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, only a bank could do this when it lent money to its account holder. But now non-banks can do it, too. A fintech executive told The Ken that this tool will soon become business as usual in every lender’s tool box. But things are still not there yet since the banks are not predictably sharing the statement data or their servers are down.And here’s where account aggregators come into the picture. These aggregators are a newly-created class of licensed companies by the Reserve Bank of India. They basically help businesses exchange financial information about a user after taking the user’s consent. Meanwhile, Navi Finserv, a four-year-old non-bank, was quite particular about how fast it could help its users take out a loan. Navi’s co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal—who previously co-founded the Flipkart —believes “banking should be as easy as going on Swiggy and ordering food”. So to amp up both disbursals and collections, Navi and others like it are counting on account aggregators. But being able to access a borrower’s bank statement at any given time is a powerful collection tool.And the problem is how Navi has been using this power.Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

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 just wasn’t worth the investment. That was until Reliance came in and changed everything. Back then, Mukesh Ambani launched Infocomm. The idea was to make telephone calls in India as cheap as sending a postcard. And it worked. Slowly, as costs started to drop, more and more people saw sense in adopting mobile phones, and eventually abandoning landlines altogether.This episode is by no means a history lesson. But that context was important. Because India is almost exactly where it was back then. Except, the device they are on the fence about is now electric vehicles. And the company in question now is JSW MG Motor. Funnily enough, the solutions that JSW is coming up with are eerily similar to the Reliance strategy back then. It's biggest proposition? A subscription plan for your EV battery.Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

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 process of using air to keep these centres cool. Liquid cooling does just that but with water. It’s more efficient and largely believed to be a better way of cooling. But change does not come easy. Many data centre operators here in India believe it is riskier than air cooling. But with AI technology advancing the way that it is and GPUs growing more popular, they may soon not have a choice. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

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 really driving India's obsession with ranking the richest?Hurun India has grown way beyond its original rich lists, creating rankings for just about everything you can think of—from self-made entrepreneurs to top art collectors. They even track billionaires by zodiac signs. Today we look at Hurun India beyond just these lists— a closer look at the behind the scenes relationship it has with wealth-management firms, and how it keeps the ultra-rich happyDaybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

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. This isn't just limited to running. Social clubs in general are really having their moment. These are clubs that are centred around an activity — like hiking, painting, reading, even knitting. In search of meaningful relationships, sometimes even love, they are putting down their phones and pursuing hobbies like never before. But what led to this sudden resurgence of social clubs? Was it the pandemic? Loneliness? Social media fatigue? Or something else entirely? Tune in to find out. Special thank you to the 56 Run Club for collaborating with us for this episode. You can follow them on Instagram to get the latest updates on their runs and events. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

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 profitability. It took Swiggy nine years till its food delivery business finally turned profitable last year.Today, we revisit an episode of Daybreak in which we’d talked about what was happening behind the scenes of Swiggy’s IPO preparation.Tune in.Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

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 quickly coming back to Earth. These startups still need the money, obviously. But they have realised that raising a round of funding may not be as easy as it once was. But they have found their knight in shining armour. In comes ‘venture debt’. These are essentially loans that go to VC-backed startups. A lot of the startups in the Indian ecosystem are thirsty, and venture debt is increasingly proving to be the refreshing splash they needed amid this funding drought.But there's a catch. 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 business stories.

Chief Marketing Officers, or CMOs, are a dying breed. Last year, Nykaa decided to reshuffle its marketing structure. You see, the company’s previous chief marketing officer, or CMO, had exited Nykaa. But strangely enough, the company didn’t immediately fill the spot. Instead, it decided to break the role apart. So now it would have two marketing heads. One person would look at performance marketing – this is the more technically, data driven side of e-commerce. And then there would be a head of organic marketing. This is marketing in the conventional sense – the creative, freewheeling stuff. Now, for most of us on the outside, we would probably just brush this off as an internal staffing decision. Nothing out of the ordinary. But in reality, its indicative of a much larger trend. The move sent out a clear message: a singular CMO is no longer necessary. This isn’t exclusive to Nykaa. Several online-first companies – Firstcry, Ixigo, Yatra – have been running without a CMO. It’s a pretty big change. You see, for decades CMOs have been seen as the charming, confident face of the company responsible for all things brand building. They were responsible for a brand’s cultural relevancy. There were jingles and slogans back in the day that everyone knew. Think of Kingfisher’s iconic ‘Divided by teams. United by Kingfisher’ campaign. It literally became synonymous with cricket fandom. But the days when a CMO was considered the beginning and end of brand strategy have come to an end. 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 business stories.

Last month, 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 rupees. Even policies for Rs 6–10 lakh are harder to find and cost Rs 40,000–70,000 annually. That’s about 5X the premium someone younger would pay for the same coverage. And it’s not just the high premiums; these policies are of little help to seniors when they need it the most. In fact,  more than four out of every five people aged above 60 aren’t covered by any insurance at all. Only 20% of those over 45 years have a health cover. And the rest are just out there vulnerable to emergencies. The reason being: high premiums and meagre coverage.Tune in.Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

Ever since the pandemic, the world of skincare has witnessed nothing short of a revolution. Almost overnight, that jar of Ponds cold cream that had stood the test of time on dressing tables across the country was replaced by elaborate six-step skincare routines. The legacy brands we grew up with – the likes of Loreal, Ponds, Johnson and Johnson – were dethroned almost overnight. In their place came an explosion of new brands.  Today, everyone wants some skin in the game. Traditional FMCG companies like Tata, Marico, Dabur and Godrej all want in. So much so, that it's hard to keep a tab on the list of D2C skincare brands available in the market now.  But what does it take to launch a skincare brand? Turns out, not a lot. All you need is a contract manufacturer, 30 days, and a penchant for marketing. Tune in. We are hosting our first live recording! If you are in your 20s, like to run or just enjoy meeting new people, sign up for The Ken X 56 Run Club. This is for our Bengaluru-based listeners only. We meet at 7:30 am near Tonique on Kasturba Gandhi road. 

Lately, new breed of millionaire heirs  have been dabbling with family offices in India . These are entities that exist solely to manage the fortunes of these ultra-rich families. While these offices have been around in some of the world’s biggest financial capitals for a long time now, in India, they are catching on now . What’s really interesting is that these single and multi family offices haven’t just been popping up in big metro cities, they are also gaining popularity in tier 2 cities like Surat, Ludhiana, Lucknow, Coimbatore and the like. This largely has to do with the growing number of rich people in a lot of smaller cities and towns. A byproduct of this seems to be the rise in family offices. In the last six years alone, the number of family offices in India has shot up from 45 to 300. Some of these function like a seed-stage venture capital firm and invest money to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.Tune in.Daybreak Unwind recommendations for 'favourite translated novels.'Rahel: The Vegetarian by Han King            Hangwoman by KR MeeraSnigdha: The Legends of Khasak by OV Vijayan                 There's a Carnival Today by Indra Bahadur RaiListeners: Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbag Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

Here’s a riddle inspired by true events. We all know that pay TV subscribers have been declining for a while now. But at the same time, overall TV viewership has only been increasing. How can that be? Well, for that we have Youtube to thank. In the first half of 2024, Indians spent 8 trillion minutes watching videos. More than 90% of this was on Youtube. Now, generally when someone says the words ‘watch on youtube’ you imagine a mobile phone or a laptop right? That seems to be changing as a lot more people are watching Youtube videos on their TV sets. In Uttar Pradesh alone, Youtube reaches about 90 million households through connected television sets.And here’s the surprising part. This is roughly equal to or more than the reach of television programming. Youtube is now entering TV territory, by luring viewers into watching new format shows. Like comedian Samay Raina’s “pointless reality show” India’s got latent. Eight episodes have been aired since June, and so far, they’ve gotten up to 4X more views than the channel’s nearly 4 million subscriber base.Many similar Youtube channels are offering their subscribers TV like programming to keep them hooked. Plus, what makes them really stand out is that most often than not, these shows are better produced, that too on cheaper budgets.Looks like its time for TV channels to buckle up and fight for the throne...or couch!Tune in. We are hosting our first live recording! If you are in your 20s, like to run or just enjoy meeting new people, sign up for The Ken X 56 Run Club. This is for our Bengaluru-based listeners only. 

Last month, India’s second largest automaker – Hyundai –  went public. But this was not your run of the mill IPO. This was widely speculated to be the largest public listing ever seen in the Indian stock market. So there was naturally a lot of hype around it. But on October 17, just hours before Hyundai’s public issue was set to close, most stock market circles across the country were stumped. There was a growing sense of disbelief. Panic even. Because only half of the nearly Rs 28,000 crore offer had been subscribed until then. This was a far cry from the 90 per cent threshold that had to be crossed. The IPO eventually had a pretty listless listing on October 22. Despite all that hype. Now naturally, that left a lot of people wondering what could have gone wrong? What prompted so many retail investors to keep away from the Hyundai IPO? Well, a lot of it had to do with what transpired in Rajkot in the run-up to issue. This isn’t just about Hyundai. This small city in Gujarat has a big role to play in India’s IPO market. Tune in. We are hosting our first live recording! If you are in your 20s, like to run or just enjoy meeting new people, sign up for The Ken X 56 Run Club. This is for our Bengaluru-based listeners only. 

A new generation of designers is on the rise. These designers are expected to be  a lot more than just “one trick ponies”. The new-age ‘Designer X’ is expected to bring  a little bit of everything to the table. They understand the basics of sustainability, how their designs would impact things like climate change and culture. And they would also generally know a little bit of coding too. And that is because the whole perception of design has shifted. Just last month, IIT Delhi announced a new certificate course in design thinking. It quoted multiple reports explaining why aspirants should take it. One of them was a 2023 Deloitte report that said companies that integrated design thinking in their innovation process brought new products to market 50 per cent faster than others and saw 2.5 X more revenue growth.The latest batch of design generalists are the products of a new era of design education that has been sweeping through India’s universities. As of now, about a dozen have started their own design schools. Some of these universities are leaning into the industry’s demand for a well-rounded designer.But now that more universities have entered the picture and generalist designers are becoming a dime a dozen, landing good jobs is going to get tougher as the job market matures. Tune in.Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

*This episode was originally published on July 12, 2024 Have you ever heard of a 'f*** off fund'? Or better yet, do you have one?For the uninitiated, it is a sum of money that women should ideally set aside to get out of a difficult situation – think toxic job, abusive relationship or family situation, you get the drift. The term was coined by freelance writer, Paulette Perhach, in 2016. We recommend that you read her powerful essay on financial independence. The idea is for it to give you enough power, confidence and control to literally be able to say “f*** off” and walk away. You are probably thinking, ‘great in theory, but how do I actually build one for myself?’. We have got you covered. In this special episode of Daybreak, Chaitra Chidanand, the co-founder of Salt, a financial services platform for women, demystifies f*** off funds and how you can get one. Tune inSuggested readingA F*** Off Fund: the most important female prep, Reddit"The FOF has saved me and my kids a few times.  Health crisis. Unemployment. Violence.  S**t happens.  But just as important—having a FOF means you can act from a position of power, not fear, not subservience." Warren Buffett Invests Like A Girl? Forbes"Buffett has always said that it’s temperament--not intellect--that makes you a great long-term investor. When you look at studies that have been coming out in the last 10 years about how men and women invest, what you see is that women tend to naturally have this temperament that creates long-term investing success."For Women With Money Issues, an A.D.H.D. Diagnosis Can Be Revelatory, NYT'But because activities like planning or budgeting don’t usually give people with A.D.H.D. a dopamine hit, they can find it harder than neurotypical people to get started or stick to accounting activities. This results in extra costs — paying cancellation fees for missed appointments or late fees for not opening a bill on time, or losing refunds because we missed the deadline for returning an unwanted purchase.'For feedback, write to us at [email protected] is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

In the 2024 financial year, Apple sold products worth $8 billion in India. This was a third more than the previous year.But how did a premium company like Apple that hates giving discounts sell products worth 8 billion dollars in a country as price sensitive as India? Apple obviously knew that its phones were unaffordable for most people in India?It found an answer was easy financing. After the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, Apple made financing tie-ups with banks a mainstay. And one of the most important deals Apple made was with India’s largest private sector lender, and leading credit card issuer HDFC Bank. In fact, it was one of the costliest deals HDFC had. Thanks to it, HDFC customers have been enjoying exclusive cashbacks on Apple products ever since.Here’s the bad news. The deal between Apple and HDFC is now over.What happened?Tune in.

For a whole decade, Ola and Uber dominated the cab-hailing market. But cut to 2024 and that scenario is shifting. Both these companies are drifting. And a third contender – Rapido – is making the most of it. Both homegrown Ola and US-based Uber are dealing with a unique set of problems. The whole ride-hailing business seems to have taken a backseat for Ola, which is now knee deep in the electric vehicles business. Meanwhile, for Uber, the problem is stagnation. And those factors combined have taken a toll on their combined marketshare. The big two’s combined dominance has come down to around 60-70 per cent from over 90 per cent three years ago. But there’s a huge opportunity here for nine-year-old Rapido. Which the cab aggregation newbie is making the most of. Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

Welcome to the world of luxury-lifestyle management, where firms like RedBeryl, Indulge Global, and Quintessentially play the role of concierge for their ultra-wealthy clients, making the impossible possible.Now this sort of thing has become even easier for the rich. Because their wealth managers are also taking care of some of these requests. It isn’t a one -off thing. Companies like RedBeryl, Indulge GLobal, Quintessential – all of which play the role of concierge for their ultra wealthy clients – are increasingly partnering with wealth managers to edge out competition and increase their clientele. In today’s episode, we dive into how wealth managers are finding new ways to delight the ultra-rich. Tune in 

Zomato planning to raise 8,500 crore rupees again. This comes just three years after its grand IPO where it had raised almost the same amount. The company's stock prices have doubled in the last ten months. Interestingly, this fundraise is going to be through a qualified investment placement or QIP when a listed company raises capital from domestic markets without the need to submit any pre-issue filings to market regulators. Only qualified institutional investors are allowed to participate in this kind of a fundraise. All this just as rival Swiggy is prepping for its IPO. And the quick-commerce trio—Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto are gearing up to expand beyond the metros and into smaller cities. Plus new, deep-pocketed companies like Reliance Retail and Flipkart are also joining into the race. In a letter to shareholders, founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal wrote that the fundraise is intended to ensure a “level playing field with competitors who continue to raise additional capital” and to “strengthen its balance sheet”. There was no mention of how the funds would be used.At first, this seems like Zomato declaring war in the quick-commerce space. Some analysts believe it could be a move to show the market that it has a balance sheet that is the “strongest of all.But is that all there is to it?Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

If all the women of the world had a collective wallet where we could put in a penny for every time we heard the words “your biological clock is ticking,” we could move to Venus and run our own planet.But as unfair as it may be, it is true. There is an ideal time period in a woman’s life when she can have a baby. Or when she is the most “fertile.”Unlike men who are biologically not limited by such constraints, women are born with a limited number of eggs. And turns out, this number of eggs sees a drastic decline after the age of 37. And when we say drastic, we mean drastic.But in the 1980s, scientists figured out how to freeze women's eggs. They developed a process called oocyte cryopreservation. It took thirty years for the procedure to become widely available. Today, a growing number of women are opting for the procedure. Most people assume that women freeze their eggs so they can buy time to achieve professional success. Women who freeze their eggs are often envisioned as 'career-driven', 'power hungry', and ambitious. But, egg freezing is an intense process. It is invasive, it is painful. It takes a toll on women not just physically but mentally as well. Plus, it is expensive.So why do women freeze their eggs?Hosts Snigdha and Rahel went to Dr Marcia Inhorn, a professor at the University of Yale and author of Motherhood on Ice to find out.Tune in.Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!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 business stories.

For a country that boasts of its digital public goods infrastructure like Aadhar and UPI, it is a wonder why telecom has been so ignored. After nearly 1500 crore rupees of was reportedly lost to digital fraud in the financial year 2024, the govt’s Trai is finally scrambling to catch up with CPAN or the Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) service, its own version of Truecaller.  Truecaller, the Swedish call-screening company, meanwhile, has been holding the fort for a while now. Users count on it to save them from spam and fraud calls.  While TrueCaller maybe looking like a hero in this situation, it is a private company after all. It is using this opportunity to make money from both users and businesses. But its success in India is also built partially on how inadequate privacy laws are in India. The company has been accused of breaching data privacy norms in the past.  Can TRAI replace Truecaller?  Tune in.(This episode was first published in July, 2024)DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "coming of age"Rahel: Big Mouth, NetflixSnigdha: The Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro and Lady Bird (2017)Atish Deore: The works of PL Deshpande, a Marathi author and playwright Shubhangi: Derry Girls (2018)Brijesh: Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens   Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite translated books."              

Late last month, the Supreme Court made a very strong statement about NRI quotas at medical colleges. It essentially said that the whole thing was a fraud. But the thing is, since the Supreme Court called it out, the practice has only gotten murkier. So The Ken reporter Alifiya Khan conducted an investigation. She scoured several social networking sites only to find countless posts promising seats in medical institutes to aspirants who scored way  below the required cutoff and even those who were hardly eligible for the NRI quota. The only requirement? Well, applicants need to be ready to cough up some big bucks. The Ken wanted to see if there was something to these claims. So Alifiya went undercover. She posed as the sibling of a Maharashtra-based MBBS aspirant, with a measly NEET score of 180. She then contacted four education consultancies. And all of them, quite unsurprisingly, had boilerplate replies. The running thread – regardless of your score, they would hook you up with a medical college. And yet, most people high up in medical colleges don’t want to let go of NRI quota. Because in many ways it is what keeps the whole system afloat. What’s going on? Stay tuned. 

There is an unusual one-of-kind competition brewing within the Indian fintech space. It is so disruptive that its leaving founders and chief executives of some of India’s biggest fintechs feeling pretty intimidated and also helpless. The funny thing is, the brains behind this new competitor that’s left the whole industry feeling pretty blindsided is the Reserve Bank of India itself. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the banking regulator. And it’s called the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub or RBIH. The RBIH has been around for two years now. It's a first-of-its kind sort of company, because it is led by a central bank. Now, perhaps its closest counterpart, would be the National Payments Corporation of India or NPCI. We all know it for creating the unified payments interface or UPI. The NPCI is owned by a consortium of banks, whereas the RBIH is wholly owned by the regulator. It’s raison detre is simple: it’s meant to accelerate innovation across the financial sector. But unlike the NPCI, which collaborates with lenders in some way or the other to develop its products, the RBIH asks lenders to participate. But for the most part, a lot of fintech founders say that it works in a silo. Tune in. We are now on WhatsApp at +918971108379! Text us or send us a voice note to tell us what you thought of this episode. 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 business stories.

Earlier this month, CRED, released its financials for the year ended March 2024 at a press conference. Cred claims to have about 13 million monthly active users. For the financial year ended March 2024, it saw revenue rise more than 60% to nearly $300 million, and losses shrink by around 40% to about U$70 million. Plus, its monthly transacting users grew by more than 30%. Shah said how it's the top 10% of households who drive 60% of consumption. Even with UPI, he said, it was the top 30–40 million that drove billions of UPI transactions. And out of that target audience, Cred claims to have about 13 million monthly active users.But Cred says it does not present the option to take a loan for many of its users. And while a little more than a third of them are qualified to borrow, only about 10% have taken on a loan. According to Shah, Cred has taken a deliberately conservative approach here, which is what makes Cred unusual and 'popular with the chief risk officers of banks in India.'Tune in.We are now on WhatsApp at +918971108379! Text us or send us a voice note to tell us what you thought of this episode. 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 business stories.

A little more than a week ago, we read a really strange piece of news. Apparently, an expert committee recommended the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to ban the over the counter sale of emergency contraceptive pills like i-pill and Unwanted 72. They suggested  women should be only allowed to access it with a doctor’s prescription because of concerns over side effects. This was weird for many reasons. One, levonorgestrel, which is what these pills contain, is one of the safest emergency contraceptives available in the world. It is approved by WHO and the FDA. In fact, it is so safe, that even breastfeeding women can take it.Second, these emergency contraceptive pills are already a part of the Indian  govt’s family welfare programme. It was approved by the DCGI back in 2001. Ten years later, the ministry of health even made it a part of the ASHA workers drug kit.Much to the relief of women, the DCGI came up with a clarification a few days later saying no such ban was going to take place. But the news brought us face to face with the possibility that something as life-changing as the emergency pill—the one saving grace women have when it comes to their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy—could be taken away, just like that.Despite our progressive policy on the matter and the fact that more than 60% of emergency contraceptive pills in our country are sold over the counter, women often hesitate to buy it themselves. The fear of judgment and shame comes in the way of access.In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose talk to two experts, Vinoj Manning, the CEO of the Ipas Development Foundation, and Leeza Mangaldas, a sex educator and author of The Sex Book, about about this chasm that exists between our seemingly progressive policies and our actual society and its attitude towards emergency contraceptive pills and women's reproductive rights.Tune in!We are now on WhatsApp at +918971108379! Text us or send us a voice note to tell us what you thought of this episode. 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 business stories.

Back in 2004, two sisters, Kainaz and Tina Messman, decided to turn their life-long passion for food and baking into a full fledged business. They set up Theobroma, a small cafe tucked away in a corner of Mumbai’s posh Colaba. Today, there are more than 200 Theobroma outlets in over 30 cities across the country. The bakery chain’s evolution has been nothing short of remarkable. It has managed to build a profitable business that too in a category known to have products with one of the shortest shelf lives. The chain now commands a valuation of well over Rs 3,000 crore. In fact, investors like Chrys Capital, Bain Capital and Carlyle Group are queueing up to buy the 20-year-old brand. But being in the big leagues has meant changing up its strategy. Over the years, Theorobroma has cut down the number of baked and semi-baked items on its menu, and instead filled their shelves with longer lasting products like cookies. It’s been able to do that because of its massive, centrally located commissaries. And these strategic shifts have paid off big time. Because now investors are valuing the company at 7-9X its revenue. All of this is good news for its current promoters, the Messman sisters and the private equity investor ICICI Ventures, which invested $20 million between 2017 and 2019. Both are likely to exit with handsome returns. But once that happens, where would that leave Theobroma? Most industry experts say that sailing through with new owners is no picnic. Tune in.Daybreak Unwind recommendations for folk songs:Rahel: Genda Phool, Delhi 6, 2009Snigdha: Sketches of Darjeeling by Bipul Chettri, 2014Anushka:  Mor Bani Thanghat Kare by Jhaverchand MeghaniHari: Kalakkatha Sandana Meram by Nanjamma **Correction: Snigdha mistakenly said Mame Khan instead of Mangey Khan while talking about the Manganiyar singer's death. The error is deeply regretted.Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "coming of age."

Today, most conventional or slow clothing brands like Lee, Wrangler, United Colours of Benetton, Pepe Jeans and Levi’s are facing a tough new reality where they aren’t just trying to outperform each other. They are also up against fast fashion brands that are now dominating the industry. In the process, many of these slow brands have lost relevance in the larger scheme of things. In this episode we are going to talk about two of these brands in particular – Lee and Wrangler. Both are international brands that were launched in India in the late 80s and early 90s. But neither really took off. But now, they are trying to make a comeback. And behind this comeback is a Bengaluru based retail company called Ace Turtle. It wants to build a mini version of Indian conglomerate Reliance Brands Limited. That’s a pretty ambitious goal, considering the brands in their lineup couldn’t be more different.Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

Earlier this year, Zomato acquired ticketing platform Paytm Insider. With this, Zomato was able to take its 'going out' strategy to the next level. Since 2018, Zomato has been holding live events. You have probably heard of its its massive carnival-style event called Zomaland. The idea behind it is simple: a big part of going to a movie, or a music festival, or pretty much any live event is the food and drinks. So by being associated with live events, Zomato is able to expand the company’s reach from just restaurants to other spaces where food and beverages are consumed. The Insider acquisition takes this to a whole other level. It will place Zomato in the big leagues and really shake up India’s live-events sector. But so far, this has been a space dominated by one player – BookMyShow. For a long time now, it has been the default choice for both users and big artists because it offers discoverability and visibility like no one else does. But at the same time, it has also been facing some heat for not providing a great customer experience. Case in point: the recent Coldplay fiasco. This is exactly where a formidable rival like Insider could come in and shake things up. In fact, Zomato’s shadow is already looming. Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

The PM’s internship scheme wants to provide 10 million internships to freshly minted students over the course of the next five years. Students from premier institutes like IITs and IIMs or students with professional degrees like CA, CMA or masters are not allowed to apply. The idea is to address India’s problem of youth unemployment by making students from lower socio-economic backgrounds employable and giving them real world exposure.  It sounds great. If it is implemented well, the scheme has the potential to challenge deep-rooted hiring biases that exist in the job sector in India.  However, 10 million interns in five years is making corporates uneasy. They’re overwhelmed because they don't know how many interns they can hire. Two million interns per year between 500 odd top companies is a lot and corporates are unsure if they have the resources and the bandwidth to train and retain these interns and then deal with another two million pool the following year.  The scheme opened up for signing up to students on Saturday, Oct 12. Within one day more than 1 and a half lakh students had already registered according to news reports.  But because the scheme doesnt really have a sector specific approach, it is highly likely that we have a problem-solution mismatch coming our way. Tune in.Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

Back in 2014, Ashoka University introduced India to the concept of a liberal arts education. The private research university, tucked away in Sonipat, Haryana, came along at a time when the cracks in India’s higher education system were starting to become pretty glaring. It positioned itself as everything a conventional Indian college was not.  Ashoka promised to offer  ‘holistic, liberal, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary’ education. Simply put, it was offering choice. And that simple yet powerful promise is what made it stand out. But ten years later, it is facing new pressures. The latest phase of the Ashoka story is not one that a lot of people may have seen coming. It's marked by a stronger focus on business and sciences than ever before.  Case in point: the university’s thriving entrepreneurship department. In the last few years, it has become one of the most popular courses on offer. A big reason for its popularity is because students think signing up for courses like these will make them more ‘employable’. And that, fundamentally goes against what Ashoka stands for. So now, Ashoka is facing a dilemma: Should it give in to parental pressure and start acting like a business school, driven by placements and employability? Or should it just stay the course? Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

About a month ago, news broke about Reliance's plans to merge Disney+ Hotstar with JioCinema after their Star-Viacom18 merger. While the merger is pending approvals from the Competition Commission of India, data from Google Play Store data shows Disney+ Hotstar had over 500 million downloads while JioCinema had over 100 million downloads.While the idea makes sense from a consumer's perspective who has to deal with too many subscriptions and too many choices, things don't quite add up from a strategic perspective for Reliance.Tune in.DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "favourite murder mystery."Snigdha: We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley JacksonRahel: Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene (The Phantom of Venice)Devansh: Blood on the Tracks by Shūzō OshimiVenkat: Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya, 2019 (movie)Vaidehi: Glass Onion: A Knives Out MysteryRohith: Jane Jaan, 2023 (movie)Ashish: Sharp Objects by Gillian FlynnHari: Dial M for MurderDaybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

So far, buying medicines in India has been a complete minefield. Allow me to elaborate with the help of a completely plausible hypothetical scenario. Say you catch the flu one day and need 75 mg of the antiviral drug Oseltamivir. More often than not, we don’t really check the price tag of these drugs. But what if I told you the prices can swing anywhere between Rs 30 and Rs 125 per capsule, depending on the manufacturer and the doctor prescribing it. Now, variable pricing is not really a revelation. It’s a pretty common practice. The government caps the price of nearly 400 essential drugs through the National List of Essential Medicines. But that’s where the oevrsight ends. Generally, non-essential drugs remain outside this price cap. The National Health Authority, the body which runs India’s public health insurance scheme, Ayushman Bharat, is now looking for digital pharmacy partners to promote pricing transparency. The aim is to tackle this overcharging crisis. So in September, it went ahead and enlisted Marg ERP, a leading provider of pharmacy inventory software as one such partner. Now Kaushal Shah, founder of Evitalrx, revealed that even his cloud-based pharma software firm is on track to join the initiative in the coming weeks.But here’s the thing. This one click solution is still a long way off. Tune in. Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379 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 business stories.

Back in the day, being from one of India’s prestigious boarding schools – the likes of Doon or Mayo – was the ultimate stamp of honour.  Most of these schools were established close to a century ago, during British rule. And for the longest time, they were infamous for taking that legacy pretty seriously. In fact, that was exactly why they remained the go-to destination for India’s elite. But now, things are changing. In the recent past, the likes of Doon and Mayo have had to change their approach. They are now fighting to stay relevant. And the reason for that is the exponential growth of international schools and foreign boarding schools across the country. Tune in. Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379 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 business stories.

Sarvam, a generative AI startup based out of Bangalore, managed to raise more than $50 million from investors like Peak XIV and Khosla Ventures, in less than 6 months after it was launched last year. Last month, Sarvam released a range of new multilingual products—Al agents, voice and text models, and a workbench aimed at legal professionals. Enterprise customers who used Sarvam's services are satisfied with the performance of its products. But developers have flagged issues with its voice-based models. Even the text model is primarily trained on synthetic data which could lead to nonsensical answers if left untested.With increasing competition in this space, surely, Sarvam is going to  address the product issues in later releases.Tune in.Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379 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 business stories.

Every time you take a domestic flight and don't have to break a fixed deposit to buy a ticket, you have Captain GR Gopinath to thank. In 2003, he  launched Air Deccan, India's first budget airline.  Before that, only the rich and powerful could afford to fly. So, planes were like mini 5-star hotels – you would be waited on hand and foot, would have access to luxurious lounges, get served gourmet food. And of course, it came with an outrageous price tag to match. With Air Deccan, flying was finally democratised. And soon enough, others followed. Everyone wanted to copy the Air Deccan playbook. Cut to now. The only successful airline in India at the moment have followed the budget route, with Indigo as the market leader. On the surface, things look great. India is home to the third largest domestic aviation market by volume. Domestic passenger numbers have more than doubled in the last decade. In June alone, more than 13 million people flew domestically. But if everything is going right behind the scenes? Then why is the flying experience getting so bad? Tune in. Why do women freeze their eggs? Take the survey here.Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379 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 business stories.

Phone calls from Bajaj Finance offering loans are almost inescapable and the non-bank has been facing quite a backlash for it.But telecalling has been an enduring sales channel for the company which boasts of a loan book worth nearly $30 billion. And despite the massive size of its loan book, it’s been growing at a phenomenal rate. But now, Bajaj Finance has become a prisoner of its own growth rate. It has to maintain it anyhow.Tune inDon't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379. 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 business stories.

Not so long ago, Birkenstocks were considered the antithesis of high fashion. For the longest time, the 250-year-old German brand’s characteristic chunky sandal was seen as nothing more than an orthopedic shoe meant for hippies and old people. And then, everything changed. In the last decade or so, Birkenstock had a major glow up. It all started with the brand deciding not to settle for being just another comfortable but cringey sandal anymore. So to make Birks cool the brand began collaborating with high-end fashion designers like Rick Owens, Valentino and Dior.  Very quickly celebrities and influencers caught on. They were suddenly being spotted walking out of the gym, or a cafe with a pair of birks on. And just like that, a trend was born. The orthopedic sandal, built more for comfort than for style, was the new it-shoe. Now, the Birk craze has found its way to India. Tune in. This episode was originally published on July 16Why do women freeze their eggs? Take the survey here.Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379. 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 business stories.

India's biggest quick commerce players — Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto — are on a mission. They are frantically hunting for properties they can convert into dark stores. Dark stores are an integral part of any quick commerce strategy. Especially now, that the lines between quick commerce and e-commerce are very quickly blurring. People aren't just ordering pantry staples anymore. They are also placing orders for high value goods like headphones and full blown air conditioners. So, dark stores have to cater to these evolving needs. And things are even more heated now that Walmart-backed Flipkart and Amazon have entered the quick commerce race.All that hype adds up to a mad dash for real estate, especially in tier-2 cities like Lucknow and Jaipur in north India and Nagpur in central India. And the unlikely winners in all of this are property owners and local brokers. Tune in. Why do women freeze their eggs? Take the survey here.Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379. 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 business stories.

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 come cheap. Sheetal Shrigiri, gynecologist and counselor at a coaching center for medical-entrance exams told The Ken an MBBS degree at a private college costs anything between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore.Apart from the financial burden of the degree itself, once they become doctors, there is increasing competition from hospital chains and also the pressure of having a social media presence and to deal with.Tune in.Why do women freeze their eggs? Take the survey here.Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379. 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 business stories.

In this episode of Daybreak, hosts Snigdha and Rahel try something new — instead of the usual monologue or interview, they cover three of the biggest social media stories from around the world. The first is Brazil's ban on the Elon Musk-owned microblogging platform, X. The feud between Musk and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes traces back to April, when the judge ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation. Musk refused to comply and the row that followed was, well, unhinged. It ultimately led to Musk shutting shop in Brazil and Moraes ordering the local telecom agency to block access to X across the nation of 200 million. A somewhat similar situation arose in India back in 2020, but it unfolded very differently. Next up, host Snigdha dives into a recent study by the International Panel on the Information Environment that flags owners of social media platforms as one of the biggest threats to a trustworthy news environment onlineAnd finally, host Rahel shares some of the biggest announcements from Meta Connect 2024. Spoiler: one was a pair of augmented-reality sunglasses that looked a lot like classic Ray Ban wayfarers, but worked essentially like a mini computer you could wear on your face. Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Don't forget to take our egg freezing survey. P.S.  For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite murder mystery."If you have feedback on our new news wrap format, please write to us on WhatsApp or send us an email at [email protected], [email protected] Check out the story about Starlink, host Rahel mentioned during the episode.

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 manufacturing playbook. It is what propelled China to emerge as the world’s manufacturing hub. It’s pretty simple – Foxconn and companies like it build these large facilities, pack millions of migrant laborers into dorms near their facilities, and get them to work long hours, in often tough conditions. But now things are changing. More and more global companies are adopting a China-plus-one strategy. And India is becoming a favoured alternative. And  as the focus shifts our way, manufacturers in India are pretty much replicating the same China labour model. But this model has an indigenous problem.Tune inDAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "best opening lines in a book or a film."Nicholas: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia MarquezStory he refers to: The Most Memorable Annual Pig Parade of KharagpurRahel: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak  Prithu: The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas AdamsAvinash: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Ruhi: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K RowlingBrady: Rounders (film, 1998)Sayan: The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R Tolkien Sameer: Gangs of Wasseypur (film, 2012)Sumit: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt VonnegutRohin: The Body by Stephen KingSnigdha: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley JacksonDaybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite murder mystery."

Back in 2022, e-commerce giant Flipkart’s 35 billion dollar universe was left with a gaping fintech hole after the payments app Phonepe was spun off. There a brief period, after that, when it wasn’t clear whether Flipkart would ever try to dip its toes in consumer payments play again. But then again, this is Flipkart. Here is a company that has a finger in every pie – from online travel, fashion, quick commerce, logistics, even medicine delivery. Some may say it was only a matter of time before the company filled that gap and took another big fintech bet. That time came in June, when Flipkart launched Super.money, a credit-first unified payments interface app. Emphasis on credit-first. But the thing is, right now, credit is a hill everyone is queueing up on. So, does Flipkart stand a chance? Tune in. Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite opening line from a book or film.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379. 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 business stories.

Half of the world’s electric cars are on China’s roads, thanks to a wave of smart incentives for both consumers and manufacturers, such as tax breaks and purchase subsidies. The payoff is tangible: the smog that once shrouded some major cities has lifted, and road noise has dropped significantly.But it brought unexpected costs and challenges that nobody saw coming. Tune inDon't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite opening line from a book or film.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379. 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 business stories.

A few years ago, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had set a target of 40% growth across all categories for Flipkart. But in 2023, it was still stuck at 20%. So the company is now on a mission. It wants to push growth, gain market share, and turn a profit.So in January 2024, Flipkart's top execs along with the CEO came together for a meeting to outline a roadmap for 2024. Krishnamurthy wanted Flipkart to introduce a loyalty programme for top spenders, give out more incentives to ensure customer loyalty, push up transaction numbers and average order sizes, and also focus on brands.In the same meeting he also admitted that the company had faced quite a few hurdles the previous year but he was sure they’d make a comeback and hit profitability before the IPO.But here’s the thing, prepping for an IPO often has long term effects on a company’s culture. And the cracks are already beginning to appear inside Flipkart.Tune in.**This episode was first published on 6 May, 2024

Meet Shaik Salauddin, a 38-year-old cab driver from Hyderabad, who is fighting for the rights of eight million gig workers from across the country. While India's gig economy is burgeoning, the workers on whose backs it is built barely enjoy any rights or legal protections. Salauddin realised this early on and in 2019, after five years of relentless pursuit, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) was born. With over 25,000 members working for aggregators like Uber, Amazon, and Zomato, through IFAT, Salauddin is redefining the way we look at trade unions. To begin with, the union has no political affiliations. Instead, Salauddin encourages all of its members to understand power structures and approach the right people to drive change.Thanks to his efforts, two states, Karnataka and Rajasthan, have introduced legislations to protect the rights of gig workers. Others like Kerala are working on their own.In this episode, hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to Salauddin himself and to Prof. Vinoj Abraham from Labour Economics at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram to understand the significance of Salauddin's work and why it is important to protect gig workers.  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 business stories.A special shout out to Hari Krishna, from the Two by Two team, who kindly agreed to dub parts of this episode. Thank you, Hari!Fill in Akshaya's Happiness Survey here

For nearly two decades, Abhishek Ganguly worked as the managing director of Puma, the German athleisure brand in India. In that period alone, the brand’s revenue shot up from Rs 20 crore to close to Rs 4,000 crore. Under Ganguly, Puma even managed to beat its longtime rival Adidas to become a market leader. In 2023, Ganguly decided to quit and start his own venture called Agilitas Sports with two of his colleagues from Puma, Atul Bajaj and Amit Prabhu. Within a year, Ganguly’s company has managed to rack up more than Rs 700 crore in revenue. The way Ganguly and his co-founders got to this point is interesting. Instead of doing the obvious thing and launching their own sneaker brand, Ganguly did something quite odd. Something, that even the biggest sportswear brands in the world – Nike, Reebok, Adidas – have never even attempted. Last September, Agilitas bought India’s largest sportswear contract manufacturer, Mochiko shoes. This is the company that manufactures shoes for international brands like Adidas, Puma, New Balance, Skechers, Reebok, Asics, Crocs, Decathlon  – the works. Ganguly’s logic behind owning the factory is simple – he wants whole  pie and not just a slice of the margin. He told The Ken's DVLS Pranathi that having the additional manufacturer’s margin in a price-sensitive market like India is worth its weight in gold. But there is a reason giants like Puma and Adidas don’t go down this road—taking care of manufacturing in-house is a logistical nightmare. That’s why most brands outsource to companies that are equipped to do it, like Mochiko. But Agilitas is dead set on bringing the entire operation in-house. It’s convinced it can work and has also managed to convince VCs that there is merit in controlling both manufacturing and distributing. Investors are betting on the Ganguly-Bajaj-Prabhu trio to pull off another Puma-sized victory. But will the other shoe drop? Tune in.**The host mistakenly said a decade instead of two decades when referring to Abhishek Ganguly's stint at Puma. The error is regretted.Fill in Akshaya's Happiness Survey hereDAYBREAK UNWIND RECCOMENDATIONS FOR COMFORT FOOD SPOTSRahel: Kappa Chakka Kandhari, Bangalore,           Unnamed food truck at Utorda Beach, South GoaSnigdha: Alu Dum from Bari's tuck shop near Loreto Convent, Darjeeling                Thukpa at Kunga's, near Planter's Club, Darjeeling                 Ghee Podi Dosa from Umesh Refreshments, Indiranagar, BangaloreSatyam: Litti Chokha, Jai Mata Di Food Stall, HSR Layout, BangaloreShayanika: Dosa and Puliyogare Rice at 3 Trees Cafe, Upper Dharamkot, DharamsalaRahul: Egg fried rice at Tenzin Kitchen, Koramangala Akshaya: Okonomoyaki and fried tofu sushi at Dahlia, Chennai

Back when it was launched in 2020, Bajaj Finsev Health had a clear plan: it wanted to provide a complete healthcare package to its consumers. And it did that by happily playing a supporting role in India’s booming healthcare industry. Here's what Bajaj Finserv Health does. It is essentially a health management platform. So it facilitates things like doctor consultations and health checkups to its 400-odd corporate clients. Simple enough. But four years later, the company’s vision has evolved. They want to take things to the next level. It’s clearly sick of playing a supporting role. So it has decided to step into the spotlight. The first step was to acquire 22-year-old Vidal Healthcare, which is a third party administrator.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 business stories.PS. While you're here, here's the happiness survey for the season finale of The First Two Years. 

Subway, the globally popular sandwich-eatery chain, is now grappling with sweeping changes in India—and not for the better. For one, the world’s largest quick-service restaurant (QSR) brand is moving away from the franchise model it has operated under for the past 25 years. In doing so, it’s also shedding the very thing that made it popular in the first place: choice.Tune in. Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “comfort food at your fav spot in the city.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379. 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 business stories.