Daybreak

At the end of 2024, Indigo, India’s largest airline, was voted as the airline of the year by Centre for Aviation (CAPA) at the 2024 Global Aviation Awards for Excellence. And then just a couple of weeks later, the airline was in for a rude shock when a survey by a German consumer-rights group ranked it among the worst 10 airlines in the world. Indigo, of course, refuted the findings of the survey...

The sexual wellness industry has long been shrouded in taboo. But now, thanks to quick commerce, getting a stamina supplement or a massage wand has become as effortless as ordering a packet of milk. In the process, the long standing dominance of the old guard – the likes of Durex, Manforce and Score – has also been challenged. That's because these quick commerce platforms shone a light on the many...

For an Indian university, a spot on the QS Rankings list could change everything. It would mean they belonged to the same elite club as the Cambridges and Oxfords of the world. But to nab that spot, universities are stopping at nothing — from admitting more foreign students, to paying top dollar to hire consultants and purchasing seats at conferences. But in the process some fear these universitie...

Last month though, things went crazy in Delhi NCR's real estate market. A DLF penthouse property in Gurgaon, a little over 16,000 square feet in size, sold for a mind-blogging Rs 190 crores. Just the stamp duty was Rs 13 crores, apparently.   What really shocked the internet though was the per-square-foot price—Rs 180,000. When The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan first came across it, he immediat...

Today’s episode dives into a fascinating book called Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence , by Shrayana Bhattacharya, an economist with the World Bank’s Social Protection and Labour unit for South Asia. In this groundbreaking work, Shrayana unpacks the economic and social realities of Indian women through the stories of ten individu...

2024 was a defining year for Saregama, one of India’s oldest music labels.  This is a company that has been around for well over a century. For a long time now, it has been associated with the kind of music your parents and grandparents grew up listening to – the classics, evergreen Bollywood numbers, Ghazals, Carnatic music…you get the drift.   But this year, something changed. Saregama made it c...

*This episode was originally published on September 24, 2024 Half of the world’s electric cars are on China’s roads, thanks to a wave of smart incentives for both consumers and manufacturers, such as tax breaks and purchase subsidies. The payoff is tangible: the smog that once shrouded some major cities has lifted, and road noise has dropped significantly. But it brought unexpected costs and chall...

Remember that time in 2022 when India’s top digital payments companies Phonepe, Paytm*, and Bharatpe were in a no-holds-barred turf war? Looking back, it seemed like there was news almost every other day about some tiff between the three market leaders. In fact, former managing director of Bharatpe, Ashneer Grover, has spoken on record about “street fights” between companies’ employees over QR cod...

As 2024 draws to a close, Daybreak hosts Snigdha and Rahel look back at some of their biggest hits and misses this year. Check out the episodes that made it to their round up. Hits — Rahel's choice: Successful Women are Freezing Their Eggs and That's on men Snigdha's choice: Why India's Biggest Employer of Female Gig Workers Refuses to listen to its own workforce Audience choice: What do women rea...

The real-estate market of Delhi-NCR is an anomaly. The Ken spoke to a bunch of potential homebuyers who are looking for premium apartments with budgets of up to 2.5 crore rupees.  Real-estate experts are telling them to give up on their dreams. Lately, the national capital has been facing an acute supply crunch of new housing projects, especially in the mid-premium segment (80 lakh to 2 crore rupe...

No one was surprised by Vishal Mega Mart’s stellar market debut last week. After all, institutional and retail investors oversubscribed 27X to the Rs 8,000 crore IPO. So when it listed at a considerable premium, most people saw it coming.  But, how did the 23-year-old value retailer get to this point?  Well, in the last few years, Vishal, which has 70 per cent of its stores in tier 2 and smaller c...

For most Indians, a cup of good chai is a comfort that’s accessible. Coffee chains, on the other hand, are mostly premium. And it all adds up when one considers the fact that Indians consume 20 cups of tea for every cup of coffee. But we live in a time when opulence and luxury makes us go google eyed. In the Indian consumer market, premiumisation is no longer a choice. Even chai cafes chains don’t...

This isn't your usual Daybreak Friday episode.  Considering it's the end of the year, we thought we’d ask the reporters in our newsroom to talk to us about the stories they liked best. This week, we have DVLS Pranathi and Shristi Achar on the show. They share two of their favourite stories — First, Pranathi tells us about an unconventional new homegrown footwear company started by three former Pum...

Category managers have shifted from routine e-commerce roles to powerful decision-makers in quick commerce. They now manage the limited shelf space in dark stores and decide which products get visibility on platforms like Instamart, Zepto, and Blinkit.  Naturally, brands are aggressively courting them, with over 30,000 requests every month for just 150 slots. From hosting parties to taking them ou...

Back in 2016, the Internet and Mobile Association of India set up an all new club for what was then a very small cohort of digital leaders in corporate India. It was called the all-India Chief Digital Officer club.  Back then, there were only about five-six CDOs that were members. The point of the initiative was to give legitimacy to this new, emerging role. But soon enough, the initiative fizzled...

Back in 1949, XLRI introduced India to management studies.  Since then, it has managed to become one of the most sought after B-schools in the country. For decades, it was like the dependable elder statesman of Indian management education.  But now, XLRI wants to be anything but just another business school. In the last two decades, there has been an explosion of MBA seats across the country.  Now...

India can't get enough of surveillance technology. Indian startups, meanwhile, are making the most of this trend by securing high visibility government contracts. But while these can boost a startup's profile, government projects are unpredictable and often difficult for smaller startups to win. As a result, there is a shift underway — private clients are becoming increasingly crucial for profitab...

The golden age of the Indian shopping mall is over. There are at least 400 malls across the country. But a growing proportion of them are either dead or on life support. A report by real estate consultant firm Knight Frank found that the number of ghost malls in the country rose from 57 in 2022 to 64 in 2023. That’s about 1 in almost six malls. The report estimates that between 2022 and 2023, the...

For a while now, some of the biggest players in India’s third-party logistics industry have been riding on the success of e-commerce unicorn Meesho. As of 2023, it accounted for over half of the 2.5 billion shipments that were being handled by third-party logistics players. Companies like Delhivery and Ecom Express happily rose to the occasion and partnered with Meesho to handle all its order deli...

A couple years ago the biggest challenge for an organic food brand was convincing consumers that their products were worth the premium they were paying for them. It was naturally a gargantuan task, particularly in a price sensitive market like India.  But for the brands that stood their ground, believing that the Indian market would one day come around to organic eating, well, their moment has fin...

It really isn’t a great time to be a smartwatch brand in India. Pun intended. You see, the market for smartwatches in India has gone from seeing dizzying highs to depressing lows, all within the span of one year.  Just last year in September, at least 17 million people had placed orders for smartwatches across the country. Everyone seemed to want to get their hands on one. And the two brands that...

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 r...

This isn't your usual Daybreak Friday episode. Considering it's the end of the year, we thought we’d ask the reporters in our newsroom to talk to us about the stories they liked best. This week, we have Rounak Kumar Gunjan and Aakriti Bhalla on the show. They share two of their favourite stories — The first is a fascinating story by Rounak about how a tiny discount caused an uproar inside IRCTC or...

It has been about four months since Minutes, Flipkart's all new quick-commerce service was launched in Bangalore. But Flipkart isn’t doing e-commerce the old fashioned way. It’s not taking on the likes of Blinkit or Swiggy Instamart directly by promising speedy grocery deliveries. Instead, its big focus is electronics.  It is a space that quick-commerce giants like Blinkit, Swiggy and Zepto – have...

There’s a running joke at Hindustan Unilever's Mumbai Headquarters. If a new hire is assigned to the ice cream division, it’s immediately clear that they aren’t in the company’s inner circle. But if you’re handed Surf Excel, Brooke Brond, or Glow & Lovely, it means you are in the big leagues. Right now, that pecking order is clearer than ever. Just last month, the FMCG giant went ahead and dec...