Business Daily

Today - from a teenage DIY invention, to US national TV, to changing legislation, and now global sales. What started as a way to protect a friend who’d been drugged at a college bar became a product made from an old hair scrunchie and her mum’s stockings. Shirah Benarde tells us how she set up NightCap, a business that’s grown from a bedroom prototype, to securing investment on the Shark Tank show...

Today, we’re looking at a wooden house revolution that's happening in Europe. Concrete’s carbon footprint is turning architects and construction companies towards trees. In Portugal, a rush of new residents to the sparsely populated rural areas – and a lack of builders – is driving the flat-pack and modular wooden house market. Many of these rural plots often have a ruined, abandoned house on them...

The use of electronic travel authorisations or ETAs is growing worldwide. Dozens of countries have brought them in, or are bringing them in this year, but many passengers are forgetting to complete them - and missing flights. It is costing customers and business big money to re-book. We hear the arguments for and against the new digital border checks and how to navigate the changes. If you'd like...

India is home to more than a billion people. For decades, many families lived with uncertainty around food, water and work. Even as incomes rise and the economy grows, for many people the fear of not having enough remains. It's called 'scarcity mindset'. We find out how it impacts daily lives. If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.ukPresented and pr...

Fraudsters are increasingly using deepfake videos of CEOs and other company executives to trick firms out of millions of dollars. And with the evolution of AI, these videos are becoming ever-more sophisticated and convincing. We speak to two CEOs who have been deepfaked: the head of the Bombay stock exchange and the boss of password security company LastPass. And we hear how criminals used deepfak...

We meet Melanie Perkins, the CEO and co-founder of graphic design platform Canva, which has hundreds of millions of users and a valuation of nearly $40 billion. Despite her immense wealth, Melanie Perkins says the label “billionaire” has never felt quite right. Instead, she plans to give away most of her fortune during her lifetime. She also tells us why she believes young people should be educate...

In just a few months, the country has signed or advanced several major trade deals with other nations. Is it a reflection of the growing size of the Indian economy - it is on course to become the third largest in the world - or it is because of a global economic realignment due to US President Donald Trump's tariff policies? And is India ready to open its markets to foreign competition, or is ther...

We’re in France, where traditional eateries, bistros, and brasseries, once a huge part of the economy, as well as the culture of the country, are disappearing fast. A few years ago, if you drove through France, you’d come across dozens of little restaurants. Now, in many small towns, you’ll only find a boulangerie and a takeaway. Restaurants serving traditional French food like steak and chips or...

We’re in Toronto in Canada, North America's second-biggest financial centre after New York, where so-called ethical investing has become big business, with many investors choosing funds they believe are better for people and the planet. But amid growing concerns about misleading environmental claims, it can be hard to know what’s genuinely ethical and what’s just clever marketing. We explore how p...

We go right to the cutting edge of food production and glimpse into the future of farming. Farmers are increasingly using artificial intelligence-powered machines to try to maximise their crops and reduce their spiralling costs. We speak to farmers, those behind the AI systems, and hear concerns about the growing use of automation in agriculture. If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our em...

Jennifer Riria grew up in a rural village in Kenya, juggled motherhood and university studies in her late teens, and ended up running one of the biggest microfinance institutions for women in Africa, which allows women to access loans for their businesses. The entrepreneur pioneered giving small loans to women at a time when they were not allowed to get finance. We hear about her story in life and...

Six weeks after the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela appears to be shifting its economic strategy. The government is reopening its crucial oil industry to foreign investment and redirecting oil exports back toward the United States. Presenter Rahul Tandon is joined by producer Gideon Long, who spent five years reporting from Venezuela, to examine the changes introduced since Maduro’s...

Biohackers say they're making their bodies and brains run better by hacking their biology. And it's not just kitchen counter experimentation anymore. There's now an entire industry promising to optimise you with supplements, treatments and increasingly strange gadgets. Are these expensive, unproven “hacks” worth the investment? To get in touch with the team, send an email to businessdaily@bbc.co.u...

Sri Lanka: a country long loved and marketed as a tropical paradise is reeling after Cyclone Ditwah, which hit the island nation last November. The storm left a third of the island in ruins. Hundreds of lives were lost, homes were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. The country's President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has called it the country's worst-ever economic disaster....

Poland’s economy is expected to be the fastest-growing in Europe this year according to the European Union, with the spending power of its average worker on course to overtake that of Japan. So how, three and a half decades after the fall of communism, has it become a case study of capitalism? We hear from some of the country's biggest companies on that increased consumer power, their ambitions to...

In our first edition of Meet the Founders, we meet Luana Lopes Lara, creator of Kalshi, a prediction markets startup that allows users to trade on the outcome of real-world events - from inflation and interest rates to elections and geopolitics. Kalshi drew attention for showing Zohran Mamdani as a favourite in the NYC mayoral race, as prediction markets gain traction as political barometers. But...

As Japanese people prepare to head to the polls, economic concerns are back at the centre of public life. We explore how inflation, wages, demographics and geopolitics are shaping expectations, and whether the country can finally move beyond the "lost decades".To get in touch with the team, send us an email to businessdaily@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Rahul Tandon Producer: David CannBusiness Daily is the...

The Spanish government has announced plans to legalise the status of half a million undocumented migrants. Many arrive with student or tourist visas but overstay and start working on the black market. Migration is a polarising issue in western Europe, so why is Spain keen to hurry up the process of regularisation? One reason is that Spain’s economy has been outstripping its European Union partners...

As governments cut back on how much they spend on global aid, the head of the Gates Foundation Mark Suzman speaks exclusively to Business Daily about how the world’s poorest are being affected. He tells us world governments “should be embarrassed” that the Foundation has overtaken them to become the largest financial backer of the WHO.When governments reduce their air spend, the organisation inevi...

It’s probably the world’s best-known coffee chain but just over a year ago, business wasn’t doing well. Sales had slipped, customers were drifting away and the buzz had gone. Newly-arrived CEO Brian Niccol was handed a tough task: stop the fall and make the coffee shops somewhere people wanted to return to. In an interview with our North America business correspondent Michelle Fleury, he explains...

From the deserts of Tunisia to the boardrooms of global tech giants, we meet Karim Beguir, the mathematician who turned two laptops and 2000 dollars into Africa’s biggest AI firm. We hear how his company, Instadeep, caught the attention of Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and how it helped to track dangerous new variants in the Covid pandemic using large language models. If you'd like to get in touch with...

We lift the curtain on how everyone from toothpaste brands to the United Nations is using science to influence your choices in ways you’re probably not aware of. Behavioural science has even made its way into TV drama. How does it work? And why is it so effective? If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.ukPresented and produced by Rowan BridgeBusiness...

Demand has been surging for copper around the world - from renewable energy projects, to AI data centres, to infrastructure networks. Production, however, has struggled to keep pace, pushing prices close to record highs in late 2025 and early 2026.As the value of the metal has risen, criminals have increasingly targeted copper for theft - stripping it from telephone cables, railway power lines and...

Country music is in the midst of a grand renaissance. The genre - whose popularity was previously confined to the American South - is now climbing the charts, grabbing the attention of Gen Z audiences, and changing the perception of what it means to be a country listener. Streaming of the genre in the US rose by nearly 110% in the five years to 2024. And it’s taking over markets all around the wor...

One of the world’s largest airline groups has told Business Daily that airspace closures, due to war zones, are now forcing substantial rerouting of flights. Lufthansa says the ban on using Russian and Ukrainian airspace is having a measurable cost impact on its long haul network, with typical detours of one to two hours. A recent Conflict Intensity index report shows that areas affected by armed...