Daybreak

In this episode we fill you in on three standout stories from the past week. 

First, what ITC’s acquisition of 24 Mantra means for the larger organic food market; 

Next, Musk’s latest attempt to save Tesla; 

And finally, why Blusmart’s unravelling was an eventuality we all chose to ignore.

Check out the newsletter and podcast mentioned in this episode:

The latest edition of Trade Tricks 

The Nutgraf: Blusmart and the dogs that didn’t bark

On 9 April, as the world reeling from the tariff standoff between America and China, one Indian company quietly made history.

The stocks of InterGlobe Aviation, the parent company Indigo, India’s top budget airline, hit an all-time high. For a brief moment, Indigo wasn’t just India’s largest airline—it became the most valuable airline in the world. More than Delta even. 

Back home though, meanwhile, a different story has been playing out. Thousands of Indian flyers have been complaining online about broken luggage, rude crew, overbooked flights. When cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle tweeted his frustration about Indigo’s service, more than a thousand people replied to his tweet with their own horror stories.

Has Indigo stopped caring about its passengers?

But why would it? It flies nearly 9 million people a month. 

The clues, as it turns out, lie inside a grey building in Gurgaon that my colleague Rounak Kumar Gunjan visited recently. 

This is Indigo's training centre called iFly where hundreds of young trainees, often barely in their twenties, are taught how to serve tea at 30,000 feet.

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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.

 Here’s the thing about the Indian carbonated beverage market – for decades now it has been a two, sometimes three horse race dominated by everyone’s favourite black coloured colas. Pepsi, Coca Cola and Thums Up. 

But in the last year or so, a 160-ml bottle of cumin-flavoured soda has managed to do what very few bottled beverages could. It has challenged the Indian beverage industry’s holy trifecta – the Coca-Cola-Pepsi-Parle Agro trio. 

The crazy thing is, this isn’t some massive global brand that has just entered the Indian market. It’s a seven year old desi brand launched by three cousins in Punjab that was largely unknown until about a year ago. We are talking about Lahori Zeera. 

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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.

In 2021, Ashni and Avni Bayani, the scions of industrialist Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, launched their own venture – a startup studio called Think 9 Consumer Technologies.

The concept was simple – they would incubate new brands across categories like apparel, beauty, health and wellness and food; and then use common teams for marketing, technology and even product development.

Why? Well, according to an executive from the startup studio, the end goal is to be able to build them into sizable businesses in 5-7 years and then exit. It’s called the roll-up modelled and it was pioneered by a US-based consumer good company called Thrasio. 

For the Bayani sisters, this isn’t just another venture. It’s a full blown comeback. You see around the time they launched Think9 Consumer Technologies, their father’s business empire – the Future Group – was falling apart. It eventually went bankrupt in 2022 and sold everything lock, stock and barrel to Reliance Industries. 

So the sisters have a point to prove. But unfortunately not everything is working in their favour. 

For starters the roll up model they based their business on has been stuttering for some time now. Remember Thrasio? Well it filed for bankruptcy just last year. 

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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.

On 19 March, the Indian government slashed incentives for UPI transactions by more than half to Rs 1,500 crore for FY25. 

After it launched in 2016, UPI very quickly became the backbone of India’s digital economy–thanks to demonetisation, and well, the pandemic. Most importantly, it was the radical decision to keep it free that fuelled its growth. No merchant fees. No transaction costs. But the zero-MDR policy came at a price because payment processors lost more than 2500 crore last year alone. And with the new budget cut, it will get worse.

The system is clearly showing signs of strain. 

While UPI continues to post record volumes—18 billion transactions in March alone—many are asking an uncomfortable question:

Can India maintain its digital payments miracle without letting the infrastructure collapse under its own weight?

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Do you think people will stop using UPI if there is a small fee involved?

Send your answers 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.

In this episode, we dive into a topic that is as daunting as it is exciting — the future of careers.

First, we talk about a troubling trend in workplaces today — the rise of the unwilling retiree;

Next, we share some of the lessons learnt by students who graduated during economic downturns in the past.

Check out the stories and newsletters mentioned in this episode:

Why more 40-somethings are becoming unwilling retirees

Lessons from past students who graduated during economic downturns

The Ken is hosting a subscriber event! Join Two by Two hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan and three distinguished guests as they discuss broken career ladders, shortening career spans, and collapsing organisational structures. Buy tickets here. 

What happens when India’s biggest streaming platform decides it’s no longer satisfied with just airing Koffee with Karan and cricket? And it now wants to take on YouTube and Instagram?

You get Sparks–an ambitious experiment by Jiohotstar that’s is set on winning over Gen Z viewers, one short video at a time.

In February, right before the IPL kicked off, Jiohotstar launched Sparks. It is a free, creator-led platform of bite-sized episodes featuring the likes of Tanmay Bhat, Zakir Khan, Ranveer Brar, and Elvish Yadav. On paper, it might sound like just another experiment with content. But it is actually a marked product shift the platform is making after its merger with Disney’s India business. And at the heart of this strategic move is a  25-member team that includes former top executives from YouTube and Instagram. 

But let’s be real. This is like David trying to beat not one, but two Goliaths, that too on their home turf. Add to that the fact that this is a space where the rules are always shifting, creators are supremely loyal, and content never sleeps

In today's episode, host Snigdha Sharma is joined by The Ken reporter Rounak Kumar Gunjan who dug deeper to find an answer to one big question: can a streaming giant reinvent itself as a scroll-worthy destination?

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If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, send them 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.

In a little over a decade, Lenskart has gone from being just India’s biggest online eyewear retailer to becoming one of Asia’s biggest omnichannel eyewear giants. Needless to say, business has been booming. And the company is now inching towards its next big step – an IPO. 

But in the midst of all its success, it appears Lenskart may have rubbed some people the wrong way. The catch is that these are the very people who helped it get to this point in the first place –  the franchise owners that operate hundreds of its stores across the country.

You see, for the last few years, many of them have had observed a similar, pretty disturbing pattern. They’ll set up their stores with Lenskart’s blessings. And then things start getting weird.

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Check out our new podcast Make India Competitive Again —
Spotify
Apple 

The Ken is hosting a subscriber event! Join Two by Two hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan and three distinguished guests as they discuss broken career ladders, shortening career spans, and collapsing organisational structures. Buy tickets here. 

Back in 2019, an ed-tech called Scaler Academy decided to do for tech education what Masters’ Union did for the traditional MBA. 

The tech-upskilling platform launched in 2019 with a simple pitch: take AI, machine learning, and data science courses, get placed at top tech firms, and make a lot more money.

But five years later, that formula is breaking down. The very thing Scaler trained people in—AI—is making it redundant.

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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.

The Ken is hosting a subscriber event! Join Two by Two hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan and three distinguished guests as they discuss broken career ladders, shortening career spans, and collapsing organisational structures. Buy tickets here. 

Welcome to the world of consulting in 2025. AI is everywhere—from writing reports and making decks to crunching numbers. But you’d think the likes of McKinsey, Bain, and BCG would be worried about AI, right? Because AI reduces the knowledge gap between them and their clients. Turns out, instead of resisting it, they’re going all in.

The ones feeling the heat are junior most employees—the consultants. Timelines are shrinking and expectations are going up. Creativity? Who cares about that anymore. A former Bain manager told The Ken about an instance when a senior partner wanted a full client assessment by the next day. Normally, this would take weeks to pull off. The result? Rushed work and fancy words that sound good but don’t really say anything substantial. And worst of all—there is no  time to fact-check. There seems to be a real disconnect between what senior leaders think AI can do, and what it actually does. 

So what happens when the industry famous for having all the answers is now taking shortcuts using a chatbot? Also, what happens when clients find out?

Q for listeners: If 90% of your job could be done by AI, what would you focus on to stay valuable?

Send us your answers 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.