Episodes
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"Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly."
Last month, Judge Amit P Mehta of of US District Court for the District of Columbia delivered a historic ruling against one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Google was accused of abusing its dominance by paying the likes of Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to make its search engine the default option on their smartphones and browsers.
It is being called the biggest antitrust case of the century. And this is only the beginning. The Google ruling comes amid a growing anti-big tech sentiment. The general consensus is that this tiny group of companies — Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft — have grown too big and too powerful.
These companies are deciding what we see on the internet — the news we consume, the information we have access to, what we buy and who we buy from. At some point, everyone got a little wary of these companies. They started seeing some real threats to their power in the form of antitrust lawsuits and regulations. Suddenly, their every move was being scrutinised.
Have we gone too far? Manjushree RM, Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, weighs in on the pushback against big tech, and how India is keeping up with it all.
P.S The Ken's podcast team is hiring! Here's what we're looking for.
Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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.
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Dunzo, the Reliance Retail-backed quick delivery company, let go off 75% of its workforce in fresh round of layoffs earlier this week.
But for the longest time, Dunzo has been an anomaly. Its a small company that has managed to make its name a verb. Like Google but Google is a giant. Its revenue was just $7 million dollars in the year that ended in 2022. For perspective, Zomato made more than 70 times that amount in the same period, But it did not matter. Because it changed our lives and it became the kind of consumer brand that tech companies who do anything for.
To understand the unravelling of Dunzo, we need to go back to two years ago when Dunzo was on a high.
Tune in.
P.S Don't miss our brand new Thursday segment, DAYBREAK UNWIND, in this episode!
This week's recommendations:
From listeners:
Ashish: The Bear
Joy: Panlong aka Coiling Dragon
Ishan Sarkar: The Peanut Butter Falcom
Apurva: Blue Eye SamuraiFrom hosts:
Snigdha: Invisible Planets: 13 Visions of The Future of China edited and translated by Ken Liu
The Worst Person in The WorldRahel: Sisters in Sweat
Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and be a part of the Daybreak community. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "comfort food from your favourite spot in town." -
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There was once a time, not very long ago, when every company wanted to be a fintech. Food delivery, ride hailing, e-commerce – companies that you would not otherwise associate with financial services.
And when you think about it, it does add up. A couple years ago, fintech was where the money was at. Indian fintechs received nearly 9 billion dollars in funding in calendar year 2021. It was one the hottest sectors in the country.
The inside joke among venture capitalists was how founders could raise a round of funding just by mentioning “financial services” in their pitch deck. What were earlier standalone businesses would now exist as mere features on their apps. People in the industry came up with a catch-all term – fintech-as-a-feature. Take Ola for instance.
Zomato seemed to be going down that path too. In 2022, it had applied for a non-bank financial company or NBFC licence with the Reserve Bank of India.
But since then, things have changed. From 2022 onwards, the amount of money being raised by fintechs has dipped considerable. In 2022, they raised about 5.4 billion dollars, then in 2023, this amount fell to 2 billion.
What's going on?Tune in to find out.
P.S The Ken's podcast team is hiring! Here's what we're looking for.
Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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.
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In the last decade, the number of people covered by health insurance has more than doubled.
Of course, big hospitals – both the state funded ones and the private ones that look a lot like five-star resorts – are making the most of it. They are really raking it in.
But there is a sizeable chunk of the healthcare system that is left out. The small, private hospitals that make up nearly 85 per cent of the industry. This is the ‘missing middle’. It’s disorganized and severely underfunded. It’s also stuck in a bureaucratic maze of claims and reimbursements.
The patients that rely on these facilities are very often stuck between subsidised schemes and private insurance. But here’s the thing – where there is chaos there is also huge opportunity.
Opportunity that a new crop of health fintechs have identified. Enter Gmoney, Digisparsh, Healthcred, and Carepay. All of them are waiting to disrupt the ‘cashless insurance’ space.
They’re coming to the rescue with plans to connect the dots between insurers, hospitals, and patients.
Tune in.P.S The Ken's podcast team is hiring! Here's what we're looking for.
Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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.
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For a while now, some of the biggest players in India’s third-party logistics industry have been riding on the success of e-commerce unicorn Meesho. As of 2023, it accounted for over half of the 2.5 billion shipments that were being handled by third-party logistics players. Companies like Delhivery and Ecom Express happily rose to the occasion and partnered with Meesho to handle all its order deliveries.
For logistics companies this was a dream come true because most of the other major e-commerce players in India – like Flipkart and Amazon – take care of all their logistics in-house.
Now, Meesho has announced the launch of Valmo, its own in-house logistics arm. Naturally, third party logistics partners are nervous. But no one is more shaken up than Ecom Express.
Tune in.
P.S The Ken's podcast team is hiring! Here's what we're looking for.
Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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.
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When it comes to electric vehicles, China is the crownless king. Nothing new there.
But what was news to us was when Bhavish Aggarwal recently announced at an event that his company, Ola Electric, is the world’s largest electric two-wheeler manufacturer and the fourth-largest EV company in the world.
It left everyone scratching their heads for a few seconds until they noticed the fine print at the bottom of the powerpoint slide — marked with an asterisk, in tiny lettering, it said excluding China.
But you can't exclude China from the EV conversation because for the last decade it has been leagues ahead of the rest of the world. The Chinese government has been pushing for EV adoption — and all of its efforts have paid off. Multiple studies and surveys have found that China’s EV market is now the biggest in the world.But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. While India is still in its teething phase as far as electric mobility is concerned, China is well into its teens, and we all know puberty comes with a whole set of its own problems. In China’s case it’s price wars, record breaking insurance premiums, and a threat to data privacy.
Are there lessons here for India? In this episode, we speak to two people from The Ken newsroom, who have been covering the EV space extensively — Nathan Narde and Lu Zhao.
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.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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A big reason when we choose to buy online instead of going to a store depends on how easy the e-commerce company makes it to return stuff. So far, with most companies, all you have to do is ask for a return on the app or website and someone comes to your doorstep and picks it up.
While e-commerce companies have been wooing you with the option, in reality they hate returns because reverse logistics are a costly affair for them.
Which is why e-commerce platforms like Ajio and Myntra are changing their return policies. Some are even blocking some customer accounts.
But are customers ready to give it up yet?
Tune in.
* This story was previously featured on Daybreak in April, 2024
P.S Don't miss our brand new Thursday segment, DAYBREAK UNWIND, in this episode!
This week's recommendations:
Snigdha:
To read: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
To watch: Kalki 2898 ADRahel:
To watch and listen: Hanumankind – Big Dawgs | Ft. Kalmi
Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and be a part of the Daybreak community. Also, if you have any recommendations for next Thursday's Unwind, send them to us as texts or voice notes. -
There was once a time, not too long ago, when you could walk into a young working professional’s rented home in a tier-1 city, and all the furniture would look pretty familiar.
About a decade ago, everyone and their uncle was renting furniture from the two OG rental platforms Rentomojo and Furlenco. It just made sense.
When Rentomojo and Furlenco were launched about a decade ago, they were like an answer to a lot of people’s prayers. It was a great deal – your fridge, washing machine, king sized bed and more would be delivered right at your doorstep. Use them for as long as you need, and return them when you are done.
Cut to 2024, and things have changed. They are struggling to stay relevant.
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.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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Lenders are flouting every rule in their books to cater to the rising gold-loan demand.
Thanks to the collusion between lenders and borrowers at some of the branches, one in ten gold loans every month is sanctioned through malpractices—like tweaking weight and misreporting purity of gold, said two industry executives.
In this episode, we delve into the murky world of gold loans and what often goes wrong when borrowers seek them out.
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.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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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, is quite particular about how fast it can 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 is using this power.
Tune in.If you're interested in working for The Ken's podcast team, apply here
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The pandemic disrupted everyone's travel plans. But now, everyone is travelling with a vengeance and it's really overloading the systems.
With visa appointment slots hard to come by, travel agents have turned securing visa dates into a profitable business. Meanwhile, embassies and consulates are trying hard to limit the wait list.
And at the center of this anxiety-inducing maze is one company called VFS global that handles the visa application process for more than 150 of the world’s 195 countries, including India.
In this post pandemic era of the so-called revenge travel, VFS is where the dreams of many travelers’ go to die. For many Indian travellers, VFS is like the mean gatekeeper not letting them get to their dream destination.
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.
Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.
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What really makes UPI successful? The number of transactions. In FY2024, for example, more than 130 billion transactions were carried out through UPI. But it's not enough. UPI needs more and more to the point where now it has become a transaction-hungry monster. And NPCI National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), government body that runs UPI has to constantly come up with ways to feed this ever-hungry monster.
Its latest offering is delegated payments. Earlier this month, Reserve Bank of India Governor, Shaktikanta Das, announced that non-UPI users, like elderly people or teenagers or anyone who does not have a way to transact via UPI, can use another UPI user’s account and spend through it.
While many payments platforms are excited about this new feature, there are some serious issues that may become roadblocks later.
Tune in to find out.
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Many thought the fall of WeWork – as quick and public as it was – was the final nail in the coffin for the fledgling coworking space business. But a few years later, the pandemic is over and people are finally making their way back to their workplaces.
The end of work from home has given the coworking space a new lease on life and one Delhi-based startup in particular is really standing out.
Awfis, a nine-year-old flexible workspace company, is breaking pretty much every rule in the coworking space playbook. And it seems to be working out pretty well for the company.
Tune in.
Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two hereDaybreak 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.
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For more than two decades, India’s jewellery industry has been dominated by one name and one name only – Tanishq. The Titan-owned brand has managed to become the go-to jewellery store for people across the country. Some may even call it the gold standard…literally.
But since last year, things have been changing. Tanishq’s dominance is being challenged. Not by some massive international player or any other pan-India brand. Nope. Instead, it is regional players that are starting to dim Tanishq’s shine. You may have noticed all the Malabar Gold and Kalyan Jewellers ads and billboards that have popped up in the last year or so. Both are regional brands that have really been giving Tanishq a run for its money.
The funny thing is all of these regional brands have risen to the top by doing exactly what Tanishq does best. They are literally hijacking Tanishq’s own playbook. And in the process, what was once Titan’s exclusive territory, with its 8% market share in a sea of unorganised competition, is now getting crowded.
Tune in.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here
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.
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Tech platforms like Google, Meta, or even e-marketplaces such as Olx are increasingly becoming hotbeds of online advertising scams in India. People have been losing anything from a few thousands to even a few crore rupees to cyber crime syndicates who have proficient, tech-savvy members.
The amount of money consumers have reported losing to fraud that originated on social-media platforms has skyrocketed since 2017. Last year alone, people reported losing more than $1.2 billion to fraud that started on social media.
What are big techs like Google and Meta doing to prevent these crimes? Is it enough?
Tune in to find out.
**This episode is a rerun and was first published on Nov 27, 2023
Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two hereDaybreak 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.
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In Mumbai last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India was entering the bid to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2036. Yup, bidding happens more than a decade before the actual event. Because that’s how long it takes to prep a city for the Olympics. At the same event, PM Modi said hosting the games India is the “age-old dream and aspiration of 140 crore Indians”.
You see, the prestige associated with hosting the Olympics is undeniable…many would say, it is priceless. If you think about it, for a developing country, is the ultimate flex, right?
But in the end, is it really worth it? Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist does not think so. He has devoted much of his career to exposing the dark underbelly of the Olympics.
Tune in.
P.S. The Ken podcast team is looking for a talented podcast producer and an audio journalist. If you fit the bill or know someone who does, please apply!
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For many in the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), this year’s Union Budget announcement was a damp squib.
On 23 July, several officials from the ticketing-and-catering arm of Indian Railways waited for over an hour, with the collective hope that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman would quash the discounts on UPI payments.
The reason behind their discontent is that the discount has cost IRCTC an arm and a leg. The company has lost Rs 40 crore in revenue. But despite all of the pushback, this year’s Budget did not mention revoking the mandate anywhere.
So, what’s going on? And why isn’t the government backing down?
Tune in to find out.P.S. The Ken podcast team is looking for a talented podcast producer and an audio journalist. If you fit the bill or know someone who does, please apply!
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Fertility rates in India are not looking good. In fact, it has fallen below the necessary replacement fertility level, which is basically the total fertility rate at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, without migration.
So to nip the issue in the bud, state governments are now stepping in to offer what private equity-backed fertility centres would otherwise charge lakhs of rupees for: IVF treatment for free.If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.
Tune In.
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Every year, nearly three lakh students flock to the city of Kota in Rajasthan, the coaching capital of the country. Almost half of them enroll themselves at Allen Career Institute, a 36 year-old pioneering coaching centre that was last valued at over 1 billion dollars.
Lately, Kota’s reputation has been under question because of the frequent student suicides.
This has obviously affected the number of students coming in and for the first time in its history, the coaching giant Allen is seeing a fall in its admissions. And its no small dip. Admissions have dropped by over 35% to around 80,000. But here’s the interesting part. This isn't restricted to Allen institute in kota alone. Its happening in other cities too.
Actually two years ago, VCl investment firm Bodhi Tree Systems came into the picture and Allen began expanding the number of campuses outside Kota. Now, in total, there are over 200 of them and at least, one-third are new. The company’s CEO Nitin Kukreja told The Ken that Allen entered 16 new cities like Patna and Lucknow last year alone. A senior teacher at Allen Kota told us that for a centre to be profitable, it needs at least 4,000–5,000 student enrolments. But right now, Allen is not even seeing half of this. At least half a dozen senior Allen staffers and competitors told The Ken that a big chunk of these new centers are losing money. Staff pays have taken a hit but Allen is also hiring staff in new cities with a possible plan of shifting base out of Kota.
In today’s episode we take a look at what’s happening inside one of the country’s latest test prep giants.
Tune into to Two by Two's latest episode, 'Delhi pricked the Bengaluru bubble' here
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The search for an ideal workplace is a bit like finding El Dorado — that land of endless wealth and opportunities. Like El Dorado, 'the ideal workplace' also, well, seems like a myth. But that doesn't stop people from striving to find one.
This is a conversation that goes right back to the birth of the modern corporation. From the civil rights movement in the US, to the evolution of trade unions in India – throughout history, people have fought for a fair and equitable workplace. One that has equal opportunities for everyone, where everyone feels seen and heard, and no one is treated differently because of where they come from or who they are.
Eventually, the century-long battle for the ideal workplace finally boiled down to three core values – diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI. But here’s the thing about DEI – it comes and goes in waves. And it usually takes an extreme incident to trigger the pendulum to swing towards DEI.
And when the pendulum swings to the other side, DEI’s alter ego, that has been lurking in the shadows all along, finally makes its entrance. Lately, its been popularly known as MEI — merit, excellence and intelligence.
Right now, we are bang in the middle of yet another wave of the DEI vs MEI debate. In the last few weeks, giants like Microsoft, Google, Meta have majorly scaled down their DEI initiatives. Some have even laid off entire DEI teams. Naturally, many are of the opinion\ that DEI is on its deathbed.
The repercussions of all of this are being felt here in corporate India where a watered down version of DEI was just about getting started. But now that it has hit a wall in the West, what does that mean for us?
To find out hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to two women who are trying to fix this broken system but in very different ways. Christina Dhanuja, author, DEI strategy consultant and the founder of Dalit History Month and Naiyya Saggi, the co-founder of The Good Glamm Group, a unicorn startup based out of India.
Tune in.
For feedback, write to us at [email protected]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.
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