Daybreak

Ozempic went off-patent in India this year, and everyone from Novo Nordisk to Nestlé has rushed in expecting a billion-dollar market. Instead, growth has already stalled, and the reason isn't price. It's culture. While Hollywood joked about Ozempic on late-night TV and Serena Williams advertised a GLP-1 program for a tele-health platform at the Super Bowl, not a single Indian celebrity has admitted to using it. We trace why the drug ran out of India's easiest customers within months, why its next move — into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities — might not work either, and what it would actually take to sell a $200-a-month injection in a country that's only now starting to believe that obesity is a disease. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah launched Bharat Taxi, a government-backed, driver-owned ride-hailing service built to take on private players like Ola and Uber. It runs as a cooperative so the drivers own it. And when it profits, they keep 80% of the money. Nearly 800,000 have already signed up. It is the government's boldest bid yet to pull gig workers out of a precarious market and hand them a stake in it. There is just one problem. No one in Indian ride-hailing has ever turned a profit. So what is a driver-owned cab service really for, if the payday it promises may never come? Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

At least 44% of Indians have their money sitting in savings accounts. These accounts earn only about a fraction of what a fixed deposit pays. But even though FDs earn more, the payoff is that you have to lock away your money for longer, and pay a penalty if you break the account prematurely. But did you know there's a product built to solve this exactly? It's called a Flexi-FD, and it promises FD-level returns with the liquidity that comes with savings accounts. Most banks offer it. And yet, not a lot of people have heard of it. The Ken's Inderpal Singh gets into why banks aren't exactly rushing to popularise a product that's supposedly a win for depositors, and what "flexible" doesn't always mean in practice. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

India is importing sugar for the first time in nearly a decade — a million tonnes, duty-free — to cool prices before the festive season. Four years ago, it exported a record 11 million tonnes. Retail prices are up around 40% from last year. In Odisha, a kilo crossed ₹67. The government has capped stocks, halted exports and ordered mills to declare their sales. Production came in about 11% below forecast, at 30.6 million tonnes. The world's second-largest sugar producer just became an importer. How? Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

For decades, sending an electric current into the brain meant a hospital, a doctor, and a diagnosis. A Bengaluru startup called Mave Health wants to move it into your daily routine. Its Rs 30,000 headset uses tDCS, a low current to the prefrontal cortex, to ease stress before it builds. The technology is decades old and well-evidenced. What's new is who controls it. Mave sells directly to consumers, no prescription and no regulator sign-off, on the argument that it's simply a consumer electronic. The Ken reporter Sudeshna Ray wore one herself to find out how that feels. Can medicine's oldest question: who gets to treat your brain, survive being sold like earphones? Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

India's finance minister wants public sector banks to get "cool" for Gen Z. With yoga vouchers, youth kiosks, awareness campaigns. But the numbers tell a different story. PSBs are losing young Indians as both depositors and borrowers, while, at the same time, fintech lenders capture 57% of India's small-ticket loan market. Some, even at interest rates as high as 600%. On this episode, host Rachel Varghese asks why India's public banks misdiagnosed the problem, what it's actually costing young borrowers, and whether the tools to fix it, like cheaper credit, and faster underwriting, that already exist can be pointed in this demographic's direction. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Tukaram Mundhe, Maharashtra's food-safety chief, has gone viral this month for shutting famous restaurants and even noticing Shah Rukh Khan over an ad . Earlier this month his inspectors inspected around a dozen dark-store belonging to Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart. He isn't alone. On 22 August, a separate regulator in Telangana raided the dark stores behind grocery apps in Hyderabad, shutting four on the spot for expired stock and pests. Everyone's cheering the crackdown. But it can't fix what it found. To deliver in ten minutes, a dark store packs a supermarket's worth of stock into a residential space, moving so fast that the work of keeping food safe keeps losing out. That's what the model produces when it runs as designed. Quick commerce in India now runs on nearly 10 million orders a day. So why is there still no rule for the space your food waits in? Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

When Nisarga Adhikary found critical flaws in CBSE's exam portal, the board denied it. So he broke back in, filmed it, and left anime videos running on their servers. IIT Kanpur hired him the same week it launched India's first undergraduate cybersecurity degree — one that recruits through hackathons and sends students to work at government security agencies for two of the four years. India produces a quarter of all researchers on global bug bounty platforms. The bounties come almost entirely from foreign companies. The RBI is now hiring cybersecurity talent on three-year contracts with no renewal path. California is still winning. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Every Indian state wants to be the country's data-centre capital. Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra. They're all handing out land, power, decades of tax breaks, all chasing the same promise: jobs. The Ken reporters Inderpal Singh and Mrunmayee Kulkarni ran the numbers on what the jobs actually cost. And the math does not hold up. On this episode of Daybreak, we go inside what's causing the data-centre boom. Why these buildings are designed to need almost no one, what states are actually betting on, and if the data-centre industry will see the same ecosystem build out as other sectors in India. Take The Great Rewiring survey here Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Tata 1mg just reported revenue of nearly 3,000 crore rupees for the last financial year, roughly ten times what it earned when Tata took control, and it is turning a profit while much of the sector bleeds cash. In an e-pharmacy market obsessed with 10-minute delivery and deep discounts, 1mg won by doing the opposite. It capped its discounts and built its own labs and supply chain, and it treats fast delivery as a minor add-on. In this episode, we unpack why patience beats blitzscaling in Indian healthcare and what 1mg means when it calls healthcare longitudinal. Take The Great Rewiring survey here Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

China's microdrama industry took nearly eight years — and real government money — to reach the point where regulators had to step in over AI-flooded, quality-degraded content. India's biggest platforms don't have eight years. They're building AI into production from day one, racing to scale catalogues before fatigue sets in. Host Rachel Varghese, gets into why JioHotstar, ShareChat, and Kuku TV are pouring money into two-minute dramas, what a Chinese skincare brand's meteoric rise (and equally fast fall) reveals about the ceiling on this format, and whether India's shortcut to scale comes with a shortcut to burnout too. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

India built its IT industry on millions of coders doing exactly the work generative AI now does in seconds. So everyone knew who would feel the pressure first. The data refuses to cooperate. A survey of 1,552 tech professionals by the app Blind last week found the engineers, the ones everyone expects AI to replace, are the least worried of anyone surveyed. And an ICRIER study of 651 firms found the roles most exposed to AI, developers and analysts, are the ones firms want most. Why does demand for technical workers persist as AI takes on more of their work? Take The Great Rewiring survey here Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

An HSBC survey found that 86% of affluent Indian investors are now using AI in their trading. That's the highest share of any country surveyed, above China, Singapore, and the US. Nearly half say AI tools are their primary source of investment ideas. Most of them are using the same two or three chatbots. And a growing body of academic research has found that when millions of investors ask the same models the same questions, they get the same answers — and pile into the same stocks at the same time. And it's already creating an effect in some markets that experts call "predictable, and less efficient". Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

India has been talking about drones a lot lately, from Operation Sindoor to the government's $2 billion plan for combat drones. But long before that, in the forests of Chhattisgarh, security forces had already settled on the drone they trusted most. It is Chinese, made by a company called Da-Jiang Innovations, or DJI, and the government banned it years ago. So why do India's soldiers keep reaching for it? Based on investigation by Pratap Vikram Singh for The Ken Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Earlier this week, Anthropic began stamping an invisible watermark into the text and images Claude generates. The move came in order to comply with the EU AI Act but it will be switched on worldwide. It is the thing teachers, editors, and hiring managers had been demanding for years — a way to finally tell human work from machine. Within hours, many people who pay for Claude were in revolt, calling it a scarlet letter on their own work. But the mark barely does what either side thinks, right now. And the people it exposes are rarely the ones gaming the system. So why do we keep asking to know what's AI, only to step back when the answer might be us? Tune in Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day just broke India's box office records back to back — and PVR Inox's stock jumped almost 20% in the process. It looks like proof that Indian audiences are finally back in theatres. But that's not all. The real story runs through just 34 IMAX screens, a decade-old trade deal that quietly expired, and a geopolitical rift thousands of miles away that has nothing to do with India at all. Today on Daybreak, we look at how a nationwide screen shortage — something that should have hurt business — became PVR Inox's most profitable weapon, why Hollywood needs India more than ever, and why your next movie ticket could go either way depending on where you live. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

From platforms like Cred, Zerodha, and Groww integrating AI assistants, to Sebi-registered advisors now using AI to generate personalised investment recommendations, the shift is already underway. And with nearly 140 million investors and fewer than a thousand registered advisors to serve them, the math alone might make AI advice not just convenient, but necessary. Tune in. **This episode was first published on 26 March, 2026 Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

On a hot Thursday evening in Delhi, people are queuing outside India's first Olive Garden. Some found it on Instagram. Others wandered over from the business park next door. Almost all have waited at least half an hour. Bharti Group wants 10 Olive Gardens in three years, and 125 total restaurants — more than double what it runs today. Indians are dining out more than ever, and serious money is following. But the most successful restaurants in India have deliberately stayed small. The ones that tried to scale mostly didn't. And Bharti's confidence rests entirely on a simple observation: that Indians are dining out more than they ever were. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Six months on, the answer has shifted. A US-Israeli war against Iran hit an already fragile stock market. Gold cooled, silver crashed, and real estate stayed flat, pushing investors toward fixed income for want of better returns. So we put the same question to the same five experts, four Sebi-registered advisers and a private wealth manager. Their consensus on diversification holds, but the reasons behind it have hardened. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

If you Google "paisa de do", dozens of near-identical websites appear. Some, offering cash in 15 minutes. The interest rate on some of these loans is 600% per annum and the lenders are RBI-licensed. One borrower started with a Rs 75,000 loan. Within five months, he was paying Rs 6 lakh a month across eight different loan apps just to stay afloat. The Ken's Mutasim Khan found 25 such NBFCs, some reporting revenue growth of 3,000 times in a single year. In 2024, the RBI flagged 45% annual interest as predatory. These lenders charge more than ten times that. And nobody has stopped them yet. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.