Daybreak

Dec 02 2024 371 ep. 14 mins 102

Daybreak Podcast artwork

Business news is complex and overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be. Every day of the week, from Monday to Friday, Daybreak tells one business story that’s significant, simple and powerful. Hosted from The Ken’s newsroom by Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose, Daybreak relies on years of original reporting and analysis by some of India’s most experienced and talented business journalists.

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India set up a new body to fix medical education. It now needs to fix that body

Dec 02 2024 13 mins

Four years ago, India set up a new body to fix medical education. It was called the National Medical Commission (NMC) and it was meant to replace the Medical Council of India and bring reforms in this sector. The goal, at the time, was to bring some order to the chaos. But so far, it seems like the body has only been able to do the opposite. Between vacancies, a series of poor deci

Are banks done with India's credit card frenzy?

Dec 01 2024 9 mins

For the last five years, India’s new-found love for plastic has been pretty visible. More than 100 million credit cards had been issued by banks by Feb 2024.Banks, as we all know, are in a rush to sell more and more credit cards. To do this, they use a whole gamut of attractive offers. For example, free access to airport lounges became all the rage for the longest time. The footf

Why India's biggest employer of women gig workers refuses to listen to its own workforce

Nov 28 2024 28 mins

A decade ago, when platforms like Urban Company entered the scene, they were seen the beacon of hope for thousands of women like Selvi and Nisha, two beauticians based in in Bangalore—finally, an avenue that offered them the financial independence and support their families without the cost flexibility. Now, over one third of the platform's workers are female making it the larges

How regional jewellery brands are trying to beat Tanishq at its own game

Nov 27 2024 16 mins

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 in

Did someone just find the US$533 million that Byju’s lost?

Nov 26 2024 10 mins

Bloomberg recently published a damning report about Byju’s according to which Byju Raveendran, the edtech’s founder, allegedly tried to convince an American businessman to leave the country so he wouldn't have to testify in a federal court about the suspicious activities he saw while working for the edtech.However, William R Hailer, the businessman, filed a declaration in the U

Why Mamaearth is stuck with dead stock and mounting losses

Nov 25 2024 12 mins

In the June quarter of 2024, Honasa Consumer, the maker of Mamaearth, decided to launch this new project called Project Neev. The idea was to bring about a foundational change in the way the company operates, especially distribution.For context, Mamaearth hit the bourses in October last year when everyone else who had IPO plans had decided to hold them off for a bit. But Varun Alag

Are school-fee loans the next goldmine for Indian fintechs?

Nov 24 2024 13 mins

Regular CBSE schools just don’t cut it anymore for the aspirational middle class parents in India. But considering how the annual fees at most of these schools can range anywhere between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 25 lakh, sending a child to one of them is no joke. Almost 90 per cent of parents who take the step can’t afford to pay the full fees up front. In fact, for most, even paying h

The murky world of money mules and how they fuel India’s Rs 2,500 crore fraud economy

Nov 21 2024 29 mins

The world of cyber fraud has gotten even murkier thanks to a slick new tech service that is streamlining fraud for scammers and making them even harder to track down. This new concept is called ‘Mule-as-a-service’ or MaaS. It’s kind of like a plug-and-play fraud tech where service providers are able to deploy an army of mules on behalf of cybercriminals. These mules are peopl

How lenders like Navi resort to extreme borrower surveillance to keep their A game on

Nov 20 2024 17 mins

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

How do you get people to switch to electric cars? Take the subscription route

Nov 19 2024 12 mins

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