Karnataka keeps talking about decentralizing tech beyond Bengaluru. Its neighbors are actually doing it.

Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh are building tech cities from scratch—tier-2 clusters with land banks, fast-track approvals, and statutory bodies with real power. Major companies are choosing Visakhapatnam and Tirupati over Bengaluru now.

The difference? Decision-making authority. Karnataka's development body is stuck in a promotional role while other states hand their institutions the teeth to actually execute. One state makes announcements. The others are laying fiber, clearing land, and signing deals.

Southern India's tech map is being redrawn. Just not by the state that started it all.

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Two days ago, the United States said it would cut tariffs on Indian goods to 18%, down from levels that had gone as high as 50%. Markets reacted fast. Stocks rose. The rupee strengthened. The first feeling was relief. It sounded like the trade fight with Washington and Donald Trump was easing.

Then more details emerged. U.S. officials said India would commit to buying over $500 billion worth of American goods. They also said U.S. tariffs would stay at 18%, while India would allow zero tariffs on some American products.

That relief started to feel more layered.

Just days earlier, India had signed the “mother of all trade deals” with Europe.

So why did India still move on this U.S. deal, now and on these terms?

Host Snigdha Sharma dives in.

Listen to our previous episode on the India-EU trade deal here: The 'mother of all trade deals' promises cheaper imports. Prices are another story

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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.

Amazon fired 16,000 workers last month. Oracle is set to cut up to 30,000 more.

Tech layoffs have increasingly been attributed to AI. But Oxford Economics found something strange: there's no macroeconomic data showing AI is actually replacing jobs or boosting productivity. 

In fact, output per worker is slowing, not accelerating.

So what's really happening?

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.

In December, India’s top agricultural research body sent a letter to 74 universities with a clear message: natural farming is now a subject of national importance. Campuses are responding fast, planning new courses to train students for a sector under pressure. Export markets want cleaner food because consumers are paying closer attention to what they eat. In response, agri-input companies are adjusting their products.

But Indian agriculture still runs largely on chemical inputs. Farmers face real risks during transition, research gaps remain, and jobs for graduates are still uncertain.

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.

ChatGPT butchers Punjabi with spelling errors and Bollywood-style Hindi bleeding through. Hindi bots trained on newspapers miss dialects like Awadhi and Bhojpuri entirely, while Tamil AI ignores the rich variations between Kongu and Madurai speech.

Sure, Gurugram collected ₹200 crore in taxes using Hindi AI calls, but that's because Hindi dominates datasets. Most other languages remain stuck in translation hell. Private companies optimize for speed over nuance, government corpora like Bhashini sit underused, and multimodal data that captures tone and emotion is too expensive to build.

The result? AI is flattening India's 780 languages into sanitized, standardized versions that erase the very dialects it claims to serve.

Read the newsletter here. Find the Duolingo article 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.

This week, Goa said it is actively considering a ban on social media for children under 16, inspired by Australia’s new law. Andhra Pradesh has also set up a panel to examine whether similar restrictions could work there. The push reflects rising anxiety around teen mental health, cyberbullying, and exposure to harmful online content.

Supporters argue platforms are unsafe by design and impossible to regulate through guardrails alone. Critics question whether bans can keep up with technology or address deeper social issues.

In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rachel Varghese step back from the rhetoric to ask what a ban would actually mean for children, parents, and platforms.

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.

This week, India and the European Union signed a sweeping trade deal that cuts or removes tariffs on over 90% of goods traded between them. The headlines quickly focused on what might get cheaper, from wine and cheese to cars and chocolates.

But trade deals do not change prices overnight. Tariff cuts roll out over time and work their way through importers, distributors, taxes, and markets before they ever reach consumers.

In this episode, we look at what past trade deals show about everything between a trade deal being signed and actual prices changing for a consumer.

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.

Every winter, Delhi chokes. Masks become mandatory, air purifiers work overtime, and life somehow goes on. But beyond the health crisis lies an economic catastrophe most people ignore—until now.

Gita Gopinath's recent warning at Davos sparked controversy, but the numbers don't lie: pollution is costing India 1.67 million lives and nearly 3% of GDP annually. Meanwhile, China turned its pollution crisis around in just a few years with ruthless accountability.

India has the knowledge and technology. What it lacks is political will. And every year of delay continues to put lives at risk and pushes the $5 trillion economy dream away.

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 new data protection law is reshaping how companies talk to customers on WhatsApp. Messages that once felt routine now carry legal weight and are tied to consent, security, and user rights. Since the Digital Personal Data Protection Act became operational, businesses have begun reworking how they collect and manage personal data. That shift has created a fast-growing market for compliance tools, drawing startups and established firms into the same space.

As companies rush to avoid heavy penalties, disagreements are emerging over who should manage consent and how independent they need to be.

The bigger question is how much control users will really have over their data.

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 your insurance card suddenly stops working, it is not just a glitch. It is the symptom of a deeper crisis in Indian healthcare.

Hospitals say insurers have failed to update reimbursement rates despite medical inflation. Insurers say hospitals are inflating bills and resisting standardization.

Millions of policyholders are caught between them, forced to pay out of pocket for care they thought was covered.

How did India’s healthcare system end up in this deadlock. And who really decides what your treatment is worth?

Tune in.

*This episode was originally published on November 4th, 2025

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.