Daybreak

On Monday, Physics Wallah fired over 100 of its employees and also announced it was going to hire more than a thousand more in the coming months. India's only profitable edtech unicorn is on a relentless expansion spree. So much so that its investors want it to slow down. From establishing itself as the leader of NEET-JEE test preparation, Physics Wallah (PW) wants to dip its toes in a bunch of ot...

Varun Alagh, the CEO and co-founder the skincare company, Mamaearth, likes to think of his brand as an outlier. Just a day after Mamaearth’s parent company went public, on October 31, Alagh told The Economic Times that the company’s IPO was not going to meet the same fate as other new-age startups in the recent past.  The public market has been quite hostile lately and investors are especially ste...

More than 160 million people in five states will be deciding their political future this month in India. Out of them, two states, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, are set to go to poll today.  In any democracy, the run up to the elections is a very sensitive period where misinformation can spread like wildfire. Take what happened recently in Madhya Pradesh for example. A video of the BJP CM Shivra...

PVR INOX posted a blockbuster quarter with triple the revenue from a year ago. Nearly 50 million Indians flocked PVR INOX theaters in the September quarter. A huge part of it is of course thanks to this year's big releases like Barbie, Oppenheimer, Gadar 2, and not to forget, the record-breaking performance of Shahrukh Khan’s Jawan. Just last Sunday, Salman Khan’s much-awaited Diwali release Tiger...

Since last year, the edtech giant is facing the wrath of a group of creditors who had given it a $1.2 billion loan. They wanted it to immediately repay part of the loan. On Friday, a Delaware judge in the US concluded that the lenders had properly cited the default on loan when taking over control of a unit of Byju’s. Basically Byju’s lost the case.  What could’ve triggered this lack of confidence...

Last Friday Apple reported the sixth straight record quarterly revenue from iPhone sales in India. Its FY2023 revenue from the country now stands at almost $6 billion. In fact, analysts say that by the end of this year, especially with the festive season around, it is very close to hitting $10 billion. Apple’s share in India’s smartphone market is now estimated to have touched 6%. CEO Tim Cook whi...

It has taken Swiggy almost ten years and a whole lot of strategically planned moves to become the indispensable app that it is for us today. But decisive moment for the delivery giant came three years ago in 2020 with the pandemic. Swiggy’s core food delivery business took quite the hit . It had no choice but to adapt quickly and branch out. It decided to build on its delivery experience and launc...

If you’ve been watching the ICC Cricket World Cup, youve definitely seen the PhonePe one too many times. The payments giant paid Rs 150 crore to get these advertising rights. It is the biggest UPI payments company in the country with a 49% of the market share.   But why is a payments giant selling insurance and why health insurance to be specific? You see, as big as the PhonePe might be, and even...

Yesterday, November 2, 2023, was the final day of Mamaearth-parent Honasa Consumer's IPO. The digital-first D2C sailed through with the price band fixed at Rs 308-324 per share. With this, Mamaearth has become the first digital-first D2C company to take the public route. It is also the first unicorn company to do so it the last 18 months. From 2020 to 2022, Honasa saw its revenues double every yea...

Vivo, the Chinese smartphone maker, was in the news earlier this month for arrests of its associates after it faced ED raids last year. Despite this, Vivo became no.1  in India’s smartphone market, even ahead of Samsung and Xiaomi in the quarter ended June. What’s more, unlike Xiaomi, which saw a sharp decline in its market share after raids in 2021, Vivo is still going strong. But it can’t celebr...

The introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s was one of the most significant events in the history of human society. 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. Last week, in a major breakthrough, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) finished clinical trials for the world's fir...

Delivery partners who work for Swiggy or Zomato are paid per order. The fee which includes variables like base fee, surcharge, etc, depends on how many kilometres they’ve travelled from pickup to delivery destination. These payments though, are never consistent and gig workers, who make our lives so convenient, struggle with earning a stable income.  So when Zomato says on their bill under the del...

According to latest numbers, Ola Electric, the leader of two-wheeler EVs in India, is losing market share—from 40 per cent in July to just 29 per cent in September. Bajaj Auto, meanwhile, has gained the most market share. It started with just a 4% share in April and now it has gone up to 11%.  Ola Electric maybe doing much better with more than 250,000 scooters sold so far but the discontent regar...

Two days ago, on Tuesday, India’s most famous edtech was in the news again. Byju’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ajay Goyal quit the edtech barely  6 months after joining. It had taken Byju’s 16 months to find Goyal after its previous CFO PV Rao quit in December 2021 . Goyal was hired only in April this year and had a tough task cut out for him: to help improve the company’s financial compliance i...

On October 14, a Saturday, Disney Hotstar set a world record: it saw the highest number of simultaneous viewers tune in for any format of cricket ever. The ICC World Cup match between India and Pakistan was streaming and it drew in 35 million viewers. A week later, on Sunday, it broke that record too with the India-New Zealand match when 43 million viewers tuned in. The timing of this couldn't be...

It's going to be a year since the Reserve Bank of India launched its very own Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC. In fact, just a few days ago, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das, who has been leading India’s transition into digital payments while speaking at an IMF event touted CBDC, popularly known as the e-rupee, as the currency of the future. Banks, and tech experts have said that it is an innova...

With increased competition within the country, the world leader of Ayurveda brands, Dabur, is looking to acquire and expand. It wants to change its story and focus on a new target consumer.  Just last year in October, it acquired a 51% stake in Badshah Masala, one of the country’s leading spices companies.  But how is the over-hundred years old company planning to reinvent?  Tune in. Recommendatio...

BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) is becoming popular in India because it offers short-term financing options, financial flexibility, affordability, and smaller credit lines. In fact, the BNPL market expected to reach $35–40 billion by 2026 from $3.5–4 billion in 2021. But unlike credit cards, BNPL services lack security and many customers are left vulnerable to vishing (voice phising) scams. Most of them...

In March this year, the world's largest coffeehouse chain, Starbucks, finally crossed the Rs 1,000-crore rupee revenue mark in India for the first time. So far, it has 350 outlets in India. Now, carrying a cup of Starbucks around has almost become like a lifestyle statement. In many ways, Starbucks entered the Indian market with a huge advantage because India's undisputed coffee leader, Cafe Coffe...

Beets are a superfood today. Tomorrow it’ll be lemons. The internet is rife with misinformation especially about food and health related stuff. There are hundreds of influencers on your feed telling you what’s good for you. But who’s telling you what’s bad and what doesn’t work?  Maybe a keto diet worked for your friend but not for you. Take Dr Cyriac Abby Philips who goes by The Liver Doc on X or...

The NITI Aayog was created in 2015 to replace the decades-old Planning Commission. The idea was to adopt a more bottom-up approach to make India competitive in today's global economy. With CEO Amitabh Kant as the leader, the think tank progressed to become a thriving, open, and empowering space for public policy experts, including those from non-government backgrounds.  But ever since Kant's stint...

Losing IPL rights last year to Jio and then dropping HBO content has cost Disney+ Hotstar at least 21 million subscribers in just a year. The streaming giant though, decided that IPL or no IPL cricket is going to be its biggest customer acquisition funnel in 2023. And it looks like they are holding on to that strategy. The Asia Cup was streamed for free on Disney Hotstar. Now, the ICC Cricket Worl...

Licious, the online meat delivery platform, was India’s first direct to consumer company or D2C that achieved the unicorn status.  It was valued at $1.4 billion two years ago and it had enough money to grow to Rs 100 crore of revenue per month, but its revenue has remained flat from the last two years. Licious follows the premium pricing strategy. Its products are priced higher price than the aver...

It took Bajaj Finance over 15 years to become the most valued NBFC in the country. And then came along Jio Financial Services Ltd (JFSL) and took the no. 2 position in a span of just two months. It is currently valued at more than $17 billion. Its all set to take the top space. Currently, the company is on a serious hiring spree and it seems to have taken a particular liking to former ICICI Bank e...

What makes Dunzo unique is that one could never imagine a company its size to have the kind of influence it does. In 2022, a $200 million funding from Reliance Retail sent the quick-commerce startup flying high. It began expanding its dark stores and even ran advertisements in IPL. But the IPL led boom did not last long. The same year, the number and volume of orders began to decline. Dunzo was fo...