Daybreak

Lenders are flouting every rule in their books to cater to the rising gold-loan demand.  Thanks to the collusion between lenders and borrowers at some of the branches, one in ten gold loans every month is sanctioned through malpractices—like tweaking weight and misreporting purity of gold, said two industry executives. In this episode, we delve into the murky world of gold loans and what often goe...

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 deduct the money...

The pandemic disrupted everyone's travel plans. But now, everyone is travelling with a vengeance and it's really overloading the systems.  With visa appointment slots hard to come by, travel agents have turned securing visa dates into a profitable business. Meanwhile, embassies and consulates are trying hard to limit the wait list.  And at the center of this anxiety-inducing maze is one company ca...

What really makes UPI successful? The number of transactions. In FY2024, for example, more than 130 billion transactions were carried out through UPI. But it's not enough. UPI needs more and more to the point where now it has become a transaction-hungry monster. And NPCI National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), government body that runs UPI has to constantly come up with ways to feed this ev...

Many thought the fall of WeWork – as quick and public as it was – was the final nail in the coffin for the fledgling coworking space business.  But a few years later, the pandemic is over and people are finally making their way back to their workplaces.  The end of work from home has given the coworking space a new lease on life and one Delhi-based startup in particular is really standing out. Awf...

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 international player or...

Tech platforms like Google, Meta, or even e-marketplaces such as Olx are increasingly becoming hotbeds of online advertising scams in India. People have been losing anything from a few thousands to even a few crore rupees to cyber crime syndicates who have  proficient, tech-savvy members. The amount of money consumers have reported losing to fraud that originated on social-media platforms has skyr...

In Mumbai last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India was entering the bid to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2036. Yup, bidding happens more than a decade before the actual event. Because that’s how long it takes to prep a city for the Olympics. At the same event, PM Modi said hosting the games India is the “age-old dream and aspiration of 140 crore Indians”. You see, the presti...

For many in the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), this year’s Union Budget announcement was a damp squib. On 23 July, several officials from the ticketing-and-catering arm of Indian Railways waited for over an hour, with the collective hope that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman would quash the discounts on UPI payments.  The reason behind their discontent is that the disc...

Fertility rates in India are not looking good. In fact, it has fallen below the necessary replacement fertility level, which is basically the total fertility rate at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next, without migration.  So to nip the issue in the bud, state governments are now stepping in to offer what private equity-backed fertility centres would otherwis...

Every year, nearly three lakh students flock to the city of Kota in Rajasthan, the coaching capital of the country. Almost half of them enroll themselves at Allen Career Institute, a 36 year-old pioneering coaching centre that was last valued at over 1 billion dollars. Lately, Kota’s reputation has been under question because of the frequent student suicides. This has obviously affected the number...

The search for an ideal workplace is a bit like finding El Dorado — that land of endless wealth and opportunities. Like El Dorado, 'the ideal workplace' also, well, seems like a myth. But that doesn't stop people from striving to find one.  This is a conversation that goes right back to the birth of the modern corporation. From the civil rights movement in the US, to the evolution of trade unions...

From September 2, IDFC Bank’s credit card customers will only have to pay 2% of the total bill amount every month instead of the earlier 5%. The bank has reduced the minimum amount due (MAD). Even Axis Bank did this last year in November. This means for customers, there are lesser chances of being tagged as a defaulters which hurts their credit score.  Why are banks doing this? Two bankers told Th...

The last nine years have been quite a wild ride for Cars24. I t has gone from being a consumer-to-business auction platform for dealers to buy used cars, to becoming a consumer-to-consumer marketplace for used cars.  It has seen its fair share of highs and lows along the way. Off late, once again, the business has been floundering. But Cars24 is dealing with it by undergoing its most intense and u...

Last year, the central bank banned Razorpay and a bunch of its competitors, like PayTM, Cashfree and PayU, from onboarding new merchants until they were able to secure a payment aggregator license. Till then, they all had in principal approvals for the license. But the RBI stepped in and said they had to stop onboarding merchants until they actually got the license.  It was only in December that t...

Jupiter, the Mumbai based neobank, went from a $70 million valuation in 2019 to a $700 million valuation in just two years. Venture capitalists, along with fintech founders, continue to believe in neobanks. A report by Statista predicts that the transaction value across neobanks in India is will cross $150 Bn by 2027. Jupiter, a leader in the space, quadrupled its user base to two million in just...

"I am willing to take the risk and give this drug a shot, for I've tried and tested almost all anti-obesity means myself—and even failed at some. As a first step, I am banking on other Ozempic users’ experience." Meet Alifiya Khan, a health and education reporter at The Ken. Last month, she published a story on Ozempic, the 'miracle' weight-loss drug, and how easy it is to procure despite not bein...

A few days ago, an X user shared a screenshot of Google Maps depicting how it would be faster to walk than drive from a particular place to another in Bengaluru. After all, the city is best known for two things: great weather and terrible traffic. The so-called Silcon Valley of India is the sixth slowest city in the world! How is it then that no one has come up with some innovative tech-based solu...

Microschools are basically a modern twist on the concept of a one-room school house. So smaller classes, student-led learning, a flexible curriculum, the works. So for instance,  if traditional schools teach the photosynthesis phenomenon through textbook readings, a microschool would nudge students to conduct interactive experiments with plants and light. In most of these schools, there’s no fixed...

Craving a low-cal, zero-sugar, guilt free tub of ice cream? Well then, Hocco isn't for you. The ice cream brand, founded by Havmor scion Ankit Chona, takes great pride in making and selling ice cream the old fashioned way. It's a brave choice considering low-cal ice cream is really having its moment. VCs seem to believe that ice cream is a dish best served cold...and sugar free.  But Chona is stic...

On Friday this week, we’re going to see one of the largest IPOs of 2024 by a new-economy company. The Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola Electric is all set to make its debut in the stock market. The IPO which has been in the works for sometime is expected to value the company at a little over $4 billion. Aggarwal is due to sell almost 38 million shares as part of the offer for sale which is nearly 20% lowe...

The global astrology market today is worth nearly $13 billion. In India alone, the online astrology market is estimated around $100 million and is expected to grow ten times in the next five years or so.  But this isn’t astrology as we’ve known it. In the last few years, astrology has had a facelift and it’s largely thanks to Gen Z. They have rediscovered it and turned it into a full blown cultura...

Once valued at $22 billion, Byju's, is undergoing insolvency proceedings initiated by the National Company Law Tribunal. This is over a $19 million payment default to the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Byju’s could now see a potential buyout or liquidation. It gets worse. A couple of days ago, one of the largest foreign investors in India, the Qatar Investment Authority, requested the Karn...

Healthify saw immense success during the pandemic. Its revenues more than doubled in FY 2022. And it adds up when you think about it. With millions of people stuck at home and gyms shut, Healthify’s virtual fitness and nutrition plans were pretty ideal.  But once gyms reopened, home workouts didn’t cut it anymore. And unfortunately, Healthify really bore the brunt of it. The following year, revenu...

In 2015, Bira 19 introduced India to craft beer. In the process, the brand started the conversation around taste and quality. It very quickly blew up and became the cool new beer to drink at a bar or a party.  The craft beer brand also managed to become a hit among investors. It bagged $450 million in funding from the likes of Japanese beer and beverage company Kirin Holdings and venture capital g...