Daybreak

There is an unusual one-of-kind competition brewing within the Indian fintech space. It is so disruptive that its leaving founders and chief executives of some of India’s biggest fintechs feeling pretty intimidated and also helpless. 

The funny thing is, the brains behind this new competitor that’s left the whole industry feeling pretty blindsided is the Reserve Bank of India itself. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the banking regulator. And it’s called the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub or RBIH. 

The RBIH has been around for two years now. It's a first-of-its kind sort of company, because it is led by a central bank. Now, perhaps its closest counterpart, would be the National Payments Corporation of India or NPCI. We all know it for creating the unified payments interface or UPI. The NPCI is owned by a consortium of banks, whereas the RBIH is wholly owned by the regulator. 

It’s raison detre is simple: it’s meant to accelerate innovation across the financial sector. 

But unlike the NPCI, which collaborates with lenders in some way or the other to develop its products, the RBIH asks lenders to participate. But for the most part, a lot of fintech founders say that it works in a silo. 

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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.

Earlier this month, CRED, released its financials for the year ended March 2024 at a press conference. Cred claims to have about 13 million monthly active users. For the financial year ended March 2024, it saw revenue rise more than 60% to nearly $300 million, and losses shrink by around 40% to about U$70 million. Plus, its monthly transacting users grew by more than 30%.
 
Shah said how it's the top 10% of households who drive 60% of consumption. Even with UPI, he said, it was the top 30–40 million that drove billions of UPI transactions. And out of that target audience, Cred claims to have about 13 million monthly active users.

But Cred says it does not present the option to take a loan for many of its users. And while a little more than a third of them are qualified to borrow, only about 10% have taken on a loan. According to Shah, Cred has taken a deliberately conservative approach here, which is what makes Cred unusual and 'popular with the chief risk officers of banks in India.'

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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.

A little more than a week ago, we read a really strange piece of news. Apparently, an expert committee recommended the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to ban the over the counter sale of emergency contraceptive pills like i-pill and Unwanted 72. They suggested  women should be only allowed to access it with a doctor’s prescription because of concerns over side effects. 

This was weird for many reasons. One, levonorgestrel, which is what these pills contain, is one of the safest emergency contraceptives available in the world. It is approved by WHO and the FDA. In fact, it is so safe, that even breastfeeding women can take it.

Second, these emergency contraceptive pills are already a part of the Indian  govt’s family welfare programme. It was approved by the DCGI back in 2001. Ten years later, the ministry of health even made it a part of the ASHA workers drug kit.

Much to the relief of women, the DCGI came up with a clarification a few days later saying no such ban was going to take place. But the news brought us face to face with the possibility that something as life-changing as the emergency pill—the one saving grace women have when it comes to their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy—could be taken away, just like that.

Despite our progressive policy on the matter and the fact that more than 60% of emergency contraceptive pills in our country are sold over the counter, women often hesitate to buy it themselves. The fear of judgment and shame comes in the way of access.

In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose talk to two experts, Vinoj Manning, the CEO of the Ipas Development Foundation, and Leeza Mangaldas, a sex educator and author of The Sex Book, about about this chasm that exists between our seemingly progressive policies and our actual society and its attitude towards emergency contraceptive pills and women's reproductive rights.

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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.

Back in 2004, two sisters, Kainaz and Tina Messman, decided to turn their life-long passion for food and baking into a full fledged business. They set up Theobroma, a small cafe tucked away in a corner of Mumbai’s posh Colaba. Today, there are more than 200 Theobroma outlets in over 30 cities across the country. 

The bakery chain’s evolution has been nothing short of remarkable. It has managed to build a profitable business that too in a category known to have products with one of the shortest shelf lives. The chain now commands a valuation of well over Rs 3,000 crore. In fact, investors like Chrys Capital, Bain Capital and Carlyle Group are queueing up to buy the 20-year-old brand. 

But being in the big leagues has meant changing up its strategy. Over the years, Theorobroma has cut down the number of baked and semi-baked items on its menu, and instead filled their shelves with longer lasting products like cookies. 

It’s been able to do that because of its massive, centrally located commissaries. And these strategic shifts have paid off big time. Because now investors are valuing the company at 7-9X its revenue. All of this is good news for its current promoters, the Messman sisters and the private equity investor ICICI Ventures, which invested $20 million between 2017 and 2019. Both are likely to exit with handsome returns. 

But once that happens, where would that leave Theobroma? Most industry experts say that sailing through with new owners is no picnic.

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Daybreak Unwind recommendations for folk songs:

Rahel: Genda Phool, Delhi 6, 2009
Snigdha: Sketches of Darjeeling by Bipul Chettri, 2014
Anushka:  Mor Bani Thanghat Kare by Jhaverchand Meghani
Hari: Kalakkatha Sandana Meram by Nanjamma

**Correction: Snigdha mistakenly said Mame Khan instead of Mangey Khan while talking about the Manganiyar singer's death. The error is deeply regretted.

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "coming of age."

Today, most conventional or slow clothing brands like Lee, Wrangler, United Colours of Benetton, Pepe Jeans and Levi’s are facing a tough new reality where they aren’t just trying to outperform each other. They are also up against fast fashion brands that are now dominating the industry. 

In the process, many of these slow brands have lost relevance in the larger scheme of things. 

In this episode we are going to talk about two of these brands in particular – Lee and Wrangler. Both are international brands that were launched in India in the late 80s and early 90s. But neither really took off. 

But now, they are trying to make a comeback. And behind this comeback is a Bengaluru based retail company called Ace Turtle. It wants to build a mini version of Indian conglomerate Reliance Brands Limited. That’s a pretty ambitious goal, considering the brands in their lineup couldn’t be more different.

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Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

Earlier this year, Zomato acquired ticketing platform Paytm Insider. With this, Zomato was able to take its 'going out' strategy to the next level. 

Since 2018, Zomato has been holding live events. You have probably heard of its its massive carnival-style event called Zomaland. The idea behind it is simple: a big part of going to a movie, or a music festival, or pretty much any live event is the food and drinks. 

So by being associated with live events, Zomato is able to expand the company’s reach from just restaurants to other spaces where food and beverages are consumed. The Insider acquisition takes this to a whole other level. It will place Zomato in the big leagues and really shake up India’s live-events sector. 

But so far, this has been a space dominated by one player – BookMyShow. For a long time now, it has been the default choice for both users and big artists because it offers discoverability and visibility like no one else does. 

But at the same time, it has also been facing some heat for not providing a great customer experience. Case in point: the recent Coldplay fiasco.

This is exactly where a formidable rival like Insider could come in and shake things up. In fact, Zomato’s shadow is already looming.

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Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

The PM’s internship scheme wants to provide 10 million internships to freshly minted students over the course of the next five years. Students from premier institutes like IITs and IIMs or students with professional degrees like CA, CMA or masters are not allowed to apply. The idea is to address India’s problem of youth unemployment by making students from lower socio-economic backgrounds employable and giving them real world exposure.  It sounds great. If it is implemented well, the scheme has the potential to challenge deep-rooted hiring biases that exist in the job sector in India. 

However, 10 million interns in five years is making corporates uneasy. They’re overwhelmed because they don't know how many interns they can hire. Two million interns per year between 500 odd top companies is a lot and corporates are unsure if they have the resources and the bandwidth to train and retain these interns and then deal with another two million pool the following year.  The scheme opened up for signing up to students on Saturday, Oct 12. Within one day more than 1 and a half lakh students had already registered according to news reports. 

But because the scheme doesnt really have a sector specific approach, it is highly likely that we have a problem-solution mismatch coming our way.

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Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

Back in 2014, Ashoka University introduced India to the concept of a liberal arts education. The private research university, tucked away in Sonipat, Haryana, came along at a time when the cracks in India’s higher education system were starting to become pretty glaring. 

It positioned itself as everything a conventional Indian college was not.  Ashoka promised to offer  ‘holistic, liberal, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary’ education. Simply put, it was offering choice. And that simple yet powerful promise is what made it stand out. 

But ten years later, it is facing new pressures. 

The latest phase of the Ashoka story is not one that a lot of people may have seen coming. It's marked by a stronger focus on business and sciences than ever before.  

Case in point: the university’s thriving entrepreneurship department. In the last few years, it has become one of the most popular courses on offer. A big reason for its popularity is because students think signing up for courses like these will make them more ‘employable’. And that, fundamentally goes against what Ashoka stands for. 

So now, Ashoka is facing a dilemma: Should it give in to parental pressure and start acting like a business school, driven by placements and employability? Or should it just stay the course? 

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Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

About a month ago, news broke about Reliance's plans to merge Disney+ Hotstar with JioCinema after their Star-Viacom18 merger. While the merger is pending approvals from the Competition Commission of India, data from Google Play Store data shows Disney+ Hotstar had over 500 million downloads while JioCinema had over 100 million downloads.

While the idea makes sense from a consumer's perspective who has to deal with too many subscriptions and too many choices, things don't quite add up from a strategic perspective for Reliance.

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DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "favourite murder mystery."

Snigdha: We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson
Rahel: Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene (The Phantom of Venice)
Devansh: Blood on the Tracks by Shūzō Oshimi
Venkat: Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya, 2019 (movie)
Vaidehi: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Rohith: Jane Jaan, 2023 (movie)
Ashish: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Hari: Dial M for Murder

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite folk songs."

So far, buying medicines in India has been a complete minefield. Allow me to elaborate with the help of a completely plausible hypothetical scenario. Say you catch the flu one day and need 75 mg of the antiviral drug Oseltamivir. More often than not, we don’t really check the price tag of these drugs. But what if I told you the prices can swing anywhere between Rs 30 and Rs 125 per capsule, depending on the manufacturer and the doctor prescribing it. 

Now, variable pricing is not really a revelation. It’s a pretty common practice. The government caps the price of nearly 400 essential drugs through the National List of Essential Medicines. But that’s where the oevrsight ends. Generally, non-essential drugs remain outside this price cap. 

The National Health Authority, the body which runs India’s public health insurance scheme, Ayushman Bharat, is now looking for digital pharmacy partners to promote pricing transparency. The aim is to tackle this overcharging crisis. 

So in September, it went ahead and enlisted Marg ERP, a leading provider of pharmacy inventory software as one such partner. Now Kaushal Shah, founder of Evitalrx, revealed that even his cloud-based pharma software firm is on track to join the initiative in the coming weeks.

But here’s the thing. This one click solution is still a long way off. 

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Don't forget to send us your recommendation for this Thursday’s Unwind segment. The theme is “your favourite murder mystery.” Send them to us on WhatsApp as a voice note or as a text message. The number is +9189711-08379

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.