Daybreak

When it entered the quick commerce scene for the first time in 2021, Zepto was a disruptor. Now, it is the third largest company in the market after Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart. Recently, it secured its biggest funding ever at a US$3.6 billion valuation, mainly from its existing investors.

Venture Intelligence, a data provider told The Ken that the US$660 million funding is largest bet made by VCs in Indian startups this year. And now, The Ken's sources say that Zepto is planning to raise another round from “top-tier global VCs” at a US$5 billion valuation.

What did Zepto do to get all this attention from investors?

Tune in.

Also listen to:

Daybreak: Why we date, marry, or breakup with Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, Zepto & BigBasket

TFTY: How to get people to listen to you when you have no authority or title?

Four years, 15 cohorts, and roughly 1,500 students later, Stoa School has shut down. The poster child for alternative business-school education in India is no longer accepting new students. 

What went wrong? And what does it mean for India's altMBAs? 

Tune in to find out.

P.S. While you are here, check out the latest episode of The Ken's careers podcast The First Two Years, where host Akshaya Chandrasekaran delves into how to build trust with colleagues who don't trust you. 

The pandemic, as brutal as it was, forced a lot of businesses to double down on convenience and accessibility. Whether it was your online education or quick deliveries or at home blood tests. Just to be able to skip that dreaded visit to a hospital or a diagnostic centre meant so much to most people.

Accredited labs popped up all over promising to come right to your doorstep and collect your samples from the comfort of your home and that too for super affordable prices. Healthians, a testing lab startup has seen bookings triple since the pre-pandemic era. Now, the company handles 12,500–13,000 bookings daily, with nearly 75% of its business coming from home collections.

But while home tests are gaining popularity, whether you can trust them 100% is still under question. Phlebotomists and runners hold the keys to a sample’s fate and accuracy.

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.

On June 3, about 200 employees of the American management consulting firm Bain and Company’s India division received a rather ominous calendar invite. 

They each would have a 10-minute meeting with HR. But no one, other than the heads of the regional offices and the head of HR, knew what the meeting was about. 

During the meeting, they were all told they were being laid off. The layoffs took the consulting community by surprise, because it just wasn’t a very ‘Bain’ thing to do. 

What's going on? Tune in to find out.

P.S. While you are here, check out the latest episode of our careers podcast The First Two Years, where host Akshaya Chandrasekaran delves into how to build trust with colleagues who don't trust you.

Nothing about Nykaa is strictly its own anymore. 

Back when it went public, it had no real rivals in the beauty space. But since then, things have changed. 

Last year, India’s largest retailer, Reliance Retail, officially entered the beauty space. It launched an omnichannel beauty retail platform called Tira

Reliance isn’t playing around. In the last year, it has made one thing clear: it wants to completely shake up the country’s  beauty segment. 

But even the Reliance legacy to back it up, Tira’s success in this space isn’t a given. 

More than a decade has passed since Starbucks came to India. But the world’d biggest coffee chain has been struggling to achieve profitability. In the latest financials,  the company saw its slowest sales growth in India since the pandemic.

So far, Starbucks has managed to open around 400 outlets across the country. Meanwhile, Third Wave, a much smaller specialty coffee startup that started around eight years ago, already has more than 100 stores around the country. Its new CEO Rajat Luthra recently announced that that chain plans to open 50 new outlets in existing markets. Third Wave has more than doubled its operating revenue in the last financial year. In the year before that, it saw its revenue grew more than fourfold. It raised $35 million in a funding round led by private equity firm Creaegis in September last year.

How far can a startup like Third Wave go against a a 50 year-old global coffee powerhouse with the backing of Tata?

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.

At the Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, almost a week ago, Apple made a very important announcement. It launched what it calls 'Apple Intelligence', which is basically an umbrella term for all of the new generative AI features that will be available on certain models of the iPhone, iPad and Macbook.

It was a revolutionary announcement because with it, Apple has finally entered the Gen AI race. What took it so long?

'Daybreak' hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to The Ken co-founder Rohin Dharmakumar in this special episode.

P.S while you are here, check out the latest episode of our early careers podcast 'The First Two Years', aka TFTY. In it, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran talks about how to fight for your next promotion. 

The newest battle ground between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jim is financial services. Airtel already has two thriving ventures. The first is the seven-year-old Airtel Payments Bank which happens to be one of the three profitable payments banks in India. And the second is new financial entity called  Airtel Finance which is mainly aimed at Reliance Jio’s fintech disruptor, Jio Financial Services. 

The one year old Airtel Finance has already serviced loans worth $300 million. It seems do be doing pretty well. In fact, just last month, in an earnings call, the Airtel boss, Gopal Vittal talked about how Airtel Finance was shaping up really well. He said It served 400,000 car and loan products in FY24.

The story is similar with Airtel Payments Bank. It registered its highest-ever annual revenue of more than $250 million in FY24 and also grew its deposits by 50% from the year-ago levels. The bank has been adding nearly a million new customers every month.

But all of this comes at a time when India’s other fintechs are struggling with profitability.

Apart from the fact that Jio is still leading, there is one more thing that sets the two of them apart from each other. Jio Financial Services’ focus is to lend to B2B players and engage in asset-management services. 

Airtel, meanwhile, is taking a different path. The company is using the oldest tool it has—SIM cards—to partner with lenders for consumer-centric products like loans and credit cards.

But why SIM cards? The answer lies in the Airtels nearly thirty year old distribution network.

Tune in.

Bluestone and Caratlane set out with the same dream. They both wanted to sell everyday fine jewellery online.

This was a pretty alien concept in a country like ours, where gold and diamonds are seen more as an asset rather than just an accessory. And for a lot of people, buying gold and diamonds online is completely out of the question, even today. 

But both these companies were committed to the idea that there was space for fine jewellery online. And turns out they were right. Today, pretty much any major jeweller you can think of is selling their jewellery online. 

But somewhere along the way, they went on completely different trajectories. 

AI algorithms for cancer screening are being developed around the world. 

Most medical professionals will agree that there is tremendous potential here. If developed properly, AI can potentially detect various cancers at very early stages – which would make it easier to treat cancer and possibly even increase chances of survival. 

But all of that is great in theory. In reality, the general consensus amongst the medical community is that AI-led cancer screening just isn’t there yet. When it comes to screening, accuracy is everything. And There’s a long way for this technology to go before it is able to detect cases of cancer with close to perfect accuracy.