Daybreak

On Independence Day this year, just six days after it went public, Ola Electric launched three new electric motorbikes. This was a bold move, especially considering that  electric vehicles haven’t really clicked with the Indian audience yet. 

The exception to that rule has been electric two and three wheelers, which had some unexpected success in tier-2 India. But motorcycles are not scooters. People still prefer their 125cc ICE bikes. So, it’s a difficult space to break into. But if there is one thing we know about Ola Electric, it’s that the company does not shy away from making bold business decisions. 

It has its sights set on becoming the next Hero Splendor. Has Ola Electric bitten off more than it can chew? 

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Three days ago, Rapido, the bike taxi company, became India’s latest unicorn after it raised $200 million at a valuation of over $1 billion. The funding round which was led by WestBridge Capital also saw new investors put in their money into the company. In an interview to the ET, CEO Aravind Sanka said that the funds will be used to expand Rapido's newly launched four-wheeler taxi service, which competes with Ola and Uber.  

But here’s the thing. 

Ever since it started, Rapido has consciously stayed away from venturing into the cab business. Until last year was happy to stay in the bike taxi lane and beat Ola and Uber there even though that it managed to do it, often, at the expense of customer safety. Now it has forayed into cab-hailing but it is trying a different route.

Instead of commissions, its driver partners pay it a subscription fee.

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If you've been wondering what The Ken is all about and why our subscribers love us, here is your chance to find out. Check out our special 30-day trial curated just for you.

To apply for the latest job openings in The Ken's podcast team, click here.

"Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly."

Last month, Judge Amit P Mehta of of US District Court for the District of Columbia delivered a historic ruling against one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Google was accused of abusing its dominance by paying the likes of Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to make its search engine the default option on their smartphones and browsers.

It is being called the biggest antitrust case of the century. And this is only the beginning. The Google ruling comes amid a growing anti-big tech sentiment. The general consensus is that this tiny group of companies — Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft — have grown too big and too powerful.

These companies are deciding what we see on the internet — the news we consume, the information we have access to, what we buy and who we buy from. At some point, everyone got a little wary of these companies. They started seeing some real threats to their power in the form of antitrust lawsuits and regulations. Suddenly, their every move was being scrutinised.

Have we gone too far? Manjushree RM, Senior Resident Fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, weighs in on the pushback against big tech, and how India is keeping up with it all.

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

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself 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.

Dunzo, the Reliance Retail-backed quick delivery company, let go off 75% of its workforce in fresh round of layoffs earlier this week.

But for the longest time, Dunzo has been an anomaly. Its a small company that has managed to make its name a verb. Like Google but Google is a giant.  Its revenue was just $7 million dollars in the year that ended in 2022. For perspective, Zomato made more than 70 times that amount in the same period,  But it did not matter.  Because it changed our lives and it became the kind of consumer brand that tech companies who do anything for.   

To understand the unravelling of Dunzo, we need to go back to two years ago when Dunzo was on a high. 

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P.S Don't miss our brand new Thursday segment, DAYBREAK UNWIND, in this episode!

This week's recommendations:

From listeners:
Ashish: The Bear
Joy: Panlong aka Coiling Dragon
Ishan Sarkar: The Peanut Butter Falcom
Apurva: Blue Eye Samurai

From hosts:
Snigdha: Invisible Planets: 13 Visions of The Future of China edited and translated by Ken Liu
                The Worst Person in The World

Rahel: Sisters in Sweat

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and be a part of the Daybreak community. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "comfort food from your favourite spot in town."

There was once a time, not very long ago, when every company wanted to be a fintech. Food delivery, ride hailing, e-commerce – companies that you would not otherwise associate with financial services. 

And when you think about it, it does add up. A couple years ago, fintech was where the money was at. Indian fintechs received nearly 9 billion dollars in funding in calendar year 2021. It was one the hottest sectors in the country. 

The inside joke among venture capitalists was how founders could raise a round of funding just by mentioning “financial services” in their pitch deck. What were earlier standalone businesses would now exist as mere features on their apps. People in the industry came up with a catch-all term – fintech-as-a-feature. Take Ola for instance. 

Zomato seemed to be going down that path too. In 2022, it had applied for a non-bank financial company or NBFC licence with the Reserve Bank of India. 

But since then, things have changed. From 2022 onwards, the amount of money being raised by fintechs has dipped considerable. In 2022, they raised about 5.4 billion dollars, then in 2023, this amount fell to 2 billion. 

What's going on?

Tune in to find out.

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

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself 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 the last decade, the number of people covered by health insurance has more than doubled. 

Of course, big hospitals – both the state funded ones and the private ones that look a lot like five-star resorts – are making the most of it. They are really raking it in. 

But there is a sizeable chunk of the healthcare system that is left out. The small, private hospitals that make up nearly 85 per cent of the industry. This is the ‘missing middle’. It’s disorganized and severely underfunded. It’s also stuck in a bureaucratic maze of claims and reimbursements. 

The patients that rely on these facilities are  very often stuck between subsidised schemes and private insurance. But here’s the thing – where there is chaos there is also huge opportunity. 

Opportunity that a new crop of health fintechs have identified. Enter Gmoney, Digisparsh, Healthcred, and Carepay. All of them are waiting to disrupt the ‘cashless insurance’ space. 

They’re coming to the rescue with plans to connect the dots between insurers, hospitals, and patients. 

Tune in.

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

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself 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.

For a while now, some of the biggest players in India’s third-party logistics industry have been riding on the success of e-commerce unicorn Meesho. As of 2023, it accounted for over half of the 2.5 billion shipments that were being handled by third-party logistics players. Companies like Delhivery and Ecom Express happily rose to the occasion and partnered with Meesho to handle all its order deliveries. 

For logistics companies this was a dream come true because most of the other major e-commerce players in India – like Flipkart and Amazon – take care of all their logistics in-house. 

Now, Meesho has announced the launch of Valmo, its own in-house logistics arm. Naturally, third party logistics partners are nervous. But no one is more shaken up than Ecom Express.

Tune in.

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

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and since when you've been listening to us and be a part our community. Also, if you have any recommendations for this Thursday's Unwind segment, send them to us as texts or voice notes.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself 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.

When it comes to electric vehicles, China is the crownless king. Nothing new there.

But what was news to us was when Bhavish Aggarwal recently announced at an event that his company, Ola Electric, is the world’s largest electric two-wheeler manufacturer and the fourth-largest EV company in the world. 

It left everyone scratching their heads for a few seconds until they noticed the fine print at the bottom of the powerpoint slide — marked with an asterisk, in tiny lettering, it said excluding China.

But you can't exclude China from the EV conversation because for the last decade it has been leagues ahead of the rest of the world. The Chinese government has been pushing for EV adoption — and all of its efforts have paid off. Multiple studies and surveys have found that China’s EV market is now the biggest in the world.

But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. While India is still in its teething phase as far as electric mobility is concerned, China is well into its teens, and we all know puberty comes with a whole set of its own problems. In China’s case it’s price wars, record breaking insurance premiums, and a threat to data privacy.

Are there lessons here for India? In this episode, we speak to two people from The Ken newsroom, who have been covering the EV space extensively — Nathan Narde and Lu Zhao.

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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.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.

A big reason when we choose to buy online instead of going to a store depends on how easy the e-commerce company makes it to return stuff. So far, with most companies, all you have to do is ask for a return on the app or website and someone comes to your doorstep and picks it up.

While e-commerce companies have been wooing you with the option, in reality they hate returns because reverse logistics are a costly affair for them.

Which is why e-commerce platforms like Ajio and Myntra are changing their return policies. Some are even blocking some customer accounts. 

But are customers ready to give it up yet?

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* This story was previously featured on Daybreak in April, 2024

P.S Don't miss our brand new Thursday segment, DAYBREAK UNWIND, in this episode!

This week's recommendations:

Snigdha:
To read: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
To watch: Kalki 2898 AD

Rahel:
To watch and listen: Hanumankind – Big Dawgs | Ft. Kalmi

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Send us a hello with your name and be a part of the Daybreak community. Also, if you have any recommendations for next Thursday's Unwind, send them to us as texts or voice notes.

There was once a time, not too long ago,  when you could walk into a young working professional’s rented home in a tier-1 city, and all the furniture would look pretty familiar. 

About a decade ago, everyone and their uncle was renting furniture from the two OG rental platforms Rentomojo and Furlenco. It just made sense. 

When Rentomojo and Furlenco were launched about a decade ago, they were like an answer to a lot of people’s prayers. It was a great deal – your fridge, washing machine, king sized bed and more would be delivered right at your doorstep. Use them for as long as you need, and return them when you are done. 

Cut to 2024, and things have changed. They are struggling to stay relevant.

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.

Want to be part of the Daybreak community? Introduce yourself here.