Daybreak

India is building data centres at unprecedented speed to support cloud services, AI, and digital growth. At the same time, cities across the country are struggling with water shortages and repeated contamination of drinking-water supplies.  A new United Nations report describes this condition as water bankruptcy. It is the stage where water systems continue to function, but only by drawing down re...

Sam Altman called ads a "last resort" in late 2024. That day has arrived. OpenAI just announced ChatGPT is running ads—personalised ones based on your conversations. The company spent $8 billion in 2025 alone with zero profit, and an essay predicted they'll burn through cash by 2027. Meanwhile, Google's Gemini is betting on staying ad-free, preserving user trust while ChatGPT strains it. Host Rach...

India has become one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, powered by scale, assembly lines, and global contracts. But much of the design, components, and technology still sit elsewhere. In this episode, we look at why the government is now backing electronics components, what India’s EMS firms built first, and what they postponed. As India pushes deeper into the supply chain, the ques...

For over a decade, Indian startups have chosen to be incorporated in Delaware and Singapore when raising venture capital. Now India wants to change that with Gift City—a financial enclave designed to compete globally. But can it? We explore why founders still choose Delaware's speed and legal certainty, what Gift City offers to funds but not startups, and the structural gaps that need fixing. Tune...

AI is learning healthcare from systems that are stretched and uneven. In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rachel Varghese discuss what tools like ChatGPT Health and Claude for Healthcare could mean in India. We talk about how people already use AI to understand symptoms and reports, how hospitals deal with data and paperwork, and how bias and privacy shape these tools. Tune in. Daybreak is p...

India’s soda shelves have changed almost overnight. Coke and Pepsi now sell zero-sugar versions of their drinks at prices as low as 10 rupees. The move came after Reliance launched Campa Cola with its own budget zero-sugar option. Now, they are taking over in big cities and small towns alike. But what looks like a health trend is really a business strategy.    What is really inside those bottles?...

Four months after India's nationwide ban on online gambling ads, Meta platforms were still running them—140 in December alone.  A Reuters investigation into leaked internal documents reveals this isn't an oversight. Meta made specific calculations about how much enforcement it could afford, and governments worldwide are hitting the same wall.  From Malaysia to the Philippines, removal requests pil...

Investing extra money can be confusing, no matter how big or small the amount. What works for someone with Rs 1 crore is very different from what suits someone with Rs 1 lakh or Rs 10 lakh. Experts say everyone should first take care of basic needs before investing. There are many simple, logical, and even unconventional ways to invest. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, I...

India's Fund of Funds for Startups 1.0 is winding down this March—but it's falling short of its goals. Of the ₹10,000 crore mandate, only ₹6,500 crore has been disbursed, and just ₹3,200 crore has actually reached startups. Meanwhile, FFS 2.0 remains stuck in limbo with no guidelines released yet. Despite catalyzing India's startup boom—from 3,000 startups in 2016 to over 200,000 today—the program...

In this episode we fill you in on four standout stories from the past week. First, a quick look at how the Venezuela crisis is benefiting Reliance and ONGC; Next, why the quick fashion promise stands on shaky ground; Third, how AI has been filling up Indian shopping carts; And finally, why the discourse about Grok AI is starting to sound a little lopsided. Tune in. Read The Ken's story on quick fa...

10-minute delivery has quickly gone from novelty to expectation. In this episode, through conversations with delivery workers and the gig workers’ union leader, host Snigdha Sharma argues how the 10-minute delivery model intensifies existing problems in gig work. Is it is a promise we really need to be kept for us? Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscribe...

Apollo 24/7 has bled money for five years. But its loyalty program, Apollo Circle, might be the cure. For 299 rupees yearly, members get free teleconsultations, priority access, and discounts—locking them into Apollo's ecosystem of hospitals, pharmacies, and diagnostics. The strategy is working: average orders doubled, losses shrank, and Apollo Health Co turned profitable. Now the company wants Ci...

India wants to generate 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047. As of now, it produces less than 9 GW. For decades, nuclear energy in India was built, owned, and run only by the state. That is now changing. In December, Parliament passed the Shanti Bill, opening the sector to private players. And an American nuclear company, Holtec International, wants to build 200 small modular reactors across India, mo...

India's largest airline crisis made headlines for weeks. Last month, Indigo  cancelled nearly 4,000 flights over 10 days, forcing the government to cut 10% of its schedules until March.  The culprit? A severe pilot shortage that the airline had two years to prepare for. While Air India doubled its pilot strength ahead of new flight duty rules, Indigo ended up with fewer pilots than before. The air...

This episode revisits one of The Ken's most consequential stories from 2025. When journalist Anand Kalyanaramn started investigating unusual patterns in India's options market, he uncovered alleged manipulation on a massive scale. Someone was controlling market movements to guarantee profits—making billions while regular traders lost everything. SEBI identified Jane Street as the culprit; and the...

Teaching at India’s public universities no longer offers the certainty it once did. Permanent jobs have become scarce, while short term contracts have quietly filled the gap. Many teachers are now hired semester by semester, paid per lecture, and required to reapply for their jobs again and again. This shift has reshaped academic careers and changed how universities function day to day. What cause...

Property prices across Indian cities have gone through the roof, up by nearly 30% in the last two years. This along with ever increasing rent and general cost of living has made planning for the future quite challenging for those in their 20s and 30s.  So has the idea of home ownership changed among the younger generations, like in many Western countries where more and more people are choosing to...

This episode is a look back at four Daybreak, The Ken stories that stayed with us in 2025. After three years of making the show, a few episodes each year stand out because they captured something shifting beneath the surface. These four did exactly that. Host and producer Snigdha Sharma revisits a conversation feat. Waterfield Advisor's Soumya Rajan about why even India’s wealthiest women still fi...

Private equity is reshaping India’s schools. A relaxed New Education Policy and rising demand for international curricula have opened the doors for global operators to buy up chains across the country. The promise is scale, better infrastructure, and tighter governance. But the reality looks a little different—lean budgets, shrinking salary hikes, and a growing focus on cost-cutting. And the fallo...

AI is changing how people learn languages and India is where the shift is showing up first. Duolingo has scale here but very little conversion. At the same time AI tools now offer practice, feedback, and even conversation for free, while Indian platforms focus on jobs, exams, and real outcomes.  In this episode, we look at how language learning is being reshaped in India, why translation is no lon...

From the very public Ambani family feud to the private struggles of the Raymond family, the transfer of wealth and power has often been messy. With over 850,000 millionaires in India, and many of them looking to transition their wealth in the next decade, there's a growing, yet largely unaddressed market for a specific type of expert: the succession coach. Part mediator, part therapist, part strat...

In this episode, we bring you two reported stories from The Ken's newsroom that stayed with us this year. The first, reported by Nuha Bubere, looks at Flipkart at a moment of pressure and at how its CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy is running the company as competition intensifies and expectations remain high. In the second, Atul Krishna tells us about India’s decision to allow foreign universities to set...

Buried deep in Amazon's app is a partnership with Orange Health Labs for at-home diagnostics—it's third healthcare experiment in India after pharmacy and telemedicine. The strategy? Target existing customers with zero advertising spend, keeping the bet low-risk while competitors like Bigbasket and Blinkit capture other categories. With its U.S. healthcare playbook built on insurance infrastructure...

Traditional case competitions are boring theater—companies toss out fake problems, students present cookie-cutter solutions nobody uses. The Ken flipped the script. It revealed something interesting: no company is safe anymore. Students attacked more than a 100 incumbents—from McKinsey to temple economies—and built working prototypes showing exactly how they'd do it. The insight? AI hasn't just lo...

The consumer-robotics graveyard is littered with well-funded American startups. Moxie, Jibo, Anki—all raised millions, then collapsed under cloud costs and thin margins. Enter Miko, a Mumbai company selling AI companions to American kids. With Indian manufacturing cutting costs to one-fifth of US production and subscriptions driving recurring revenue, Miko has advantages its rivals never had. Yet...