Daybreak

Cloud, streaming, generative AI… while all of these are increasingly becoming hot topics of discussion, data centres—the large, boxy buildings that house high-powered computers—are looking for innovative solutions to stay cool. The advent of GPU processing has opened an opportunity for a handful of foreign companies to throw their hat into the ring. Their proposition? Liquid cooling.  So far, air...

Hurun India began curating rich lists a decade ago. Now, it has moved up ahead of ranking giants like Bloomberg and Forbes with 17 lists so far. It has a Global 500 list, similar to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. In fact, at this point, its safe to say that it has replaced Forbes as the most trusted choice for bankers and wealth managers.  Hurun has managed to turn showing it off into a cultural t...

Last Sunday, the Daybreak team joined a run club! Why, you ask? For research, of course. We wanted to understand the recent run club renaissance, that has taken social media by storm since the beginning of the year. Run clubs, in the traditional sense, have been around for decades now. But now, something has shifted. The new generation of runners is younger, less experienced, and relentlessly soci...

On November 13, food delivery giant Swiggy made its public debut. It listed with a 8% premium over its IPO price of Rs 390 on NSE at Rs 420 and was oversubscribed by nearly four times.  While it's a bit early to comment, investors are not making strong bets on it yet. Hust to give you context, when Zomato went public, its IPO was oversubscribed by 38 times. This could be because the company is sti...

For quite a while now, the Indian startup ecosystem has really been feeling the pinch. People in the know call it the funding winter. These are periods of tremendous financial insecurity for startups, particularly now.  You see, for the last five years ago, the startup funding culture here in India was like a rollercoaster that was only going up. But now the scenario has changed considerably. Afte...

Last year, Nykaa decided to reshuffle its marketing structure after the company’s previous Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) exited the company.   Instead of immediately filling the spot, Nykaa decided to break the role apart and have two marketing heads. One to look at performance marketing – the more technically, data-driven side of e-commerce, and another as the head of organic marketing – the crea...

Last month, in October 2024, the government of India launched the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, a health insurance coverage for all senior citizens aged 70 and over, regardless of income. This is big news for healthcare in India because for the longest time, this is exactly the age group that has pvt insurance companies have been ignoring. To give you a clearer picture, a perso...

Ever since the pandemic, the world of skincare has witnessed nothing short of a revolution. Almost overnight, that jar of Ponds cold cream that had stood the test of time on dressing tables across the country was replaced by elaborate six-step skincare routines. The legacy brands we grew up with – the likes of Loreal, Ponds, Johnson and Johnson – were dethroned almost overnight. In their place cam...

Lately, new breed of millionaire heirs  have been dabbling with family offices in India . These are entities that exist solely to manage the fortunes of these ultra-rich families. While these offices have been around in some of the world’s biggest financial capitals for a long time now, in India, they are catching on now . What’s really interesting is that these single and multi family offices hav...

Here’s a riddle inspired by true events. We all know that pay TV subscribers have been declining for a while now. But at the same time, overall TV viewership has only been increasing. How can that be?  Well, for that we have Youtube to thank. In the first half of 2024, Indians spent 8 trillion minutes watching videos. More than 90% of this was on Youtube. Now, generally when someone says the words...

Last month, India’s second largest automaker – Hyundai –  went public. But this was not your run of the mill IPO. This was widely speculated to be the largest public listing ever seen in the Indian stock market. So there was naturally a lot of hype around it.  But on October 17, just hours before Hyundai’s public issue was set to close, most stock market circles across the country were stumped. Th...

A new generation of designers is on the rise. These designers are expected to be  a lot more than just “one trick ponies”. The new-age ‘Designer X’ is expected to bring  a little bit of everything to the table. They understand the basics of sustainability, how their designs would impact things like climate change and culture. And they would also generally know a little bit of coding too.  And that...

* This episode was originally published on July 12, 2024 Have you ever heard of a 'f*** off fund'? Or better yet, do you have one? For the uninitiated, it is a sum of money that women should ideally set aside to get out of a difficult situation – think toxic job, abusive relationship or family situation, you get the drift.  The term was coined by freelance writer, Paulette Perhach, in 2016. We rec...

In the 2024 financial year, Apple sold products worth $8 billion in India. This was a third more than the previous year. But how did a premium company like Apple that hates giving discounts sell products worth 8 billion dollars in a country as price sensitive as India? Apple obviously knew that its phones were unaffordable for most people in India? It found an answer was easy financing. After the...

For a whole decade, Ola and Uber dominated the cab-hailing market. But cut to 2024 and that scenario is shifting. Both these companies are drifting. And a third contender – Rapido – is making the most of it.  Both homegrown Ola and US-based Uber are dealing with a unique set of problems. The whole ride-hailing business seems to have taken a backseat for Ola, which is now knee deep in the electric...

Welcome to the world of luxury-lifestyle management, where firms like RedBeryl, Indulge Global, and Quintessentially play the role of concierge for their ultra-wealthy clients, making the impossible possible. Now this sort of thing has become even easier for the rich. Because their wealth managers are also taking care of some of these requests.  It isn’t a one -off thing. Companies like RedBeryl,...

Zomato planning to raise 8,500 crore rupees again. This comes just three years after its grand IPO where it had raised almost the same amount. The company's stock prices have doubled in the last ten months.  Interestingly, this fundraise is going to be through a qualified investment placement or QIP when a listed company raises capital from domestic markets without the need to submit any pre-issue...

If all the women of the world had a collective wallet where we could put in a penny for every time we heard the words “your biological clock is ticking,” we could move to Venus and run our own planet. But as unfair as it may be, it is true. There is an ideal time period in a woman’s life when she can have a baby. Or when she is the most “fertile.” Unlike men who are biologically not limited by suc...

For a country that boasts of its digital public goods infrastructure like Aadhar and UPI, it is a wonder why telecom has been so ignored. After nearly 1500 crore rupees of was reportedly lost to digital fraud in the financial year 2024, the govt’s Trai is finally scrambling to catch up with CPAN or the Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) service, its own version of Truecaller.  Truecaller, the Swedis...

Late last month, the Supreme Court made a very strong statement about NRI quotas at medical colleges. It essentially said that the whole thing was a fraud.  But the thing is, since the Supreme Court called it out, the practice has only gotten murkier. So The Ken reporter Alifiya Khan conducted an investigation. She scoured several social networking sites only to find countless posts promising seat...

There is an unusual one-of-kind competition brewing within the Indian fintech space. It is so disruptive that its leaving founders and chief executives of some of India’s biggest fintechs feeling pretty intimidated and also helpless.  The funny thing is, the brains behind this new competitor that’s left the whole industry feeling pretty blindsided is the Reserve Bank of India itself. It is a wholl...

Earlier this month, CRED, released its financials for the year ended March 2024 at a press conference. Cred claims to have about 13 million monthly active users. For the financial year ended March 2024, it saw revenue rise more than 60% to nearly $300 million, and losses shrink by around 40% to about U$70 million. Plus, its monthly transacting users grew by more than 30%.   Shah said how it's the...

A little more than a week ago, we read a really strange piece of news . Apparently, an expert committee recommended the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to ban the over the counter sale of emergency contraceptive pills like i-pill and Unwanted 72. They suggested  women should be only allowed to access it with a doctor’s prescription because of concerns over side effects.  This was weird fo...

Back in 2004, two sisters, Kainaz and Tina Messman, decided to turn their life-long passion for food and baking into a full fledged business. They set up Theobroma, a small cafe tucked away in a corner of Mumbai’s posh Colaba. Today, there are more than 200 Theobroma outlets in over 30 cities across the country.  The bakery chain’s evolution has been nothing short of remarkable. It has managed to...

Today, most conventional or slow clothing brands like Lee, Wrangler, United Colours of Benetton, Pepe Jeans and Levi’s are facing a tough new reality where they aren’t just trying to outperform each other. They are also up against fast fashion brands that are now dominating the industry.  In the process, many of these slow brands have lost relevance in the larger scheme of things.  In this episode...