Daybreak

In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose are joined by interdisciplinary artist and internet truth-teller Anurag Minus Verma to talk about what’s really happening to Substack and why it matters. The online publishing platform began as a utopian space for writers and artists that promised no algorithms, no ads and no hustle for likes. It allowed for writers and readers to forge dir...

On July 22, 2025, a court found former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar guilty of accepting a ₹64 crore bribe from Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot. The bribe was allegedly routed through her husband’s company, NuPower Renewables, just a day after ICICI sanctioned a ₹300 crore loan to Videocon in 2009. In today's episode, we trace the complete timeline, from the first whistleblower alert in 20...

India’s job market is broken. We’ve known that for a while. But the reason why is worth paying attention to. It’s not a lack of talent. Every year, India adds millions of graduates to its talent pool. Thousands enter the workforce—freshly certified and ready to be hired. The real problem is the growing disconnect between qualification and competence. Tune in. 🎓 Are you an Indian student in the US...

India’s packaged-food bigwigs ignored spices for a long time. Not anymore. Since 2020, everyone from ITC to Tata Consumer Products, from Dabur to Wipro, has been scrambling to cement their place in this essential corner of the Indian kitchen. They’ve pounced on spice brands, sometimes paying top dollar for them, all while their investors cheered them on. In fact, the stocks of Tata Consumer and IT...

It takes 150 crocus flowers to make just one gram of saffron. For comparison, a spice like cumin, gets you hundreds of kilos per acre whereas saffron yields barely two. Despite getting a prestigious GI tag from the Indian government and even a National Mission dedicated to its revival, Kashmir’s saffron production has plummeted:from 8 tonnes in 2011 to just 2.7 tonnes in 2024.  So what’s going wro...

iPhone 17 components have started arriving at Foxconn’s plant in Tamil Nadu. It signals Apple’s quiet but serious shift toward next-gen production in India, potentially starting as early as August.  But as India is stepping into a more central role in Apple’s global supply chain, Foxconn is being forced to pull hundreds of Chinese engineers out of India. These are people who helped set up and run...

CIBIL or Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd is one of only four credit information providers in the country that is licensed by the RBI. It is considered the oldest and the most reliable. It essentially calculates your credit score, a three digit number between 300 and 900, and provides it to banks so they can judge your creditworthiness. Usually, anything over 700 is considered good.  But this...

On June 23, Ola Electric’s stock crashed to an all-time low of ₹43.  This week, the stock staged a brief rebound, jumping nearly 20% in a single session. But at ₹47, it’s still trading far below its IPO price of ₹76 and more than 70% off its post-listing peak. On an earnings call, founder Bhavish Aggarwal insisted the company was on track. With rising margins and tighter cost control, he said, Ola...

Welcome to the world of AI trainers. A growing army of freelancers is quietly shaping the way large language models think. Hired by companies like Turing, Mercor, and Deccan AI, these trainers are tasked with finding blind spots in models built by OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, and Google—and fixing them. The goal? Fewer hallucinations. Smarter, more coherent responses. A model that feels just a little...

Until recently, the prospect of an IIM offering a standalone undergraduate degree seemed unlikely. Traditionally known for their elite postgraduate programs, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have long been synonymous with MBA excellence. That image is now undergoing a significant shift. IIM Sirmaur is among the many who have introduced a bachelor’s program. IIM Kozhikode and IIM Sambalpu...

Just last year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sat across from Mukesh Ambani at the company’s first-ever AI summit in India. Dressed in his trademark black leather jacket, Huang addressed a packed room of tech founders, policymakers, and academics. He made a bold prediction: India, long known for exporting software, will soon be exporting AI. But this wasn’t just another keynote. It was a power play. At...

47 million Indians just lost their life insurance coverage. But not one of the country’s biggest insurers seem bothered. In this episode, we look at the silent collapse of credit-linked life insurance—policies that were once bundled with microloans and quietly protected millions of low-income borrowers. But now, that model is breaking down. Blame mounting defaults, shaky microfinance lending, and...

Private credit is having a moment in India. Hardly a week goes by without a blockbuster deal. Whether it’s Deutsche Bank’s $3.4 billion debt package, KKR’s $600 million loan to Manipal, or a fresh round of financing for Shapoorji Pallonji. But beneath the surface, pressure is building. As interest rates fall and competition heats up, yields are tightening. Banks, once sidelined, are eyeing a comeb...

After swearing off startups post a $300 million exit, Karan Bajaj is back with Complement 1 , a healthtech venture offering personalised coaching for cancer patients. But this isn’t just a pivot, it’s a whole new playbook. This time, it’s personal: Bajaj’s mother had cancer, and he says this is the product he wishes she had. Built for the American market, Complement 1 is taking a B2B route, target...

Ajio was supposed to be Reliance Retail’s e-commerce success story. While other digital bets like Jiomart, Dunzo, and Urban Ladder struggled to find their footing, Ajio surged ahead powered by aggressive discounts, brand partnerships, and the deep pockets of India’s largest retailer. But behind the scenes, the momentum was already beginning to crack. Today, we go inside the fashion platform’s shar...

Karnataka’s bike taxi ban has thrown Bangalore’s commute into chaos. Since June 16, services like Rapido, Ola, and Uber Moto have been off the roads, thanks to a High Court-backed state ban. But for thousands of gig workers and commuters, bike taxis were more than a convenience, they were a lifeline. As protests intensify and surge pricing spikes, this episode unpacks the policy deadlock, the Cent...

Rare-earth magnets, made from elements like neodymium and praseodymium, are essential to EV motors. But nearly all of them come from China. And since April, not a single shipment has arrived. Maruti Suzuki has already slashed production. TVS and Bajaj are counting down to a July deadline. Others, like Mahindra and Omega Seiki, saw this coming and started building workarounds. This isn’t just a sup...

Post-pandemic, retail giants like Reliance and Aditya Birla Fashion were ready to bounce back and they weren’t being very subtle about it. Reliance Retail for instance opened nearly 6000 stores across fashion, groceries, electronics just in FY22 and FY23. But the retail dream of a booming post-Covid shopping spree that companies had sold themselves never really happened. Soon these companies had t...

Everybody wants to invest, but not everyone knows how. There just aren’t many who can point investors in the right direction. Registered investment advisors, or RIAs—either individuals or corporates licensed by the stock-market regulator—are an endangered species in India. While the country had about 192 million demat accounts as of March 2025, there were only about 941 advisors. That’s one adviso...

Over the last four years, Croma has found itself in a curious spot. On paper, it’s Tata Digital’s crown jewel—contributing over half of its revenue and crossing ₹18,000 crore in sales last year. But behind the scenes, it’s also become Tata Digital’s favourite testing ground. From sudden team transfers — like its entire marketing team being moved to Tata Digital overnight — to shifting strategies,...

While Prada walks the ramp in Kolhapuris, here in India, Bata, the brand that once defined middle-class respectability, can barely find its footing. Bata which was once a household name, a back-to-school essential, a symbol of quality without fuss, is now finding itself squeezed. Too expensive for the value-hunting Zudio crowd and not fancy enough for the Birkenstock and Crocs-wearing folks. Which...

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...

Turns out, in India’s healthcare industry, prevention isn’t just better than cure—it’s also far more investable. The new buzzword making the rounds? Health assurance. Not insurance—assurance. It means what it sounds like. Unlike traditional insurance, which kicks in after you fall sick, health assurance is about keeping you healthy to begin with. A Pune-based startup called Loop Health was the fir...

The rise and fall of Pharmeasy is well documented. Once the poster child of the e-pharmacy boom, it reached a dizzying valuation of 5.6 bn USD at its very peak. But unfortunately, as we all know now, it didn’t last.  Today the company is worth just 450 million USD – which, is a 90 per cent drop. From aggressive acquisitions to regulatory hurdles, and a failed IPO, Pharmeasy’s journey has been a ca...

Tata Electronics is assembling iPhones in Karnataka, aiming to become a key player in Apple’s global supply chain. In this episode, we look at how the company is scaling by adding factories, hiring thousands of workers, and investing heavily in automation. But it’s also facing high attrition, rising debt, and pressure to meet Apple’s strict standards. Can Tata turn its manufacturing push into a lo...