Just two days after the Pahalgam terror attack, alarm bells went off inside India’s financial system. A stern message from an HDFC Bank executive summed up the mood: “They may come for us now.”

The national security tragedy triggered a sudden and sweeping crackdown on India’s digital payments ecosystem. Behind closed doors in Delhi, top officials from the Finance Ministry, Home Affairs, and the Reserve Bank of India launched a coordinated push to track suspicious merchant activity online like gambling, betting, drug trafficking. The idea was to follow the money all the way to its possible links with terror funding.

The fallout? Payment aggregators are scrambling, banks are under intense pressure, and merchant screening firms are suddenly flooded with work. Everyone’s rechecking everything.

But who's the collateral damage?

Tune in.

 If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

Zara and Tata’s retail arm, Trent, have been partners for 15 years. But that relationship might be coming to an end because Zara’s not pulling its weight anymore. Its share of Trent’s overall sales has dropped from 28% to just 10% in six years. Its rivals like H&M and Uniqlo have moved faster, reached more cities in a much shorter time span.

Meanwhile, Trent’s been busy. It used what it learned from Zara and built something better. Zudio, its budget fashion brand, just hit $1 billion in sales in FY25. It’s fast, affordable, and everywhere. Now, Trent’s planning to upgrade Westside into a premium brand to go head-to-head with Zara and H&M.

How Zara lost its edge and what did Trent get right?

Tune in to find out.

If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

One clear sign that Angel One—India’s third-largest discount broker—is serious about reversing its fortunes is that it bought itself a front-row seat at India’s most expensive distraction: the Indian Premier League.

That’s ambitious. Especially for a company that just flunked its latest earnings test.

 Between fiscal year 2020 and 2024, Angel One proudly nuked its full-service past—no more phone calls, no more reports, no more advisers—and became a pure-play discount broker. Just an app, an order button, and some notifications. When the markets were roaring, that was enough.

But now, not quite. Enter Plan B: be a super-app.

Tune in.

Daybreak is looking for a talented audio journalist with at least two years of experience. Check out the role 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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

In March this year, a software developer that goes by Pea Bee online published a blog rather ominously titled ‘Everyone knows all the apps on your phone’. 

He found that several Indian app-based startups are flouting rules of Google Play—Android’s app store—to access people’s data.  In particular, some apps use a workaround to scrutinise the names and usage patterns of other apps on people’s phones. In real time.

Now, the fact that apps have a lot of your data may not be a surprise to you. We’ve been pretty cavalier about our data for some time now. Remember Digi Yatra? 

But the scary thing is that Indian companies are equally nonchalant about the user data they collect. The result? Data-security breaches have been on the rise. 

So what is a data conscious Indian customer to do? 

Tune in. 

If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

Physics Wallah’s brand new initiative, the PW Institute of Innovation, was pitched as an alternative to the tough IIT route that didn’t compromise on quality or career prospects. It even came with a scholarship, a residential campus in Bengaluru, and a shot at a good job after graduation. On paper, it looked like the perfect deal.

However, students who signed up had to juggle a confusing mix of courses, keep up with a changing curriculum, and struggle through administrative chaos. Even basic things like internships, placement support, and faculty consistency didn’t materialise the way they were promised. 

For a company known for making quality education affordable, this was a far cry from its coaching roots.

But Physics Wallah isn’t just running an institute anymore, it’s a company preparing for the stock market. 

If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

Eyestem, a 14-member biotech startup from Bengaluru is turning heads in global pharma circles. With just $10 million and a modest 1,200 sq ft office, it has developed a promising cell therapy for dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD)—a condition that leads to blindness and has no cure. Early trial results are not only encouraging, they’re outperforming billion-dollar competitors in the West.

But this isn’t just about scientific innovation. It’s about doing more with less. Eyestem’s founders set out with a bold goal: to build a cutting-edge treatment that’s actually affordable, especially for Indian patients. Think world-class therapy in under $10,000. In the current world of cell and gene therapies, where treatments often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and remain out of reach for most, it is next to impossible.

How did Eyestem achieve this and what does this means for the future of biotech in India?

Tune in.

If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

Nagpur-based Counter Cyclical Investments doesn’t waste time with handholding. The six-year-old firm has a reputation for being quite cut and dry with its clients.  

Consider some gems from the ‘who should invest with us’ long-list. “Those who won’t disturb us by calling us for reassurance everytime the market falls.” “We don’t have any provision for a relationship manager. Once you have taken an informed decision to invest in our PMS, please avoid calling us. Those who are looking for regular correspondence and active interaction, may please stay away.” 

Now, if you think moneyed investors—the kind who have to put in at least Rs 50 lakh to be a part of Counter Cyclical—are put off by the insolence, you’re wrong. Counter Cyclical’s assets under management have shot up over 10X in the past three years, and its customer count has grown by leaps and bounds.

Why? The only scheme—a small-cap one —run by the six-year-old fund house is a chart-topper with five year annualised returns of, believe-it-or-not, 78%. 

Tune in. 

If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

Four months ago, food delivery giant Zomato decided to run an experiment. If you are a regular patron of the app, you may have noticed a tab called ‘Quick’ appear, that promised 15-minute deliveries in a bunch of metropolitan cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi NCR. 

Now, the company’s founder and CEO made an interesting statement last year that explains why it would choose to try out this experiment. He was asked a question about how quick commerce has changed customer expectations around food delivery. And he said, quite simply – “Blinkit is fast, but that has made Zomato seem slow.” 

He has a point. You may recall that Zomato subsidiary Blinkit launched its in-house 10-minute snack delivery service called Bistro last year, just one day after the very popular Zepto cafe was launched. Swiggy Instamart meanwhile, launched a similar service called Snacc. 

In many ways, 2024 was the year 10-minute food delivery became the next frontier of quick commerce.

Naturally, the biggest food delivery giants in the country did not want to be left behind. So while Zomato launched Quick, Swiggy rolled out its own ultra-fast delivery service, Bolt. 

But here’s where things get interesting. While announcing its Q4 results last week, Zomato announced that its four-month experiment was very quickly coming to an end. In a letter to shareholders, Deepinder Goyal explained that they just could not see a path to profitability without compromising on customer experience.

The Ken's COO and the host of Two by Two Praveen Gopal Krishnan explains what changed. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

Thanks to AI, economic disruptions, mass layoffs, and a bunch of other fun things, the 40-year career is no longer something you can take for granted. And that fundamentally changes the nature of our careers. No one embodies that change more than the Gen Z workforce. 

Young employees are now seeking a job, not a career. They don't join organisations to retire from them. Instead they see them merely as a step along the way. 

Which is why, the most rigid companies, known for being forts of loyalists, are loosening up to accommodate the needs of younger generations.

Tune in.

Daybreak is looking for a talented audio journalist with at least two years of experience. Check out the role 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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.

The world’s “most respected” test of school education—the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA—began this March. 90 countries are on the list including China, Vietnam and some of the poorest nations in the world. But India? We’re sitting this one out. In fact, India hasn’t touched PISA in 16 years!

The last time it did, in 2009, India ranked 72nd out of 73 countries. Only Kyrgyzstan did worse. Ever since, the country has been quietly working behind the scenes to fix its education system through a slow and steady effort to modernise how students are tested. The government set up Parakh, an ambitious body under NCERT, to bring all of India’s 69 school boards on the same level and align with global standards.

But can a country as huge and diverse as India really move away from rote learning to a system that values real-world problem solving and critical thinking?

Tune in.

If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them to us as texts or voice notes on Daybreak’s WhatsApp at +918971108379. 

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.

Would you like to become a sponsor of The Ken's events? Let us know by clicking here.