Daybreak

On February 12, 2026, Adani Power formed Adani Atomic Energy Ltd, a new unit to generate, transmit, and distribute nuclear power. This follows the SHANTI Bill opening India's nuclear sector to private firms. Both Adani Power and Tata Power, coal giants with long-life thermal plants, now lead the shift.

Coal powers 74% of India's grid today. These firms profit big from it. So what happens when they control nuclear's pace too? Snigdha explores the conflict.

In other news, top AI researchers have been quitting the big AI labs. Anthropic's Mrinank Sharma left over value clashes (X letter) and OpenAI's Zoe Hitzig resigned through an NYT op-ed, warning ads exploit chatbot user confessions for manipulation. Rachel breaks down how firms chase cash to scale and skip safety guardrails.

Listen to our episode on AI taking over jobs here. And, here's another one we did on the previous exodus of AI talent. 

Read Zoe Hitzig's opinion piece on NYT here. 

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at [email protected] with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

On February 10, 2026, reports said nearly 100 NDTV employees were put on performance improvement plans, often seen as a prelude to layoffs. This comes after the Adani Group acquired NDTV in December 2022 for about ₹600 crore, followed by several high profile exits. A similar moment unfolded at Jeff Bezos-owned The Washington Post last week where hundreds were laid off and multiple sections and bureaus shut.

Both Adani and Bezos run highly profitable core businesses. News is not one of them.

So why invest heavily in an industry known for low margins? Host Snigdha Sharma explores.

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at [email protected] with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

In early February, Indian IT stocks crashed 6% in a single day—the worst selloff in six years. ₹2 lakh crore vanished. Wall Street lost $300 billion.

The trigger? Anthropic launched Claude Cowork, an AI agent that can organize files, parse spreadsheets, and write reports autonomously. For the first time, AI doesn't just assist—it executes entire workflows with minimal supervision.

Investors panicked, and experts coined the term "SaaSpocalypse." But is this really the end of software companies, or are we watching an overreaction?

Today, host Rachel Varghese unpacks both sides.

Tune in.

Listen to our episode on Deloitte's AI blunder here.

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at [email protected] with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

PhonePe is heading to the public markets as India’s largest UPI player. On 21 January, the company made its IPO papers public, setting up one of the most closely watched fintech listings in years. PhonePe dominates transaction volumes, but it is listing after Paytm, whose 2021 IPO reshaped how investors value payments companies. Since then, Paytm’s stock has fallen sharply from its debut even as its business has evolved.

PhonePe is seeking a valuation premium while still reporting losses and facing pressure on some revenue streams. As investors weigh scale against profitability, one question looms.

Will Paytm's market memory still decide PhonePe’s IPO price?

Tune in.

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at [email protected] with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

In November, Decathlon began piloting two-hour deliveries across 10 Indian cities.

It's a surprising move for a company that just swung into losses—and it raises a question the rest of the sector is watching closely: can the economics of fashion quick-commerce actually work?

More than 50 million dollars has flowed into the space in 18 months. At least one startup has already shut down. The problem isn't speed. It's frequency, inventory, and unit economics that refuse to close.

Tune in.

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at [email protected] with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

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.

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at [email protected] with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

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

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at [email protected] with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our YouTube channel 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.

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? Host Rachel Varghese breaks it down.

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.