Daybreak

2024 was a defining year for Saregama, one of India’s oldest music labels. 

This is a company that has been around for well over a century. For a long time now, it has been associated with the kind of music your parents and grandparents grew up listening to – the classics, evergreen Bollywood numbers, Ghazals, Carnatic music…you get the drift.  

But this year, something changed. Saregama made it clear that it was done banking on old melodies alone. It has been on a mission to make fresh hits. And that mission has largely been successful thanks to Youtube. 

But there is a flip side to this strategy. In the Youtube-Saregama relationship, the former holds all the power. 

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.

*This episode was originally published on September 24, 2024

Half of the world’s electric cars are on China’s roads, thanks to a wave of smart incentives for both consumers and manufacturers, such as tax breaks and purchase subsidies. The payoff is tangible: the smog that once shrouded some major cities has lifted, and road noise has dropped significantly.

But it brought unexpected costs and challenges that nobody saw coming. 

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.

Remember that time in 2022 when India’s top digital payments companies Phonepe, Paytm*, and Bharatpe were in a no-holds-barred turf war? Looking back, it seemed like there was news almost every other day about some tiff between the three market leaders. In fact, former managing director of Bharatpe, Ashneer Grover, has spoken on record about “street fights” between companies’ employees over QR codes. 

A little more than two years later, there’s only calm. QR code scuffles are over. No one is beating each other up. 

Both the peer-to-merchant and peer-to-peer payments space have settled down into a tripartite peace. Phonepe, Google Pay, and Paytm—in order of market share—are the clear leaders. This raises some interesting questions: How many UPI apps do you have on your phone? And do you have a favourite one? We may have multiple, but only one of them is ever really used. No amount of cashbacks or fancy user experiences make people want to switch to something else. 

Is it brand loyalty that is preventing users from churning out of old platforms and into new ones? 

A former Paytm executive told The Ken recently, “There is zero brand loyalty for UPI payments apps…” 

Well then, what is happening?

*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in 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.

As 2024 draws to a close, Daybreak hosts Snigdha and Rahel look back at some of their biggest hits and misses this year.

Check out the episodes that made it to their round up.

Hits —

Rahel's choice: Successful Women are Freezing Their Eggs and That's on men
Snigdha's choice: Why India's Biggest Employer of Female Gig Workers Refuses to listen to its own workforce
Audience choice: What do women really want? A F*** off fund

Misses —

Rahel's choice: Are run clubs like rehab for the chronically online?
Snigdha's choice: Why aren't we scared of chemicals in our skincare anymore?
Audience choice: How India's 40-somethings are redefining career longevity?

And that's a wrap! We will be back with new episodes next year.

Stay tuned!

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 real-estate market of Delhi-NCR is an anomaly. The Ken spoke to a bunch of potential homebuyers who are looking for premium apartments with budgets of up to 2.5 crore rupees.  Real-estate experts are telling them to give up on their dreams. Lately, the national capital has been facing an acute supply crunch of new housing projects, especially in the mid-premium segment (80 lakh to 2 crore rupees) depending on the city.   Delhi NCR has witnessed the sharpest fall in inventory in this segment in the last few years.   

Real-estate prices in turn have shot up far beyond the reach of most buyers. But it’s not like demand for housing has gone down because of these sky high prices.  People are still buying tens of thousands of these mid-premium houses in and around Delhi.   

So the obvious question then is: why aren’t more residential housing units being built? 

*This episode was first published on 12 Sept 2024

No one was surprised by Vishal Mega Mart’s stellar market debut last week. After all, institutional and retail investors oversubscribed 27X to the Rs 8,000 crore IPO. So when it listed at a considerable premium, most people saw it coming. 

But, how did the 23-year-old value retailer get to this point? 

Well, in the last few years, Vishal, which has 70 per cent of its stores in tier 2 and smaller cities, has managed to outpace its rivals in the same space, such as Vmart and V2 Retail. 

Today, it pegs itself in the same league as Dmart and Trent, despite the fact that the retailer is still much smaller in scale. But this comparison has given Vishal a compelling story to tell about itself. 

In this episode, we delve into Vishal Mega Mart’s current position in India’s retail landscape. 

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.

For most Indians, a cup of good chai is a comfort that’s accessible. Coffee chains, on the other hand, are mostly premium. And it all adds up when one considers the fact that Indians consume 20 cups of tea for every cup of coffee. But we live in a time when opulence and luxury makes us go google eyed. In the Indian consumer market, premiumisation is no longer a choice. Even chai cafes chains don’t really have an option but to take the premium path.

But Chaayos, the largest tea cafe chain in India, has decided not to go where the wind blows. And Nitin Saluja, the 40-year-old founder of Chaayos, says that this decision is actually based on its customers.

Over the last two years, nearly 200 of them have clearly indicated their unanimous opinion to the company: don’t become like Starbucks.

Tune in.

** This episode was first published on 18 July 2024

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 isn't your usual Daybreak Friday episode. 

Considering it's the end of the year, we thought we’d ask the reporters in our newsroom to talk to us about the stories they liked best. This week, we have DVLS Pranathi and Shristi Achar on the show.

They share two of their favourite stories — First, Pranathi tells us about an unconventional new homegrown footwear company started by three former Puma executives. 

Next, Shristi speaks to us about why Karnataka’s EV battery making ambitions are stuck in low gear.

Shristhi's recommendation: How the stock market is fuelling India’s grandest-ever wedding season  

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.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

Category managers have shifted from routine e-commerce roles to powerful decision-makers in quick commerce. They now manage the limited shelf space in dark stores and decide which products get visibility on platforms like Instamart, Zepto, and Blinkit. 

Naturally, brands are aggressively courting them, with over 30,000 requests every month for just 150 slots. From hosting parties to taking them out for drinks, brands are pulling out all the stops. 

Meanwhile, category managers are urging brands to invest more in ads and marketing to stay competitive.

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.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

Back in 2016, the Internet and Mobile Association of India set up an all new club for what was then a very small cohort of digital leaders in corporate India. It was called the all-India Chief Digital Officer club. 

Back then, there were only about five-six CDOs that were members. The point of the initiative was to give legitimacy to this new, emerging role. But soon enough, the initiative fizzled out. Not because the role didn’t take off or anything. Actually, the opposite. The initiative became redundant because the role became even more popular than they had anticipated. So it started with 5-6 members, but within the next four years its membership rose to 50 and then doubled the next year. 

You see, digital transformation has become THE buzzword for corporate India. And in the process, the CDO has become part of the companies top leadership. 

But the question is — where does that leave the CIO?

Tune in.

P.S The Ken’s podcast team is hiring! Here’s what we’re looking for.

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.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here