India’s quick-commerce poster child, Zepto, is racing to the public markets after a festive season high. The company clocked 20 lakh daily orders during Diwali — coming only second to Blinkit. But behind that surge lies a far more complicated story: leadership churn, regulatory heat, and a business model that’s still chasing profitability. In this episode, we unpack Zepto’s dual reality — a startup celebrating record growth while quietly firefighting internal challenges. From FDA raids on dark s...
Nov 06, 2025•11 min•Ep. 615
Remember Blackberry? The phone that once ruled business meetings and earned the nickname “Crackberry”? It’s making a comeback—but this time, not in your pocket. In this episode, we dive into Blackberry’s surprising pivot from smartphones to car software. Its QNX system now runs the brains of over 250 million vehicles worldwide, powering everything from navigation to safety. And the nerve centre of this quiet comeback? India. With its Hyderabad hub, partnerships with Mahindra, Tata Motors, and Ta...
Nov 05, 2025•13 min•Ep. 614
When your insurance card suddenly stops working, it is not just a glitch. It is the symptom of a deeper crisis in Indian healthcare. Hospitals say insurers have failed to update reimbursement rates despite medical inflation. Insurers say hospitals are inflating bills and resisting standardization. Millions of policyholders are caught between them, forced to pay out of pocket for care they thought was covered. How did India’s healthcare system end up in this deadlock. And who really decides what ...
Nov 04, 2025•10 min•Ep. 613
Groww, the platform that turned stock trading into an everyday habit, is gearing up for India’s biggest-ever broking IPO. On paper, it’s flying high — profits have tripled, revenues have surged past ₹4,000 crore, and competitors like Zerodha and Angel One are feeling the lagging behind. But look closer, and the shine dulls a little. A big chunk of Groww’s recent gains comes from one-time accounting adjustments, while its active user base and broking income are already slowing. To keep the engine...
Nov 04, 2025•12 min•Ep. 612
Lenskart changed how India buys glasses. It made eyewear affordable, stylish, and available on every street corner. But behind that success is a story of shortcuts. Cheap acetate frames, thinner coatings, and rushed prescriptions have left many customers questioning the quality they once trusted. As the company prepares to close a massive IPO, its promise of clarity is facing some uncomfortable scrutiny. In this episode we look at how Lenskart built its empire on affordability and what that mean...
Nov 02, 2025•11 min•Ep. 611
Last week, ChatGPT launched its own AI browser — a tool that promises to surf the web for you. It can summarise articles, add chocolates to your cart, or even tell you which email to reply to first (though… not always correctly). OpenAI’s vision is clear: make ChatGPT the centre of your digital life. But are users buying in? From buggy app integrations with Canva and Spotify to real concerns around privacy and data access, host Rachel Varghese explores why AI-powered tools aren’t quite the game-...
Oct 30, 2025•10 min•Ep. 610
Ola’s ride-hailing business is losing speed. Its market share has dropped from 45% in 2018 to around a quarter today and investors are running out of patience. Some even explored a merger with Rapido in late 2024 but the talks collapsed. Bhavish Aggarwal’s focus on Ola Electric and his reluctance to sell have kept the cab business in limbo. Leadership churn, shrinking cash reserves, and a collapsing valuation have added to the strain. So why can’t investors leave and why is Aggarwal refusing to ...
Oct 29, 2025•10 min•Ep. 609
If you’ve ever used a Classmate notebook or a Doms pencil, you’ve already been an unwitting part of one of India’s quietest rivalries in action. For years, ITC ruled the stationery aisle — backed by its giant paper mills and powerful brands. But Gujarat-based Doms is catching up fast. Since its 2023 IPO, Doms’ sales have surged, its stock has tripled, and it’s closing in on ITC’s notebook empire. With everything made in-house and a perfectionist at the helm, Doms is turning pencils into profit, ...
Oct 28, 2025•12 min•Ep. 608
LG Electronics India just pulled off a record-breaking IPO, drawing bids worth over 4 lakh crore rupees. Investors love its dominance in consumer electronics and its unrivaled retail network. For decades, LG has built trust through deep relationships with local retailers, flexible margins, and a people-first culture. But as the company shifts toward profit maximization and premium products, those same relationships could be tested. Can a business built on generosity stay efficient enough to comp...
Oct 27, 2025•10 min•Ep. 607
Accenture is reinventing itself. Literally. Its new “Reinvention Services” division, led by former Americas CEO Manish Sharma, is supposed to make Accenture the best version of itself for clients. But inside the company? "Reinvention" signals a deep internal culling after nearly 11,000 job cuts. The layoffs, however are also fuelling a new kind of hiring boom elsewhere. The Big Four—Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG—are seizing the moment. As they race to turn themselves into AI and tech transformatio...
Oct 26, 2025•14 min•Ep. 606
Trump hiked H-1B visa fees overnight. For Indian students and engineers, it was a shock. For GCC employees, it was a chance to step up. While global capability centres handle tech, ops, and innovation, final decisions usually stay in the US. Senior employees started to wonder: could the visa disruption finally shift some power to India? In this episode, we explore why GCCs’ leap from execution to strategy is still far from guaranteed. Tune in. ⏳ How is AI changing your workday? Take our 5-minute...
Oct 23, 2025•13 min•Ep. 605
Meesho is preparing for one of India’s most watched IPOs. The company built its success in small-town India, where trust matters more than speed. Over 75% of its orders are still paid in cash on delivery. That approach helped Meesho win millions of new shoppers and grow faster than bigger rivals. But it also ties up cash and squeezes margins, making investors uneasy. Now Meesho is working with Razorpay to encourage more prepaid payments and faster settlements. But can a company that grew by trus...
Oct 22, 2025•10 min•Ep. 604
At 2 a.m. in Bangalore, a call-centre agent is resolving flight refunds with a new kind of colleague — one that never sleeps. AI copilots are now embedded across India’s BPM sector, watching every click and keystroke to improve their own efficiency. For firms like Capgemini and Genpact, the real prize isn’t labour anymore — it’s workflow data. Because in the race toward “agentic AI,” whoever owns the data, wins. And India, for all its scaled up manpower, might be training the machines that will ...
Oct 21, 2025•12 min•Ep. 603
Is the AI revolution already running out of steam? Despite years of hype about a world transformed by smart tools and endless innovation, the data tells a quieter story. The growth is flat, the excitement is fading, and there have been fewer breakthroughs than expected. Has AI already peaked or are we just looking in the wrong places? In today's episode, we dive into one of The Ken ’s most thought-provoking essays by Praveen Gopala Krishnan, 'What does an AI bubble burst look like?' Tune in. Day...
Oct 20, 2025•13 min•Ep. 602
When Dreamfolks Services entered India’s aviation scene, it quietly built the plumbing that made airport lounge access possible. It linked banks, card networks, and travellers to hundreds of lounges nationwide. For years, it stayed out of sight, powering a privilege most flyers never thought twice about. Now, it’s being shown the door. Adani, India’s biggest airport operator, is moving fast to take full control — not just of the runways, but everything that happens beyond security. Lounges, food...
Oct 19, 2025•8 min•Ep. 601
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
