Earlier this week, Tarun Saxena, a 42 year old a Bajaj Finance employee from Uttar Pradesh, died by suicide citing work pressure. Saxena blamed the stress over loan collection targets and named his seniors, urging his family to file a police complaint.
Despite the massive size of its loan book, Bajaj Finance has still been growing at a phenomenal rate. But now, the non-bank has become a prisoner of its own growth rate. It has to maintain it anyhow.
And bearing the brunt of it all are employees like Tarun Saxena.
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Not so long ago, Birkenstocks were considered the antithesis of high fashion. For the longest time, the 250-year-old German brand’s characteristic chunky sandal was seen as nothing more than an orthopedic shoe meant for hippies and old people.
And then, everything changed. In the last decade or so, Birkenstock had a major glow up. It all started with the brand deciding not to settle for being just another comfortable but cringey sandal anymore.
So to make Birks cool the brand began collaborating with high-end fashion designers like Rick Owens, Valentino and Dior. Very quickly celebrities and influencers caught on. They were suddenly being spotted walking out of the gym, or a cafe with a pair of birks on.
And just like that, a trend was born. The orthopedic sandal, built more for comfort than for style, was the new it-shoe.
Now, the Birk craze has found its way to India.
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This episode was originally published on July 16
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India's biggest quick commerce players — Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto — are on a mission. They are frantically hunting for properties they can convert into dark stores.
Dark stores are an integral part of any quick commerce strategy. Especially now, that the lines between quick commerce and e-commerce are very quickly blurring. People aren't just ordering pantry staples anymore. They are also placing orders for high value goods like headphones and full blown air conditioners. So, dark stores have to cater to these evolving needs.
And things are even more heated now that Walmart-backed Flipkart and Amazon have entered the quick commerce race.
All that hype adds up to a mad dash for real estate, especially in tier-2 cities like Lucknow and Jaipur in north India and Nagpur in central India. And the unlikely winners in all of this are property owners and local brokers.
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Young independent doctors in India are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Take F M, a 32-year-old psychiatrist who has a clinic in South Mumbai. She’s spent a third of her life slogging through medical schools and internships to finally earn her super-specialised degree. But two years into her private practice in a posh South Mumbai area, she wonders if being a doctor is really worth it.
Nearly 50% of the total medical seats in India are in private and deemed medical colleges, which don’t come cheap. Sheetal Shrigiri, gynecologist and counselor at a coaching center for medical-entrance exams told The Ken an MBBS degree at a private college costs anything between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore.
Apart from the financial burden of the degree itself, once they become doctors, there is increasing competition from hospital chains and also the pressure of having a social media presence and to deal with.
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In this episode of Daybreak, hosts Snigdha and Rahel try something new — instead of the usual monologue or interview, they cover three of the biggest social media stories from around the world.
The first is Brazil's ban on the Elon Musk-owned microblogging platform, X. The feud between Musk and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes traces back to April, when the judge ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation. Musk refused to comply and the row that followed was, well, unhinged. It ultimately led to Musk shutting shop in Brazil and Moraes ordering the local telecom agency to block access to X across the nation of 200 million. A somewhat similar situation arose in India back in 2020, but it unfolded very differently.
Next up, host Snigdha dives into a recent study by the International Panel on the Information Environment that flags owners of social media platforms as one of the biggest threats to a trustworthy news environment online
And finally, host Rahel shares some of the biggest announcements from Meta Connect 2024. Spoiler: one was a pair of augmented-reality sunglasses that looked a lot like classic Ray Ban wayfarers, but worked essentially like a mini computer you could wear on your face.
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Check out the story about Starlink, host Rahel mentioned during the episode.
What put iPhone city on the map is that it produces more than half of the world’s iPhone’s every single year. The global demand for the Apple iPhone has only increased over the years. To keep up with that demand Foxconn hires up to 200,000 workers – a mix of migrants and college students – to make sure that the assembly lines keep running. Especially during the peak season which happens to begin right around now, from September to February.
Iphone city is the perfect example of the China manufacturing playbook. It is what propelled China to emerge as the world’s manufacturing hub. It’s pretty simple – Foxconn and companies like it build these large facilities, pack millions of migrant laborers into dorms near their facilities, and get them to work long hours, in often tough conditions.
But now things are changing. More and more global companies are adopting a China-plus-one strategy. And India is becoming a favoured alternative.
And as the focus shifts our way, manufacturers in India are pretty much replicating the same China labour model. But this model has an indigenous problem.
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DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "best opening lines in a book or a film."
Nicholas: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Story he refers to: The Most Memorable Annual Pig Parade of Kharagpur
Rahel: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Prithu: The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Avinash: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ruhi: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K Rowling
Brady: Rounders (film, 1998)
Sayan: The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R Tolkien
Sameer: Gangs of Wasseypur (film, 2012)
Sumit: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Rohin: The Body by Stephen King
Snigdha: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
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 murder mystery."
Back in 2022, e-commerce giant Flipkart’s 35 billion dollar universe was left with a gaping fintech hole after the payments app Phonepe was spun off. There a brief period, after that, when it wasn’t clear whether Flipkart would ever try to dip its toes in consumer payments play again.
But then again, this is Flipkart. Here is a company that has a finger in every pie – from online travel, fashion, quick commerce, logistics, even medicine delivery. Some may say it was only a matter of time before the company filled that gap and took another big fintech bet.
That time came in June, when Flipkart launched Super.money, a credit-first unified payments interface app. Emphasis on credit-first. But the thing is, right now, credit is a hill everyone is queueing up on.
So, does Flipkart stand a chance?
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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.
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A few years ago, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had set a target of 40% growth across all categories for Flipkart. But in 2023, it was still stuck at 20%. So the company is now on a mission. It wants to push growth, gain market share, and turn a profit.
So in January 2024, Flipkart's top execs along with the CEO came together for a meeting to outline a roadmap for 2024. Krishnamurthy wanted Flipkart to introduce a loyalty programme for top spenders, give out more incentives to ensure customer loyalty, push up transaction numbers and average order sizes, and also focus on brands.
In the same meeting he also admitted that the company had faced quite a few hurdles the previous year but he was sure they’d make a comeback and hit profitability before the IPO.
But here’s the thing, prepping for an IPO often has long term effects on a company’s culture. And the cracks are already beginning to appear inside Flipkart.
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**This episode was first published on 6 May, 2024
Meet Shaik Salauddin, a 38-year-old cab driver from Hyderabad, who is fighting for the rights of eight million gig workers from across the country.
While India's gig economy is burgeoning, the workers on whose backs it is built barely enjoy any rights or legal protections. Salauddin realised this early on and in 2019, after five years of relentless pursuit, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) was born. With over 25,000 members working for aggregators like Uber, Amazon, and Zomato, through IFAT, Salauddin is redefining the way we look at trade unions. To begin with, the union has no political affiliations. Instead, Salauddin encourages all of its members to understand power structures and approach the right people to drive change.
Thanks to his efforts, two states, Karnataka and Rajasthan, have introduced legislations to protect the rights of gig workers. Others like Kerala are working on their own.
In this episode, hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to Salauddin himself and to Prof. Vinoj Abraham from Labour Economics at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram to understand the significance of Salauddin's work and why it is important to protect gig workers.
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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 special shout out to Hari Krishna, from the Two by Two team, who kindly agreed to dub parts of this episode. Thank you, Hari!
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For nearly two decades, Abhishek Ganguly worked as the managing director of Puma, the German athleisure brand in India. In that period alone, the brand’s revenue shot up from Rs 20 crore to close to Rs 4,000 crore. Under Ganguly, Puma even managed to beat its longtime rival Adidas to become a market leader.
In 2023, Ganguly decided to quit and start his own venture called Agilitas Sports with two of his colleagues from Puma, Atul Bajaj and Amit Prabhu. Within a year, Ganguly’s company has managed to rack up more than Rs 700 crore in revenue.
The way Ganguly and his co-founders got to this point is interesting. Instead of doing the obvious thing and launching their own sneaker brand, Ganguly did something quite odd. Something, that even the biggest sportswear brands in the world – Nike, Reebok, Adidas – have never even attempted.
Last September, Agilitas bought India’s largest sportswear contract manufacturer, Mochiko shoes. This is the company that manufactures shoes for international brands like Adidas, Puma, New Balance, Skechers, Reebok, Asics, Crocs, Decathlon – the works. Ganguly’s logic behind owning the factory is simple – he wants whole pie and not just a slice of the margin.
He told The Ken's DVLS Pranathi that having the additional manufacturer’s margin in a price-sensitive market like India is worth its weight in gold. But there is a reason giants like Puma and Adidas don’t go down this road—taking care of manufacturing in-house is a logistical nightmare. That’s why most brands outsource to companies that are equipped to do it, like Mochiko.
But Agilitas is dead set on bringing the entire operation in-house. It’s convinced it can work and has also managed to convince VCs that there is merit in controlling both manufacturing and distributing.
Investors are betting on the Ganguly-Bajaj-Prabhu trio to pull off another Puma-sized victory.
But will the other shoe drop?
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**The host mistakenly said a decade instead of two decades when referring to Abhishek Ganguly's stint at Puma. The error is regretted.
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DAYBREAK UNWIND RECCOMENDATIONS FOR COMFORT FOOD SPOTS
Rahel: Kappa Chakka Kandhari, Bangalore,
Unnamed food truck at Utorda Beach, South Goa
Snigdha: Alu Dum from Bari's tuck shop near Loreto Convent, Darjeeling
Thukpa at Kunga's, near Planter's Club, Darjeeling
Ghee Podi Dosa from Umesh Refreshments, Indiranagar, Bangalore
Satyam: Litti Chokha, Jai Mata Di Food Stall, HSR Layout, Bangalore
Shayanika: Dosa and Puliyogare Rice at 3 Trees Cafe, Upper Dharamkot, Dharamsala
Rahul: Egg fried rice at Tenzin Kitchen, Koramangala
Akshaya: Okonomoyaki and fried tofu sushi at Dahlia, Chennai
Back when it was launched in 2020, Bajaj Finsev Health had a clear plan: it wanted to provide a complete healthcare package to its consumers.
And it did that by happily playing a supporting role in India’s booming healthcare industry.
Here's what Bajaj Finserv Health does. It is essentially a health management platform. So it facilitates things like doctor consultations and health checkups to its 400-odd corporate clients. Simple enough.
But four years later, the company’s vision has evolved. They want to take things to the next level. It’s clearly sick of playing a supporting role. So it has decided to step into the spotlight. The first step was to acquire 22-year-old Vidal Healthcare, which is a third party administrator.
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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.
PS. While you're here, here's the happiness survey for the season finale of The First Two Years.
Subway, the globally popular sandwich-eatery chain, is now grappling with sweeping changes in India—and not for the better. For one, the world’s largest quick-service restaurant (QSR) brand is moving away from the franchise model it has operated under for the past 25 years. In doing so, it’s also shedding the very thing that made it popular in the first place: choice.
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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.
Last month, a Twitter post a Bengaluru-based IT professional about getting a laptop delivered from Flipkart went viral on social. The reason? Flipkart’s quick delivery arm called Minutes that went live in select cities had delivered it to him at a Starbucks cafe in 13 minutes.
But Minutes is Flipkart’s third attempt at quick delivery. And the real test is actually around the corner when the Big Billion Days sale goes live at the end of this month. During the sale, daily order volumes usually go up by nearly 140%, which makes delivery delays unavoidable. Flipkart’s delivery partners who work with its logistics and supply-chain arm, Ekart Logistics, are stretched thin. And now its going to get even more challenging because Flipkart is going use the same delivery personnel for Minutes.
Not only is Ekart going to help Flipkart with quick delivery, it is also supposed to be helping it manage its dark stores. Can Flipkart finally strike the right balance between its e commerce and quick commerce business?
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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 the late 2000s when Byju's was founded, it was best known for teaching students how to 'hack' competitive examinations like the CAT. They taught students how to work backwards from the answer and use a bunch of shortcuts to get the highest score possible. The art of 'hacking' examinations was something that the company's founder, Byju Raveendran, was the master of. Or at least that's how the Byju's origin story goes.
It all started back in the early 2000s when Byju, an engineer from a small town in Kerala, began helping his friends with the CAT exam. Every time he would sit for the exam, he’d score in the 100th percentile. This was when he sharpened his ability to teach-the-test. The lore spread and Byju's was created. By 2022, its valuation hit $22 billion. The company was on a dream run.
The real trouble began when Byju’s began applying this hack method to its growth with unrealistic sales targets and billions of dollars in loans.
Fast forward to now, on Sept 17 2024, the Supreme Court of India is going to hear a plea against the NCLAT's stay on insolvency proceedings against Byju’s.
In this episode, we dive into the Byjus saga. How did it get here? And who is to blame? Hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to Olina Banerji, who covers education for The Ken. Subscribe to her newsletter, Ed Set Go.
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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?
From listeners:
Praveen: Partner (2007)
Sravan: The Intern
Anish: Lord of the Rings trilogy
From hosts:
Snigdha: The Perfect Couple
Rahel: Call Me Bae
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 "comfort food from your favourite spot in town."
India's tuition republic came into the picture to fill the gaps in the education system. First and foremost: they promise to get you into the college of your dreams. That simple but powerful promise has made this a Rs 58,000 crore industry.
But there is a flip side to this. It puts traditional schools in a rather precarious position. Students start trickling out of the system after class 10. Their parents transfer them to junior colleges or schools with integrated coaching models so they can focus on cracking competitive exams.
One school has had enough of this. It's tackling attrition by taking on these coaching centres directly. The first step? Hiring 200 IITians.
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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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"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.
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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.