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.

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DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "favourite murder mystery."

Snigdha: We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson
Rahel: Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene (The Phantom of Venice)
Devansh: Blood on the Tracks by Shūzō Oshimi
Venkat: Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya, 2019 (movie)
Vaidehi: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Rohith: Jane Jaan, 2023 (movie)
Ashish: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Hari: Dial M for Murder

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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? 

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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This episode was originally published on July 16

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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. 

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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.

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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 online

And 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.

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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.

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DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "best opening lines in a book or a film."

Nicholas: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Story he refers to: The Most Memorable Annual Pig Parade of Kharagpur
Rahel: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 
Prithu: The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Avinash: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ruhi: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K Rowling
Brady: Rounders (film, 1998)
Sayan: The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R Tolkien
Sameer: Gangs of Wasseypur (film, 2012)
Sumit: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Rohin: The Body by Stephen King
Snigdha: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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 murder mystery."