Daybreak

When it entered the quick commerce scene for the first time in 2021, Zepto was a disruptor. Now, it is the third largest company in the market after Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart. Recently, it secured its biggest funding ever at a US$3.6 billion valuation, mainly from its existing investors. Venture Intelligence, a data provider told The Ken that the US$660 million funding is largest bet made by VC...

Four years, 15 cohorts, and roughly 1,500 students later, Stoa School has shut down. The poster child for alternative business-school education in India is no longer accepting new students.  What went wrong? And what does it mean for India's altMBAs?  Tune in to find out. P.S. While you are here, check out the latest episode of The Ken's careers podcast The First Two Years, where host Akshaya Chan...

The pandemic, as brutal as it was, forced a lot of businesses to double down on convenience and accessibility. Whether it was your online education or quick deliveries or at home blood tests. Just to be able to skip that dreaded visit to a hospital or a diagnostic centre meant so much to most people. Accredited labs popped up all over promising to come right to your doorstep and collect your sampl...

On June 3, about 200 employees of the American management consulting firm Bain and Company’s India division received a rather ominous calendar invite.  They each would have a 10-minute meeting with HR. But no one, other than the heads of the regional offices and the head of HR, knew what the meeting was about.  During the meeting, they were all told they were being laid off. The layoffs took the c...

Nothing about Nykaa is strictly its own anymore.  Back when it went public, it had no real rivals in the beauty space. But since then, things have changed.  Last year, India’s largest retailer, Reliance Retail, officially entered the beauty space. It launched an omnichannel beauty retail platform called Tira Reliance isn’t playing around. In the last year, it has made one thing clear: it wants to...

More than a decade has passed since Starbucks came to India. But the world’d biggest coffee chain has been struggling to achieve profitability. In the latest financials,  the company saw its slowest sales growth in India since the pandemic. So far, Starbucks has managed to open around 400 outlets across the country. Meanwhile, Third Wave, a much smaller specialty coffee startup that started around...

At the Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, almost a week ago, Apple made a very important announcement. It launched what it calls 'Apple Intelligence', which is basically an umbrella term for all of the new generative AI features that will be available on certain models of the iPhone, iPad and Macbook. It was a revolutionary announcement because with it, Apple has finally entered the Gen AI...

The newest battle ground between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jim is financial services. Airtel already has two thriving ventures. The first is the seven-year-old Airtel Payments Bank which happens to be one of the three profitable payments banks in India. And the second is new financial entity called  Airtel Finance which is mainly aimed at Reliance Jio’s fintech disruptor, Jio Financial Services. ...

Bluestone and Caratlane set out with the same dream. They both wanted to sell everyday fine jewellery online. This was a pretty alien concept in a country like ours, where gold and diamonds are seen more as an asset rather than just an accessory. And for a lot of people, buying gold and diamonds online is completely out of the question, even today.  But both these companies were committed to the i...

AI algorithms for cancer screening are being developed around the world.  Most medical professionals will agree that there is tremendous potential here. If developed properly, AI can potentially detect various cancers at very early stages – which would make it easier to treat cancer and possibly even increase chances of survival.  But all of that is great in theory. In reality, the general consens...

Last week, Foxtale, an Indian D2C skincare company secured an $18 million funding in its series B round. Meanwhile, news also broke that the Deepika Padukone-led 82°E is planning to raise around $6 million from new and existing investors. Scores of new age skincare and beauty brands have cropped up since the pandemic and all of them harp on the science of skincare and their whole appeal is transpa...

There is something really concerning happening to India’s 200-million strong workforce. Nearly half of them, who are above the age of 45, have reached a point in their careers where they may have to retire much earlier than they planned. Against their will. In a nutshell, the usual career span that would last anything between 40 to 50 years even has been slashed by half almost….. to just 20 or 25...

Zomato, the food delivery giant is all set to infuse more than $35 million into Blinkit. But not too long ago, Blinkit, the grocery delivery platform that was formerly known as Grofers, was on the verge of dying. It was the first year of the pandemic and the demand for quick commerce was at its peak. Grofers wanted to join the bandwagon but it didnt have the money. A year later in June 2021, it go...

When 29-year-old Deepa delivered a healthy baby boy six months ago, she thought her health insurance would cover her hospital expenses. But unfortunately, it barely covered 1/3rd of the Rs 1 lakh bill. So she ended up using her corporate health insurance that offered a higher limit.  And this isn’t a one off. The Ken spoke to 13 women from six different cities who delivered babies in the last coup...

When e-commerce giant Flipkart acquired online travel aggregator (OTA) Cleartrip back in 2021, the hope was that it would be able to turn things around. Cleartrip had hit rock bottom. And in many ways the only way from there on was up.  But things haven’t quite played out as Flipkart and Cleartrip had hoped. One big reason is that Cleartrip under Flipkart may have veered too far away from what mak...

Last year,  Indians collectively drank nearly 600 million litres of energy drinks. This was almost 30X more than 2018. Among all the go to drinks in India, lately energy drinks have become super popular. People seem to clearly be attracted to their appeal as stimulants. And what’s crazy is that these drinks have become an alternative to chai at tea stalls for office goers. And even for daily wage...

Desi dating apps are vying for parental approval. And their strategy seems to be working. A couple months ago, Agrima Srivastava, a 29-year-old media professional from Lucknow, had an awkward conversation with her mother. She wanted to know if Agrima had ever heard of Indian dating apps, Aisle and Better Half. That was the first time Agrima had an open conversation with her mother about her love l...

It has been a tough couple of years for India’s Chartered accountants.  This was and to some extent still is one of the most sought after jobs in the country.  But lately, the amount of risk involved in their work has been amped up considerably.  And as a result, CAs have been resigning left, right and centre.  The reason this is happening is because the auditing industry has been undergoing a maj...

According to a survey by S&P, more than 75% of Indian adults do not understand basic financial concepts. The gap is 5% more when it comes to women. So the rise of financial influencers who simplify complex financial jargon and provide investment advice is not really surprising. But often, they underplay risks  and overplay returns, and try to ride the market waves. In fact, SEBI, the market ca...

Since 2021, Toyota and Maruti have been engaged in somewhat of a marriage of convenience.  The terms were pretty simple. Toyota would share its hybrid technology with Maruti Suzuki. In exchange, Toyota would get to re-enter the pocket-friendly segment.  So what this meant was that the non-premium Toyota cars sold were actually built by Maruti. And the fully hybrid cars sold under the Maruti label...

Credit card companies, in their rush to sell more and more cards use a whole gamut of attractive offers—the most popular one being free access to airport lounges. Thanks to this and the sharp rise in domestic air travellers, airport lounges saw of footfall of over 8 million people in 2022. What was once an exclusive service became a top-selling feature, even for non-premium cards issued by banks....

In today’s special Friday episode, The Ken’s Praveen Gopal Krishnan (aka PGK) joins hosts Snigdha and Rahel to talk about India’s complicated relationship with 10 minute delivery apps. They talk about how these apps are shaping our economy and society at large, and more importantly how we, as users, are shaping them. Why do we pick a particular app, what makes us switch to another one and what mak...

At the time of demonetisation, the country was desperately seeking an alternative to cash. And a payments regulator called NPCI or the National Payments Corporation of India, was our unexpected knight in shining armour.  The NPCI managed to launch UPI at just the right time. This was a revolutionary, once in a generation product that really put the NPCI on the map.  Over the years, UPI also became...

New-age D2C mattress brands like Wakefit and The Sleep Company have successfully made orthopaedic mattresses into a mass product. They are changing the landscape of the mattress market in India with their innovative science and tech based approach and clever marketing techniques.  Wakefit, for example, literally offers a “sleep internship" where all you have to do is "sleep for 9 hours everyday fo...

A couple months ago, Xiaomi released a new product – the SU7. This wasn’t a smartphone, or any other gadget that you would have otherwise associated with the Chinese company. The SU7 is actually Xiaomi’s first-ever Electric Vehicle.  Now, this is a major milestone for Xiaomi. It has become the first smartphone maker to successfully launch an EV. Funnily enough, this is something that many smartpho...