Daybreak

ITC's stock had been lagging for years. Many institutional investors stayed away from ITC because the company's shares are considered sin stocks.  The company, meanwhile, has avoided acknowledging the importance of cigarettes, its mainstay business, in its communications. But over the last year, the ITC stock has made a dramatic comeback. Suddenly, investors can't get enough of the company. What c...

The fourth draft of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is all set to be presented in the Parliament during the ongoing Budget session.  While it makes a strong case for creating laws to prevent the personal information of citizens from being harvested and exploited, the Bill is playing blind to two Important factors.  This in turn could end up creating a crony-capitalist economy where an in...

The introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s was one of the most significant events in the history of human society. But it still left the burden of birth control largely on women. Now, however, things are changing. The demand for male contraceptives is on the rise. But why have large pharmaceutical companies not paid enough attention to the research on male contraceptives for all these...

CP Plus, a CCTV camera brand, procures 80% of its supplies for its parent company Aditya Infotech Ltd (AIL) from the Chinese security-equipment manufacturer Dahua Technology.    Dahua and Hikvision, another Chinese surveillance-tech firm, are facing sanctions in the UK, US, Australia, and other countries, for their connection to the Chinese government. But in India’s growing CCTV market, which is...

In 2015, the current government set an ambitious target. It said we would have 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022 and 40% of it would come from rooftop solars or RTS. Back then, the country’s solar capacity was just 3.7 GW.    But as of October 2022, this capacity rose to only a little over 60 GW.  The main reason for this is the slow adoption of RTS. High transaction costs and lack of data about th...

Years ago, a tug of war began between tech companies including OTT platforms and telecom companies. Telecom and internet service providers believe that content and tech companies should pay them for disproportionate traffic. But tech and content companies argue that this would violate the principles of net neutrality. The debate has now reached India and telecom regulator TRAI is expected releasin...

Hotstar has remained the undisputed OTT leader in India boasting of half of India's 90 million paid OTT subscribers. A part of this success has come via the IPL streaming rights and from bundling with telecom and DTH service providers like Jio and Airtel.  But last year, Jio's Viacom 18 won the digital streaming rights of IPL, the largest cricket tournament in the world. Not just that Reliance's J...

From February 26, the Union Health Ministry will organise a two-day 'Chintan Shivir'  to explore ways to build trust on Indian drugs, cosmetics and medical devices. Despite being called 'the pharmacy of the world,' time and again, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has received criticism for substandard quality. The most recent such incident was when the deaths of children in Gambia and Uzbekistan...

With its phenomenal success, UPI has changed the way Indians interact with money. Now, the NPCI along with other fintech platforms are making efforts to launch UPI for international use. But the government needs to ensure UPI remains secure and reliable as it expands beyond the country's borders. Note: In the previous version of this episode, the host mistakenly referred to NPCI as NCPI. The error...

A few days ago, Zomato announced that it was withdrawing its services from 225 cities in India on account of "not so encouraging" performance. Last week, the food tech giant also reported its financial results for the last quarter of 2022. It saw its losses soar 5X to nearly 350 crore rupees. The volume of orders also declined during this period. But in these numbers there also lies hidden a glimm...

With increased competition within the country, the over-hundred years old Ayurvedic brand, Dabur, is looking to acquire and expand. It wants to change its story. Just last year in October, it acquired a 51% stake in Badshah Masala, one of the country's leading spices companies. But why does the world leader of Ayurveda brands need to reinvent itself? Tune in.

Whether it is to decide where to eat or what to buy, online reviews play important role. But fake reviews are turning out to be quite a menace. To bring them under control, the Indian government released a set of guidelines for e-commerce platforms. But they forgot to mention an important point. Tune in to find out.

Lately, Indians have been spending increased amounts of money on travelling to foreign countries. In the month of November last year, Indian travellers spent 1 billion dollars abroad.  The government and even regulator RBI took notice of the new trend. And now, in the Union Budget 2023, a new tax has been added to overseas spending through the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LTS).

Britannia's market share has consistently been inching up over the last decade or so. And its shares have doubled in value in the past five years.  Apart from biscuits, the company also wants to crack the dairy business. But in the year ended March 2022, the biscuit giant’s revenue was nearly $1.7 billion and out of it only $60 million came from dairy.  Despite this, the biscuit giant has grand pl...

With a dipping market share and no leader in India, many in the industry say Google Pay is losing its agility in the country.   While the reasons range from slow roll-out of new features to overlooking merchants, one has played a big role in Google Pay's current position.   And it has a lot to do with the relationship it shares with its banking partners.   Tune in

Even with comparatively higher tax rates the old tax regime has remained popular amongst Indian taxpayers.   The government, in the new budget, announced changes to incentivise the new  regime.   However, what will suit taxpayers still depends a lot on whether they find the changes attractive enough.    Tune in.

In the last three quarters, the revenues of India's largest telco have been seeing a steady slowdown.  A Rajasthan government's free-smartphones-for-women project came along just in time and won Reliance Jio managed to bag 60% of the contract value. But now Jio is waiting, fingers crossed, for the new budget with reports of the government shelving the project. If the project does come through, wha...

From moment Nykaa went public on the stock exchanges in 2021, it became an investors’ favourite. Its stock had listed at an 80% premium to its issue price of Rs 2,001 per share on the BSE. Its parent company FSN e-Commerce Ventures hit a valuation of 1 lakh crore rupees. And founder Falguni Nayar’s net worth tripled and turned her into a billionaire.   But lately, things have not been going so wel...

BharOS is being launched at a time when the tech giant Google is under the government's scrutiny for adopting anti-competitive practices as the market leader in India. But this is not the first time India is trying to develop an indigenous operating system, both for mobile and computer devices.  The failure of the OS projects in the past may hold some important lessons for anyone making a future a...

The edtech industry in India is facing a host of challenges from all directions, from a decline in funding to the emergence of formidable competition. One that stands out, however, is the allegation of mis-selling and fraudulent loans. According to the Advertising Standards Council of India, 33% of the complaints filed with it in FY21-22 were related to the education sector.  And one of the reason...

Despite winning the 'pharmacy of the world,' two out of five cancer patients in India have to borrow money and sell their assets to get treatment.  The price of many innovative patented oncology drugs in India are as high as in developed countries making them inaccessible for a large section of patients. Where are Indian cancer patients turning to for cheaper cancer medicines? Tune in to find out.

Unclaimed funds at the government-run Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) are  likely to have risen to Rs 50,000 crore ($6 billion) by now.  But for an average investor, the settlement process is almost designed to discourage investors from claiming what's theirs. Now, after the Supreme Court took notice post the filing of a petition, the IEPF Authority has asked all stakeholders for sug...

For Mahindra Finance, the RBI directive against it couldn't have come at a worse time.  The rural financier had barely recovered from the effects of the lockdown since it had higher bad loans than its rivals. Add to that the dent on its reputation. How did the NBFC deal with the RBI's restriction on using third party agents for repossession?  Tune in to find out.

With the funding crunch and slow growth, edtechs like Unacademy and Vedantu are giving teachers monthly targets to sell online courses to students. Not meeting sales targets is reason enough for edtechs to fire teachers as part of cost-cutting exercises.  Tune in to find out how teachers are being forced to become the new sales force in some edtech companies.

In May 2020, McDonald's decided to launch the McSpicy Fried Chicken in the southern states of India where majority of the population consumes meat. Two year later, the shares of McDonald’s India franchisee, Westlife Foodworld, shot up by 40%. Tune in to find out how fried chicken was one of the key drivers behind the fast-food chain becoming a the top-choice among public-market investors.