In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from The Ken newsroom. 

We will talk about Reliance and Airtel’s latest deal with Space X’s Starlink Internet; how Dhan, the stock broking underdog, is defying all odds; and finally, we discuss the market for treating farmed animals humanely. 

Stay tuned

Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode:
Dhan is the stock-broking underdog that Chryscapital and Hornbill are after. But why?
How big is the market for treating farmed animals humanely? 

If there’s one thing urban Indians love to do, it is delegate. Today there’s all manner of apps for anything even vaguely resembling a chore. Need someone to deep clean your house? Or a stand-in for the driver that called in sick? Well, there’s an app for it. 

The Ken’s deputy editor Seetharaman G recently pointed out how all of this is possible only because of an ever-growing army of gig workers constantly whizzing around cities and towns across India for wages that are abysmally low. 

In many ways it is a never ending loop. As stable jobs continue to vanish, millions of young Indians are turning to odd jobs instead. They are fuelling a booming gig economy, where startups – both big and small – are turning even the smallest chores into business opportunities. 

Naturally, venture capitalists can’t get enough. They have been pouring tens or billions of dollars into gig driven startups. They are directly and indirectly betting big on this endless supply of underpaid workers to keep these business models afloat. 

The stats are pretty alarming. Today, 13 per cent of all tech funding is fueling this vast eco system of odd jobs on demand. It all paints a pretty dismal picture. Because it’s starting to seem like the future work is taking care of everything you don’t want to do. 

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.

When the Bengaluru-based Cloud kitchen operator Curefoods went ahead and acquired the distribution rights for the American donut and coffee brand Krispy Kreme in December last year, a lot of people were naturally quite surprised. 

Given the company’s roots in the fitness startup Cult fit, you would assume that it would be in Curefood’s best interest to promote all things “healthy”. Even its flagship brand up until now, Eatfit, is popular on delivery platforms for its healthy, clean food options. 

But turns out, that’s not the path this cloud kitchen operator wants to walk down anymore. It is now dead set on expanding its menu beyond just salads. And the only way to do that is by giving people what they really want — junk food.

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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.

After years of being associated with powerful politicians and menacing goons thanks to Bollywood films, SUVs are now undergoing a makeover. At car dealerships across the country, they are now being positioned as the ultimate family car —  a fortress that can keep your loved ones safe on treacherous Indian roads. 

The word on the street, according to multiple sales executives and industry insiders, is that Indian carmakers are deliberately positioning these  vehicles as rolling citadels. And it's working. SUVs are now outshining hatchbacks in annual sales. 

But this love for SUVs among buyers is like the inexplicable craze around skinny jeans—no one likes them except the manufacturers and the ones in them. Simply put, more SUVs on the road mean more worry for everyone else.

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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.

When the much-awaited Swiggy IPO took place in November last year, many HNIs make put in their money into the company. Some made smaller investments of more than Rs 2 lakh and the others who bought stocks for over Rs 10 lakh. But they weren’t buying stocks because they believed in the real value or long-term potential of these shares. They bought them because they assumed someone else will buy them at an even higher price. 

The Ken reporter Suprita spoke to a VP of a Bengaluru-based unicorn. They told him that they just though they were getting a good deal at a discounted price. They even sold off some of their SIPs and even their Zomato shares. When many HNIs buy unlisted stocks before a company's IPO, they drive up the stock price. But once the pool of these HNI buyers dries up, the bubble bursts.

It is the theory of greater fools and it played out during Swiggy's IPO when  brokers pitched Swiggy shares as a piece of India’s hottest food-delivery and oldest quick-commerce giant, that too at a discount.

But a discount to what?

Because Swiggy’s market capitalisation is right now stands at under $9 billion as compared to its listing valuation of $13 billion. 

So what happens to HNIs like the unicorn VP who bought Swiggy shares before its IPO?

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.

In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from The Ken newsroom.

We’ll talk about the latest development in the Byjus story; how Reliance’s Campa is taking on the Coke-Pepsi duopoly; and finally, the battle between YouTube and streaming companies to be the next television.

Stay tuned.

Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode:
The latest edition of Ed Set Go
Pepsi’s biggest bottler is pouring more cola to fight Reliance’s Campa

Two by Two

This year the JSW MG Windsor became the highest selling electric car in India. It recently even managed to outperform Tata’s most popular offerings like the Nexon and Punch EV. It recorded total sales of over 10,000 units in a single quarter, beating all the models from Tata, Mahindra, and Hyundai.

The obvious question here is – what did MG do differently? And the answer is simple – by doing for EVs what Reliance did for cell phones in the early 2000s. 

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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.

Over the past few years, public universities here in India have been stuck in a rather difficult position. For decades, they were almost entirely dependent on state funding to keep the lights on.

But now the state funding has steadily been drying up. So now, they have no choice but to fend for themselves. But legacy institutes like IIT Bombay, IIT Madras and IIT Delhi have found a workaround. 

They are all taking a page out of the Ivy league playbook and setting up their own endowment funds. In this episode we delve into what that means and why it isn't as easy as it may sound.

Stay tuned.

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.

Up until recently, for most enterprises the default choice ended up being ChatGPT maker Open AI's models. That was mainly since for a long time there were no serious alternatives. 

Then, in came Deepseek R1. It proved that other models could compete and even win against OpenAi, that too at a fraction of its price. So now its the one that’s nudging enterprises to think twice before paying OpenAi for its services. 

And as a byproduct of that, over the last few months, the entire AI ecosystem has been moving from the one size fits all approach to picking the best tools for the job. Basically that means getting multiple models to work together. 

There is a huge opportunity here. Not for consumer-AI startups that were once dominating funding charts, but instead for LLMops businesses. These are companies that glue together large language models or LLMs and optimise hardware and software to speed up computation processes. In the near future, these companies could potentially grow faster than ever before. 

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.

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.

*This episode was first published on September 30, 2024

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 we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from around the world. 

We’ll talk about US President Donald Trump’s trade war threat and what it means for India and why Meta is suddenly doubling down on its Indian market. Finally we will take you through some of our favourite offerings from The Ken’s newsroom this week. 

Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode:

Netradyne made a $1.3B business out of surveilling drivers. Now, it must focus on driverless cars
Nutgraf: Here's how the Swiggy, Zomato monopoly could crack 

Two by Two: Airtel fights spammers. And Truecaller's business model.