Daybreak

Indians have really been warming up to credit cards lately. More than a 100 million credit cards are in circulation in India as of now. And this rise has a lot to do with the benefits customers get: cash back deals and reward points that you can collect and redeem for anything from flight tickets to stays at fancy resorts. But between the two, cashbacks are a more straightforward method of making...

In this week's Daybreak Special episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose speak to The Ken's Shivani Verma about her investigation into Pharmeasy's dubious business practices. The once IPO-bound company is under the scanner for its 'unethical' ways of upselling alternative medicines and supplements. Everyone – from Pharmeasy's own pharmacists, to the doctors who call behalf of the company...

Thanks to Swiggy and Blinkit, it’s gotten to a point where getting everything – from your groceries to a literal water cooler – delivered to your doorstep within minutes has become pretty routine. Something we expect.  But there is so much going on behind the scenes to make that delivery possible. Like one executive told The Ken, it’s a combination of solid logistics and precise inventory manageme...

If you were flying sometime last month, you may have noticed, staff from Digiyatra, the contactless, biometric entry system at airports, were repeating the same thing over and over again to passengers at the entrance: “The old app is discontinued, please download the new app.” Passengers were only given this information at the airport. None of them received any notifications or SMSes. Apart from i...

No other payment aggregator has been able to pull off what Phonepe has in less than a year.  Its nearly 50 per cent market share is obviously a huge draw for new merchants. And in the last couple years, its been able to onboard some pretty big names like Bharti Airtel and IRCTC.  But the bigger the client, the more ruthless their demands. At the end of the day, they are only loyal to the aggregato...

The lure of appearing on the popular reality show on national television is so strong that even startups that already have been funded by VCs and institutional investors want to get on Shark Tank. In fact, investors themselves are asking their founders to go on the show. Money or funding is not the goal for these startups. It's the marketing opportunity they want. But Sony, the producer of the Sha...

Contrary to its name, the US-based skincare brand 'The Ordinary' pulled off something pretty extraordinary when it was launched in 2016. From the beginning, it was all about transparency. It veered away from fancy packaging, instead opting for simple labels that list out all of the main ingredients, or 'actives', that were used to make the product. And just like that, the brand managed to demystif...

CP Plus, one of the most popular CCTV camera-makers in India, gets 80% of its supplies for its parent company, Aditya Infotech Ltd (AIL), from the Chinese security-equipment manufacturer Dahua Technology. Dahua and Hikvision, another Chinese surveillance-tech firm, are facing sanctions in the UK, US, Australia, and other countries, for their connection to the Chinese government. But in India growi...

A few days ago Meesho closed the first tranche of its $600 million funding round by securing $275 million. The e-commerce unicorn has impressed investors lately thanks to its sustainded operating growth and the reduction in its monthly burn rate. Over time, the platform has built a kind of dominance in India’s smaller cities and towns that become the envy of its competitors —all thanks to its supe...

You may be surprised by how often bank lockers are robbed. According to Finance Ministry data, close to Rs 200 crore has been stolen from locker facilities in the last three years alone.  This is pretty disconcerting, especially considering that for the longest time the bank locker has been considered the safest place to store your most precious valuables.  It also doesn’t help that every aspect o...

When Gaurav Munjal started Unacademy, the edtech unicorn, he hated the offline coaching business. Edtech companies have tried to stay away from offline because of a number of reasons like low profit margins and huge capital.  But with the edtech downturn, Gaurav Munjal, finally admitted to the press that he’d been wrong and had overestimated the online business. This came at a time when Unacademy'...

When it comes to debit cards and ATM networks, no one can beat the State Bank of India. But being the market leader of debit cards in India is actually turning out to be a problem for the public lender. With Indians becoming more open to credit cards and UPI swamping the market, debit cards are dying a slow death. In fact, a lot of industry experts agree that debit cards, in their current physical...

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. For example, the company's toothpaste brand Dabur Herb'l Charcoal recently collaborated with Disney for its Star Wars franchise and hired Darth Vader as its chief innovative officer. Just last year in October,...

Aditya Birla Fashion is arguably one of India's most complex listed retailers. It has dozens of really diverse fashion brands and retail formats under it. On one hand it has high-end luxury labels like Sabyasachi and Tarun Tahiliani, and on the other, it also owns the retail chain Pantaloons and labels like Allen Solly, and Louis Phillip — names that we all know because they are accessible to most...

A few years ago, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had set a target of 40% growth across all categories for Flipkart. But in 2023, it was still stuck at 20%. So the company is now on a mission. It wants to push growth, gain market share, and turn a profit. So in January this year, Flipkarts top execs along with the CEO came together for a meeting to outline a roadmap for 2024. Krishnamurthy wanted...

Even though EV sales just make up a fifth of the Tata Motors’s overall sales, the automobile-maker is still the reigning giant of India's growing EV ecosystem. It is also leading the cab industry’s shift to EVs . Over the next 3 to 5 years, it has promised to sell at least 50, 000 EV four wheelers to cab companies. Based on the deal made over a year ago, half of them are meant for Uber. But it's b...

Nearly half of India’s 200 million workforce that is over the age of 45 suddenly has the sword of an involuntary retirement hanging over their heads. These are loyal employees from sectors like pharma, retail, manufacturing, and banking who are dealing with shorter career spans but for whom retirement is not a voluntary choice. Those aged between 40-60 years are facing long periods of joblessness...

In the last decade or so, French retailer Decathlon has managed to completely change how most of us shop for anything sports and fitness related.  It replaced mom and pop sports stores by becoming a one-stop shops for all things sports and fitness related. Cult. Fit wants to pull off just that with the help of its in-house athleisure and fitness equipment brand, Cult.sport. But it doesn’t help tha...

More people switching to Electric Vehicles (EVs) is not just great for our environment, it's great for hackers too. As EVs become more popular, hackers are constantly looking for opportunities to exploit the widening network of digitally connected vehicles. Between 2018 to 2021, incidents related to breach of cybersecurity in the auto industry rose by more than 200%. And it is only going to get wo...

A damning investigative report about Swiggy recently revealed how the foodtech giant has been depriving its delivery workers of their health insurance coverage if their ratings fall.  It comes at a time when the company is prepping to make its stock market debut to raise more than a billion dollars. Earlier this week, Swiggy  also got the official green flag for the IPO from its shareholders. But...

A few weeks ago, retail chemists got together to draw BJP's president JP Nadda's attention to the dangers of e-pharmacies. AICOD urged BJP to promise to include this ban in their election manifesto, along with a ban on discount advertising. They said e-pharmacies should be done away with nationwide to protect public health and prevent drug abuse among the youth. However, this isn't the first time...

When you think of the average unicorn-status startup, PocketFM — a homegrown audio streaming platform — is somewhat of an anomaly. Its main claim to fame? Very dramatic, borderline NSFW Hindi fiction audio series’.  Its content can best be described as ‘masala’ entertainment. And yet, millions of listeners tune in every day to listen to stories like ‘I love you monster’, or ‘Karan Arjun reloaded’,...

In the last few years, companies like Everest that manage cab fleets have become the silent battalion in Uber’s army of cabs. In fact, 90% of Everest’s fleet is with Uber. This, of course, has helped Everest grow its revenues and both seem to have found their relationship to be mutually beneficial. Everest gets to run its assets on a high demand platform. And for Uber, it become so much easier to...

Last month, the Reserve Bank of India directed credit card issuers or banks to not sign exclusive contracts with card networks, like Visa and Mastercard, that restrict them from using other networks. The RBI did this because it said consumers deserve to have the freedom of choice.  This new rule will be effective from early September and it will change the credit card game as we know it. For start...

In 2021, Campus Activewear took away the top spot in India's athleisure-footwear market from Puma, thanks to its affordable and trendy sneaker offerings. And by May 2022, it became a publicly listed company. Within a span of five months after its listing, its valuation shot up to a staggering US$2.2 billion. However, two years later now, its market capitalisation has nosedived to under US$890. The...