Daybreak

For almost two decades, India was a stagnant market for one of the leading tech companies of the world. But in 2021, things changed and Apple’s sales graph in India began to rise upwards.

By 2022, Apple sold over 7 million iPhones in the country. And then in April, Apple CEO Tim Cook inaugurated India’s first Apple retail store in Mumbai. But compared to markets like the US and China, Apple’s numbers in India are far from substantial.

Yet, the company is looking to give Its Indian customers a premium experience, even if the sales don’t yet justify it.

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India’s maternity law needs to stop being an outlier

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

For the longest time public sector banks, as we know them, have been very reluctant about study abroad loans. And it was for good reason. They've suffered greatly because of education loans going bad.

Meanwhile, its a whole different story that was going on with non-banks. Study abroad loans accounted for about US$4 billion in the year ended March 2023. These were almost fully funded by non-banks like Credila and Avanse Financial. Their staregy was simple—sanction collateral-free as fast as possible. Over time they gained experience and most importantly, years worth of data.

Guess who is using all that data and experience gathered by non-banks to offer overseas education loans now?

The banks!

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Who will fund your study abroad? Banks want to be an option now

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 government of India launched Digiyatra, a contactless, facial-recognition-based passenger-entry system, in December last year. The idea is for those who sign up on the platform to avoid the tedious process of getting their ID and flight tickets checked by  CISF personnel at airports.

But lately, stories of passengers being forced to sign up for the app are surfacing on social media. Meanwhile, airlines, which are important stakeholders to make the entire endeavour successful are unable to see any benefits for themselves. Airports though see it as a great opportunity. In fact, multiple sources close to the implementation of Digiyatra told The Ken that the whole idea of Digiyatra came from airports themselves.

What's in it for them?

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What airports really want to do with Digiyatra

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 the longest time, consulting at the “Big 3” strategy consulting firms—McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Co.—is not only one the most sought-after careers but also one of the highest-paying jobs.

Five years ago, 30% of graduates from the top IITs with bachelors degrees chose consulting. For those from the IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, 35% of graduates chose a consulting job at one of these companies.

But ever since 2022, something’s changed. The Ken spoke to four placement coordinators of IITs and IIMs and they told us that these jobs, especially at the entry level, are not as popular anymore.

Why?

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A job with McKinsey, Bain, or BCG trumps everything. Or it used to

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How brands decide what your favourite snack tastes like

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.

Lately, India's bike taxi leader, Rapido, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. With numerous complaints of sexual harassment, theft, and even impersonation, the startup has been reckless with the safety of its customers, epecially women.

Despite these incidents, Rapido still enjoys a 60% share of the bike-taxi market in India. It clocks in as many as 750,000 rides every single day and yet, the level of scrutiny it deploys for the drivers on its platform is close to non-existent.

What’s is the bike-taxi not fixing these issues?

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How Domino’s defied the might of Zomato and Swiggy

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.

Airlines in India, from Indigo to Akasa, are on a spree to expand their fleet. Around a thousand more aircrafts will be flying the Indian skies in the coming few years.

Usually, each aircraft usually requires a crew of at least ten or more pilots. This means we will need close to 10,000 pilots. But we already have 10,000 pilots waiting to be hired.

The problem is no airline wants to hire them.

Why?

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Airlines want pilots. Pilots want jobs. Why are thousands unemployed?

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.

Last month, Unacademy did something very unsusal. It introduced a new policy, restricting how much its educators can engage online.
Ever since, Unacademy has either suspended or sent show cause notices to at least 50-60 of its teachers.

But Unacademy relied on its teachers to bring in students. It wanted them to be popular so it encouraged its teachers to work on methods to hack social media. It made them its sales force.

What made it make this U-turn and restrict the personal social media accounts of teachers? Many think the Karan Sangwan incident must've something to do with it but there is much more to it than what meets the eye.

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Unacademy stifles tutors after giving them free rein

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.

Between 2018 to 2021, incidents related to breach of cybersecurity in the auto industry rose by 228%. In the next few years, this number is only expected to get worse.

In India though, it is not much of a concern yet due to the low penetration of EVs so far. But it won't remain that way for long without proper safeguards in place.

The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 is a step in the right direction, but it has a long way to go.

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Ola Electric woke up and chose violence

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 few months ago, multiple Hotstar executives had told The Ken the same thing. “IPL or no IPL, cricket is going to be the platform’s most important customer-acquisition funnel this year.” It seems Disney Star is holding on to that strategy. The Asia Cup is going to be streamed for free on Disney Hotstar from today onwards.

Even after losing the IPL's digital streaming rights, Disney+Hotstar is the leader of the Indian OTT space in terms of subscriber numbers. But OTT is a complex business and just having the largest subscriber base is not really enough, at least not in India.

In fact, Disney has been on quite the downturn in India. And the way its headed, it almost seems like its making space for Jio to come take its crown.

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Project Manager is dead. Long live the Product Manager 

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 mattress industry in India this year is valued at around $2.5 billion and growing at a CAGR of 10%. Up to 9 million mattresses are sold in the country every year.

Among the top brands in the mattress market is Sleepwell, owned by Sheela Foam, the largest manufacturer of Polyurethane Foams (PU) in Asia Pacific. Despite having a fourth of the market share and conditions ripe for innovating and growing, the company had been in a limbo of sorts.

Until last month, when it announced it was acquiring a 95% stake in Kurl-On, another popular mattress maker.

What's in this deal for Sleepwell?

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Up all night: Capitalising on India’s big sleep gap

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.