Daybreak

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...

After the pandemic years, Kota’s coaching industry saw an unprecedented boom. Money was pouring in from everywhere–from edtechs to investors. In the last five years, Kota saw about 2 lakh engineering and medical aspirants, on average, arrive from across the country. Kota runs on stiff competition not just among the students but also among the scores of institutes that host and prep them. But since...

All the twists and turns in the journey of startups have been well-documented since VC funding began drying up over the past year or so. In the first half of 2022,  Indian startups received more than $17 billion dollars. But a year later in 2023. they just got a little over $5 billion. What’s we’ve barely heard about, though, is what is happening to the funders of these startups and their foot sol...

From the time it was the number one indian telecom company to braving the whole phase when Jio came around and disrupted the whole space. Its been a long, brutal competition for Airtel and Gopal Vittal has managed to bring Airtel back to health. Meanwhile, he's spent years on finding and grooming the right talent to create the next generation of leaders at the telco giant. And now Airtel is underg...

For a people who were quite averse to the whole concept of credit, Indians really seem to be developing a new found love for the piece of plastic and banks have been happy to ride the wave. But lately they've been left quite baffled because they are being being beaten at their own game. A growing community of people are constantly finding hacks to take advantage of the loopholes in credit-card rew...

From content flagging, suspension, shadow-banning and even account deletion, content creators are grappling with a variety of censorship methods on social media platforms—all in the name of maintaining community guidelines. But with social media platforms relying more and more on AI and machine-learning tools identify and remove violating content, even content aimed at creating sexual, social, and...

For almost two decades, India was a stagnant market for one of the leading tech companies of the world. But in 2021, things changed and Apple’s sales graph in India began to rise upwards. By 2022, Apple sold over 7 million iPhones in the country. And then in April, Apple CEO Tim Cook inaugurated India’s first Apple retail store in Mumbai. But compared to markets like the US and China, Apple’s numb...

For the longest time public sector banks, as we know them, have been very reluctant about study abroad loans. And it was for good reason. They've suffered greatly because of education loans going bad. Meanwhile, its a whole different story that was going on with non-banks. Study abroad loans accounted for about US$4 billion in the year ended March 2023. These were almost fully funded by non-banks...

The government of India launched Digiyatra, a contactless, facial-recognition-based passenger-entry system, in December last year. The idea is for those who sign up on the platform to avoid the tedious process of getting their ID and flight tickets checked by  CISF personnel at airports. But lately, stories of passengers being forced to sign up for the app are surfacing on social media. Meanwhile,...

For the longest time, consulting at the “Big 3” strategy consulting firms—McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Co.—is not only one the most sought-after careers but also one of the highest-paying jobs. Five years ago, 30% of graduates from the top IITs with bachelors degrees chose consulting. For those from the IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, 35% of graduates chose a consul...

Lately, India's bike taxi leader, Rapido, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. With numerous complaints of sexual harassment, theft, and even impersonation, the startup has been reckless with the safety of its customers, epecially women. Despite these incidents, Rapido still enjoys a 60% share of the bike-taxi market in India. It clocks in as many as 750,000 rides every single day and y...