Daybreak

While most startups were facing a reckoning earlier last year with mass layoffs, Licious, the meat delivery platform, was sitting proud, unaffected. Both the founders, Hanjura and Gupta, were giving interviews talking about how their company had made no job cuts and how they did not want that kind of bad karma. It became the anomaly in a market that was seeing a bloodbath that going on all around....

The Reserve Bank of India has barred Paytm from continuing all its banking services via Paytm Payments Bank after February 29. It's been operational since 2017 and its services include current and savings accounts, fixed deposits with partner banks, and balance in wallets, UPI, and FASTag, among other services. The RBI has basically said it cannot take any more deposits or conduct credit transacti...

Season 3 of one of the country’s most popular reality TV shows, Shark Tank India, premiered on January 22, 2024. The show has given rise to a significant demand for startup investing. Investors are able to put in as little as Rs 5000 via online fundraising platforms like Tyke Invest and Infubiz. They offer investments in startups through Community Subscription Offer Plans. But these fundraising ca...

The results for the latest quarter for Freshworks are out and the US-based Saas company has beaten Wall Street estimates. It posted a revenue of nearly $600 million for FY 2023. Its losses, meanwhile, have narrowed by over 40%. Just a year ago, the story was slightly different. In the same quarter in 2023, the company saw a decline in its net dollar retention rate. Even though the free cash flow w...

It wont be a stretch to say that the Meftal Spas is life-changing for those who suffer from dysmenorrhea. The medicine which is a combination mefenamic acid and dicyclomine was launched more than 40 years ago by Blue Cross Labs, an Indian pharma company. Meftal Spas enjoys the lion’s share of the market at nearly 90%. But at the end of November last year, the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC),...

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...

When the govt of India came up with the budget, taxpayers were given 2 options: move to the new tax regime or continue with the old one. The tax rates in the new regime were clearly lower. But despite this, most chose to stick to the old regime. Even with comparatively higher tax rates the old tax regime has remained popular amongst Indian taxpayers. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom...

It was Dominoes that made delivery under 30 minutes a thing. Before Swiggy and Zomato came along, Domino’s was more or less the only place you could order in from. It showed Indians that pizza could be cheap and also enjoyed in our own houses.   Jubilant, the company that runs the Dominos franchisee in India has nearly 3/4ths of the pizza market share which is also why it is among the first to be...

Byju’s financials for the Financial year 2022, are finally out. Almost 2 years late. And unsurprisingly, it doesn't paint a very pretty picture. The edtech giant posted a consolidated loss of more than 8000 crore rupees on an operating revenue of around 5000 crores.  And that’s not all…its valuation has dipped from about 22 billion dollars in the last funding round to less than a billion now. Its...

Happy Republic Day, dear listeners. Today is a public holiday but if you're still tuning in, here is an older episode of Daybreak you might like: 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 ju...

From giving an extra month for “good-faith” negotiations a little over two years ago, to accusing Zee of breach of contract…the Sony Zee merger deal has seen its fair share ups and downs. It was supposed to be the country’s biggest entertainment merger worth $10 billion—two media behemoths were coming together. Now though, the deal is buried six feet under. On Monday, Sony officially released a st...

The prime minister will be inaugurating the newly constructed Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh today. It's quite the event. In fact, PVR INOX, has even collaborated with a news channel to broadcast the ceremony live in more than 150+ cinemas in more than 70 cities across India. The who’s who of business, from Adani, Ambani, Tata, to Bollywood celebrities and sports stars like Tendulkar and Koh...

It was 20 years ago when doctors first used the help of a robot in India to carry out a complicated heart surgery at Fortis Escorts, New Delhi. Ever since, more than 100,000 robot assisted surgeries have been performed in the country. Patients are embracing these type of surgeries now than never before and why wouldnt they? Who wouldn't want a less painful procedure, a shorter hospital stay, and m...

Have you noticed how easy it has become to get loans? Whether you want to buy a whole house or you want to buy a pair of shoes, you can take an EMI for whatever you want. And of course, in India, an aspirational country, this means we finally have a way to attain the standard of living we have dreamed of. In the year that ended in March 2023 household debt saw its second-highest surge since indepe...

More than 100 Indian startups wrote to TRAI a couple of months ago urging it to maintain its unwavering support for net neutrality principles. This a tug of war began between tech companies including OTT platforms on one side and telecom companies on the other, began years ago. Telecom and internet service providers believe that content and tech companies should pay them for disproportionate traff...

Earlier this week, India’s biggest winemaker, Sula, saw its share price reach historic high. The winemaker controls more than half of the market share of India's domestic wine industry.  When it went for an IPO at the end of  2022, it was successfully subscribed by almost two and a half times. So you might think the jump in the share price makes sense. Afterall, Sula dominates the wine market in I...

Paytm*, the fintech giant that was last valued at $16 billion would've never been able to get where it is now without its field agents. Field agents are to fintech payments companies, what delivery partners are to Zomato, Swiggy: their backbone. Out of the 70,000 odd fintech field agents in India, Paytm has about 35000 of these  all around the country. The fintech giant boasts of nearly 40 million...

2023 turned out to be a landmark year for UPI (Unified Payments Interface) with the number of transactions crossing the 100-billion mark for the first time, according to the latest data released by the NPCI. The month of December alone saw more than 12 billion transactions. These numbers are testament to how UPI has revolutionized the way we use money.  As of now, there are more than 300 million u...

Ever since it started, Rapido, the bike taxi company has consciously stayed away from venturing into the cab business. It was happy to stay in the bike taxi lane and beat Ola and Uber there even though that it managed to do it at the expense of customer safety. Now, though, eight years later, Rapido has finally launched its own cab hailing service. Over the last six months or so, it ran a pilot pr...

In 2023, more than 70 million new users downloaded the online shopping app Myntra. India’s leading fashion e-retailer owned by Flipkart has been on quite the discount giving spree lately. And we are not just talking about the year end and festive discounts. Since July, Myntra has 22 sales days every month. Its biggest rival, Reliance owned Ajio has no more than 14. So you might think, Myntra must...

For the last week of December, we are taking you back to some of the most popular Daybreak episodes of 2023. We'll be back with regular programming from January 3, 2024. 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 baffl...

For the last week of December, we are taking you back to some of the most popular Daybreak episodes of 2023. We'll be back with regular programming from January 3, 2024. 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 differ...

More than a year after the communication minister Ashwini Vaishnav had introduced a the draft version to the public, on Thursday, the Rajya Sabha passed the new Telecom Bill. Many hopes were pinned on it considering it was meant to replace the three archaic laws that had been governing India’s telecom sector. The journey until here, however, was far from smooth. The draft version of the bill had l...

Two years ago, Sony’s India unit, Sony Pictures Networks, announced a merger with rival Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. It was supposed to be the country’s biggest entertainment deal.  The combined entity would own more than 70 TV channels, two video streaming services and two film studios. Ever since, Sony Liv’s subscriber base grew from 18 million to over 33 million. With good original storie...

A few days ago Karthik Ayyar, the founder of an IIT Madras-incubated company that developed India’s first indigenous mobile operating system, BharOS, said his company is considering providing this technology for routers. BharOS is being launched as an alternative at a time when the tech giants like Google are under the scanner for anti-trust practices in India. However, this is not the first time...