbook. Now, Delhi has other plans. An Act of Parliament is folding IRMA into a vast new central university, the "Tribhuvan" Sahkari University, with hundreds of affiliates. On paper, it’s about scaling cooperative education natio...
Sep 21, 2025•13 min•Ep. 581
India’s millionaire households have jumped 90% in just four years, and a gold rush for wealth managers has begun. Firms like Nuvama, Kotak, and 360 One are in a race for high-net-worth clients—deploying relationship managers, slashing rates, and dangling exotic products to stay ahead. But the old playbook of generous distribution fees is colliding with a new reality. Today’s wealthy are savvier, fee-sensitive, and increasingly leaning on advisory-first models or even building in-house family off...
Sep 18, 2025•12 min•Ep. 580
Gold has hit record highs: $3,702.95 an ounce globally and ₹110,666 per 10 grams in India, up over 40% this year. But inflation seems to be easing, and there’s no immediate threat of war. What could be behind the surge? Experts point to central banks around the world buying gold, expectations of U.S. rate cuts weakening the dollar, and Indian households holding onto their gold, limiting supply. The rally matters for India because it pushes up imports and puts pressure on the rupee, which hit a r...
Sep 17, 2025•11 min•Ep. 579
Private equity is reshaping India’s schools. A relaxed New Education Policy and rising demand for international curricula have opened the doors for global operators to buy up chains across the country. The promise is scale, better infrastructure, and tighter governance. But the reality looks a little different—lean budgets, shrinking salary hikes, and a growing focus on cost-cutting. And the fallout? Increasing staff attrition, decreasing academic quality, and schools trading their founder-led e...
Sep 16, 2025•12 min•Ep. 578
India’s largest stockbroker, Groww, is chasing an ambitious IPO. But behind the headlines, its core broking business is under stress. Its clients are leaving, regulations are squeezing revenues, and profits are wobbling. To keep its $7–8 billion valuation intact, Groww is making big moves. It's acquiring loss-making wealth-tech startup Fisdom for $150 million and launching “W,” a new unit for the rich. Wealth management is the trend everyone wants in on, but can Groww really pull it off? Or is t...
Sep 15, 2025•10 min•Ep. 577
Most SaaS companies have accepted the “cloud and AI tax” , the cost they pay to Amazon, Google, and Microsoft for storage and processing data. But Zoho is refusing to play along. Famous for its frugality, Zoho is now building its own AI models and data centers to keep costs down for the small and medium enterprises that make up most of its clientele. While rivals lean heavily on third-party clouds, Zoho has bet on a homegrown LLM—Zia—to power its products and stay affordable. But the strategy co...
Sep 14, 2025•13 min•Ep. 576
Urban Company’s IPO is off to a roaring start. Retail investors snapped up shares within an hour of the issue opening. By the second day, demand was more than five times the supply, and in the grey market, the stock was already trading nearly Rs.40 above its official price band. The company has reported its first-ever annual profit, rolled out new services like Insta Help and Revamp, and is raising nearly Rs.1900 crore to fuel its next phase of growth. On paper, it’s a remarkable turnaround stor...
Sep 11, 2025•34 min•Ep. 575
Physics Wallah has filed for a ₹3,820 crore IPO earlier this week making it India’s first edtech unicorn to go public. Founded by Alakh Pandey, the YouTube tutor turned entrepreneur, PW disrupted test prep with free videos and low-cost courses. It scaled into a unicorn with offline centres, AI tools, and millions of loyal students. But as it steps into the public markets, Pandey’s cult-like persona, the company’s biggest strength, may also be its biggest risk. Can a business built around one man...
Sep 10, 2025•13 min•Ep. 574
With ties to the US and China on shaky ground, India is leaning on a new partner—the UAE. The economic relationship has surged past $100 billion in FY25, and this surge has resulted in Indian companies from Tata to Omega Seiki Mobility setting up shop in the Emirates’ tax-free zones. Attractive incentives like access to capital, world-class infrastructure, and geographical centrality are attracting Indian manufacturers abroad. But this raises a big question: is the UAE a launchpad for India’s gl...
Sep 09, 2025•10 min•Ep. 573
The Online Gaming Bill 2025 has wiped out India’s real-money gaming industry overnight. But the ripple effects extend far beyond fantasy cricket and poker tables. For years, payment aggregators like Razorpay, PhonePe, Cashfree, and PayU quietly powered the industry’s explosive growth. They processed deposits, payouts, and billions of rupees in prize transfers every month. Real-money gaming wasn’t just another client vertical. It was their golden goose that delivered high margins in a hyper-compe...
Sep 08, 2025•11 min•Ep. 572
Giva is shaking up India’s jewellery market, long dominated by gold, with an unexpected bet on silver. Founded in 2019, the company has already grown into a $2 billion brand by targeting the massive but largely unorganized silver jewellery segment. Unlike competitors such as Caratlane and Bluestone that built their businesses around gold and diamonds, Giva has leaned on an “affordable luxury” play—high-margin silver products, agile design cycles, and impulse-friendly purchases. But challenges lo...
Sep 07, 2025•10 min•Ep. 571
