Daybreak

Seventeen years ago, Reliance Industries made a promise that was supposed to change India's energy future. It didn't. Today, with a war raging in the Middle East, the Strait of Hormuz mostly closed, and Qatar — India's single largest gas supplier — unable to guarantee supplies, that broken promise has become a full-blown crisis. India finds itself caught between Trump, Tehran, and its own structural failures. The IEA calls it the worst energy crisis in history. For India, it may be the moment that finally forces a reckoning.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.

When your SIP bounces, your bank charges you Rs 500. The mutual fund that missed the investment? Charges you nothing. That gap is not an accident.In this piece, The Ken's Mutasim Khan traces how India's banks have quietly turned missed SIP debits into a revenue line — one that costs them roughly Rs 25 to process, and nets them hundreds of crores a month. The people paying most are first-time investors in smaller cities, often unaware the charge even happened.This is a read aloud of Mutasim's original story, by Snigdha Sharma, on Daybreak.

India's life expectancy has doubled since 1950. But 65% of deaths are still from diseases caught too late. Cent, the new startup from Practo's founder, thinks it has an answer: full-body AI scans that find risks before they become diagnoses. At Rs 20,000–30,000 a scan, it's already found critical findings in hundreds of patients — with zero false positives, it claims.But Cent doesn't diagnose. It doesn't refer. And it has no proprietary technology. So what exactly are you paying for — and what happens after it finds something?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.

Anthropic has spent years building a reputation as the AI company that actually cares about safety. Then, in the span of two weeks, it leaked an unannounced model, exposed its own source code, and accidentally handed hackers a blueprint of its most widely-used product. The fix came in 24 hours. The blueprint can't be unlearned. And the companies that trusted Claude Code with their deepest systems are still running on publicly documented defences. If the most careful AI company couldn't prevent this, what does that mean for everyone else?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.

The Indian government approved a ₹41,534 crore fertiliser subsidy for the upcoming kharif season last week, a 12% increase from last year. The move comes as the Gulf War has severely disrupted India's fertiliser supply chains, with urea prices jumping 65% in just 40 days. India is the world's second largest fertiliser importer, and the Strait of Hormuz carries a significant share of both the finished fertilisers and the gas needed to make them domestically. The kharif season, which produces roughly 100 million tonnes of rice, begins in June. In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma looks at India's fertiliser subsidy policy and what its really doing for farmers during this crisis. 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.

India is building data centres at unprecedented speed to support cloud services, AI, and digital growth. At the same time, cities across the country are struggling with water shortages and repeated contamination of drinking-water supplies.A United Nations report describes this condition as water bankruptcy. It is the stage where water systems continue to function, but only by drawing down reserves that cannot recover fast enough.In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma looks at how India's data centre push fits into that reality, drawing lessons from cities abroad where similar tensions have already surfaced.So as India builds for a digital future, the question is simple: who decides how much water that future can afford?**This episode was originally published on 22 Jan, 2026Daybreak 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.

India's new undergraduate framework was supposed to fix a broken system — where only 8% of graduates land jobs that match their degrees. The fix? Give students hundreds of courses to choose from, blend formal education with vocational training, and make them more employable. But when every course carries the same two credits, students do the math quickly and the easier course wins.Now universities are scrambling, edtechs are stepping in to teach core curriculum, no one's quite sure who's in charge and it's not really clear if this reform is fixing employability yet.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 a fintech conference in February, Razorpay showed a demo. A user ordered food on Zomato by voice and paid — without opening a checkout page or a UPI app. No friction and no redirects. Just a job done end-from-end.The same week, OpenAI quietly rolled back its own in-chat shopping agent.Razorpay is calling this the biggest disruption to payments since UPI. But agentic commerce raises questions that a demo can't answer — around trust, fraud, consent, and who's liable when an AI spends your money.Is India ready for that? Is anyone?Hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rachel Varghese, speak to The Ken reporter Mutasim Khan. Tune in.Buy your tickets for the Zero Shot event 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.

A cartoon reposted. An account restricted. A takedown notice with no warning and no appeal.India's new IT rules give platforms three hours to remove flagged content — the shortest window anywhere in the world. But a draft amendment published last month could go even further, potentially treating anyone who posts about current affairs as a publisher. Without the protections that come with it.For millions of creators, anonymous users, and global tech platforms, the stakes just got harder to ignore.The deadline to push back is April 14th.Tune in.Find the IFF email template here.Buy your tickets for the Zero Shot event 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.

India's civil aviation ministry issued two directives this March that pulled in opposite directions. First, it mandated full refunds for cancelled flights. Three days later, it removed all caps on airfares. The trigger for the second move: the US-Israeli war against Iran has sent jet fuel prices soaring, up nearly 60% in the US, and India is bracing for the impact. Airlines, already running on thin margins, are warning that fares will rise. For Indian flyers, the net result is this: cancellations just got free but flights just got more expensive.How did we get here?Tune in.Get your tickets for the first Zero Shot live event 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.

India wants to design its own semiconductor chips. To help, the government launched a scheme with money and tools for startups that do exactly that. But there's a catch — and it's keeping out the very people best placed to build this industry. The engineers who spent decades in Silicon Valley, built the chips inside your devices, and are now coming home. A regulator that's also a competitor. And a factory that was supposed to be for Indian startups — but probably won't be.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.

Imagine paying insurance premiums for years and then one day you actually need it. You're in a hospital, or someone you love is. And the insurer says: no.In the last financial year, Indian health insurers rejected claims worth ₹30,000 crore. Nearly one in eight claims were denied or left pending.And what's wild is how far back the problem starts. There are agents filling out forms incorrectly to earn a faster commission. Hospitals that know exactly what a surgery costs but keep the number vague on purpose. And insurers operating on margins so thin that scrutinising every claim is more about survival than greed.The Ken reporter Sudeshna Ray dived into this for The Ken's Make India Competitive Again newsletter. Host Snigdha Sharma reads it for you in this episode.Apply for The Ken's Event Manager role hereDaybreak 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.

Polymarket and Kalshi are two New York-founded prediction market platforms now valued in the billions. While both let users bet real money on elections and political events in real time, it is Polymarket — the larger, offshore, largely unregulated one — where someone made nearly a million dollars predicting US military strikes on Iran before they happened. Together, the two platforms processed over $44 billion in bets last year.In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma explores how two New York startups turned opinion into a tradeable asset — and what happens when the people placing the biggest bets already know the answer.India banned online money gaming last year. These platforms are taking bets on our elections anyway.Tune in.Apply for The Ken's Event Manager role hereDaybreak 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 decade, digital advertising ran on one idea: get to the top of Google. Buy the keywords and earn the clicks. That was the game.But AI just changed the rules.ChatGPT and Gemini now have over a billion and a half users between them, growing at nearly 200% year on year. People have stopped searching for links. Instead,nthey're asking questions and expecting answers. And those answers mention three brands, maybe four. For the rest who don't make it to these answers, it's like they don't even exist.What will those brands do? 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.

In 1965, Yoko Ono sat on a stage at Carnegie Hall and handed a pair of scissors to strangers. What they did next was entirely up to them. It was a performance about agency — and about what happens when you give an audience too much of it. Sixty years later, Sam Altman made a promise: OpenAI would treat adults like adults, and roll out an erotic mode for verified users. The market was there. Other players in the intimate AI companion space were raking in dollars. But after multiple delays, the Open AI plan was eventually shelved. So, why is a company known for burning cash, saying no to a revenue making avenue it already considered?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.

Semaglutide's patent just expired in India. The molecule behind Novo Nordisk's blockbuster obesity drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy, is now fair game for generic manufacturers. An 85 to 90% price drop is expected.Eli Lilly's Mounjaro had already been outselling Wegovy.For most companies, this would be the beginning of an exit. But Novo is doing the opposite. Why?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.

India's hospitals have been slow to adopt AI. Its government, however, has not. A new programme aims to train 50,000 doctors in artificial intelligence. And not just to use it, but to help build it. The argument is simple: engineers understand disease like an algorithm. Doctors know it's never that clean. So what happens when clinicians become co-builders?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.

Bengaluru's water utility loses a third of everything it pumps. It owes Tokyo Rs 10,000 crore. It bleeds Rs 80 crore every month.Its answer to all of this was an app — GPS-tracked tankers, government-backed, 40% cheaper than the market.But nine months later the all the app has to show is 10,000 downloads and a 2.8 rating in a city of 14 million. So why are Bangalore's residents saying no to the state's efforts?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.

From platforms like Cred, Zerodha, and Groww integrating AI assistants, to Sebi-registered advisors now using AI to generate personalised investment recommendations, the shift is already underway. And with nearly 140 million investors and fewer than a thousand registered advisors to serve them, the math alone might make AI advice not just convenient, but necessary.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.

Seventy years ago, Homi Bhabha designed a three-stage nuclear plan built around one idea: that India's future was thorium, not uranium. The science was proven, the reactors were built, and by 1996, India had already demonstrated a thorium fuel cycle at an experimental reactor in Kalpakkam.What it never did was take it to commercial scale. In 2025, an eight-year-old American startup did exactly that — with a fuel designed specifically for Indian reactors, and a former chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission on its board of advisors. So what happened in between?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.

India's telecom operators have spent decades controlling how signals reach customers indoors but that arrangement is now under serious pressure.A new breed of infrastructure companies, ones that do not own a spectrum and hold no licence, are taking control of how 5G reaches you inside airports, metro lines, malls, and office towers. The fight over who builds and who pays has drawn in regulators, sovereign wealth funds, and the Supreme Court.And it points to a much larger shift in who really owns the network.Tune in.

India's Northeast has always had money. Wealth managers are only now showing up to court it, and finding the welcome chillier than expected. Post-GST, a wave of newly banked business wealth is looking for a home. Sophisticated products like AIFs, PMS, bonds, are finding takers. But Northeastern millionaires play by different rules. They don't respond to cold calls. They don't trust outsiders easily. And they have little patience for managers who can't answer basic questions.So what does it actually take to win a client here — and why are so many wealth managers still getting it wrong?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.

Last Friday, Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur hosted 150 founders at Razorpay's Koramangala headquarters — not to talk payments but to let them showcase what they'd built with OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent taking the world by storm. The same week, thousands were queuing outside Baidu and Tencent offices in China just to get the software installed. The  open source agent AI platform is the same but the two approaches are quite different. China is deploying OpenClaw at a scale and speed no other country is matching. India, meanwhile, is moving carefully, deliberately, problem-first. So here's the question: is India behind China on OpenClaw? And is speed is the only thing that matters in the AI race?Read Inc42's report here: The New Garage: OpenClaw And India's DIY AI Agent BoomDaybreak 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 next time you pick up a strip of tablets at your neighbourhood pharmacy, consider this: the drug you just bought for Rs 170 may have left the factory for Rs 14. That's a markup of over a 1000%. And, it's completely legal.In this piece, The Ken's Mutasim Khan traces how India's drug pricing system works, and why the pharmacist, the doctor, and the manufacturer are all optimising for something, while the patient simply pays.This is a read aloud of Mutasim's original story, by Snigdha Sharma, on Daybreak.

In 1955, a man from a small village in Kerala paid 500 rupees for passage on a crowded boat to Abu Dhabi. He told no one he was leaving. He wasn't the first, and he certainly wasn't the last. Over the decades, millions followed  — and the money they sent back quietly rebuilt everything: houses, schools, entire towns. Today, remittances make up over a fifth of the state's economy. Which means when war broke out across the Middle East last month, Kerala isn't just watching from a distance. The hurt is closer home.Tune in. Want to work with The Ken? Apply 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.

India is drinking more — and spending more when it does. Between 2020 and 2025, alcohol consumption nearly doubled. Post-Covid, drinkers didn't just drink more; they upgraded. Four bottles where there used to be one. Home bars where there used to be none. Global brands that once ignored India are now flooding distributors with enquiry emails. But the opportunity comes wrapped in one of the most complicated regulatory systems in the world — 69 permits for a single brand in some states, margins so thin most retailers stock only five or six labels. India is still a teenager. The hangover hasn't hit yet.Tune in.Want to work with The Ken? Apply here!

Within days of the war in Iran, panic spread across India's cooking-gas system. Millions rushed to book LPG refills. Restaurants shut kitchens. A temple in Delhi halted its community meals. The government invoked emergency powers and warned hoarders they could face seven years in jail. But the panic revealed a deeper question.India now has 33 crore households cooking on LPG — one of the largest cooking-gas networks in the world. Yet the country's strategic underground reserves amount to less than two days of national demand.And interestingly, in last year's budget documents, the government told Parliament it had no plans to build any new LPG storage caverns. Almost no one noticed that line until now.How did the world's most ambitious clean-cooking programme end up with a buffer this thin?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.

Uber is one of the most recognised brands in the world. But in India, it's losing ground — to a government-backed taxi app, a newer competitor, and its own shrinking margins. So it's making a surprising bet: instead of fighting harder for your weekend ride, it wants to drive you to work. The B2B transport market it's entering has been run by specialists for decades. And those specialists aren't sure whether to be worried or not.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.

Akasa Air wants to be India's most efficient low-cost carrier. Founded in 2022 by veterans who watched Jet Airways and Go Air collapse, the airline is copying IndiGo's early playbook — single aircraft type, ruthless cost discipline, long-term thinking. It has 35 planes, 5% market share, and serious backing from the Jhunjhunwala family. But Boeing strikes delayed deliveries, pilots left, two co-founders have exited, and airport slots remain locked up by bigger players. Meanwhile, IndiGo is stumbling and Air India is still reeling from last year's tragedy. Can Akasa turn everyone else's bad year into its own breakthrough?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.

Karnataka just announced it wants to ban children under 16 from social media. Goa and Andhra Pradesh are considering the same. And on paper, it sounds like exactly the kind of protection kids need — platforms like Meta have spent years knowingly exposing children to addiction, exploitation, and harm, while spending millions lobbying against any legislation that would stop them. So a ban feels like the only way. But here's the thing: when Karnataka made the announcement, Meta's response was more compliant than history would have suggested. And that restraint might be the most telling part of this story. Host Rachel Varghese explains.Tune in.

Indians put more than half their household wealth into real estate. But almost all of it goes into one kind: residential. Commercial property like offices, shops, warehouses, barely features in the average Indian portfolio. Some investors argue that that might be a mistake. Commercial real estate offers higher rental yields, steadier returns, and in some cases, fewer headaches than the family flat. And today, you don't even need a crore to get in. REITs, SM REITs, and AIFs have opened the door to smaller investors. But the office isn't a free lunch. The risks are real, and they're different from anything most Indian investors are used to.This is a read-aloud version of this story from The Ken.Tune in. 

Swish launched less than a year ago with a simple promise: hot food in 10 minutes. It's already raised 16 million dollars, with another 30 to 35 million reportedly on the way. But the giants who tried this before — Zomato, Zepto, Swiggy — have all stumbled, scaled back, or shut down. The problem isn't the idea. It's the math. Small order sizes, a lack of dedicated riders and razor-thin margins. Swish and its investors thinks it has an edge the others didn't. But can a one-year-old startup crack what India's biggest food delivery companies couldn't?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.

Yesterday, Reuters reported, Indian refiners have rushed to secure prompt cargoes of Russian crude as the war involving Iran disrupts supplies from the Middle East. The crisis has choked traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — a route that normally carries around 40% of India's oil imports — forcing companies to scramble for alternatives. The shift is striking. New Delhi had spent months cutting back Russian imports under U.S. pressure. But with India holding only about 25 days of crude reserves, the war has quickly exposed how thin that buffer really is. So how did India's energy strategy end up here, between Russian oil, U.S. pressure, and a war in Iran? Host Snigdha Sharma explains.Tune in.

Deepinder Goyal, the founder of Zomato, has a new startup. It's called Temple — a wearable that tracks blood flow in your brain. His theory is that improving that flow could slow down aging. Doctors aren't convinced. Investors seem to be.Temple is valued at 190 million dollars. The science behind it hasn't been peer reviewed. And India has a rapidly aging population that could genuinely use some answers.So who exactly is this for?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.

When Ozempic began changing how the world lost weight, most slimming companies panicked. But VLCC didn't. Backed by Carlyle, it's opening more clinics than ever before. Because to Carlyle, Ozempic isn't a threat—it's just another doorway into India's beauty economy. In this episode, we look at how VLCC's new owners are turning an existential challenge into expansion, why its products are taking a back seat to real estate, and what the future of India's weight-loss industry looks like in the age of GLP-1 drugs.Tune in.*This episode was originally published on November 12th 2025Daybreak 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.

Across India, many heirs are stepping away from running their inherited businesses to run family offices instead. They see investing as more flexible, more global, and less tied to daily operations.Their parents built factories but they are more interested in managing portfolios.It's a practical shift but one that's changing how old wealth works and what it values.What's driving this change and does India's next generation of uber-rich business owners still want to build anything at all?Tune in.*This episode was originally published on October 15th 2025Daybreak 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 late January, a plane crash in Maharashtra killed the state's deputy chief minister, Ajit Pawar. It also exposed something few had been paying attention to: India's booming private charter industry, where demand is surging, corners are being cut, and the regulator is struggling to keep pace. There are now over 430 non-scheduled aircraft in the country. The top operator alone has 17 planes and 70-plus pilots. But between periodic audits, years-long crash investigations, and operators who'd rather fly with a broken light than lose a booking — the cycle of crash, probe, and forget has a way of repeating itself.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.

Private equity has been buying up some of India's most prestigious schools. The pitch: better governance, professional management, and much-needed capital for a struggling sector.But inside some of these acquisitions, something else is happening. Teacher training budgets are shrinking. Salaries are stagnating. And in at least one case, a school is paying 65% of its revenue in rent — to a landlord owned by the same firm that owns the school.Some investors have made it work. Others have changed something harder to measure.In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rachel Varghese speak to The Ken reporters Valli Vikram and Mutasim Khan about how private-equity firms squeeze money out of schools and what that does to them.Read the stories here:Private equity's priority for Indian schools: pickleball courts over teacher training by Valli VikramThe private-equity handbook for turning non-profit schools into cash cows by Mutasim KhanIf you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel here.Disclosure: Reporter Valli Vikram comes from a family that previously owned a school acquired partially by International Schools Partnership (ISP)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.

This week, on Tuesday, India announced a sweeping overhaul of how it calculates GDP, fixing a measurement system the IMF had flagged as outdated just last November. It includes a new base year, better price data, and a wider net to count the informal economy. The number seems to be getting closer to reality.But that raises a harder question. For a country that has built its global identity around being the world's fastest growing major economy, what happens when the arithmetic changes? And does any of it actually reach 1.4 billion people?Host Snigdha Sharma explores.Tune in.If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

The next frontier of AI isn't in your phone. It's supposed to be around your neck, on your face, in your ear and out in the world with you. Tech companies have spent billions on that pitch. The generation they were counting on to buy it coined the term "hammerbait" instead. Today: the wearable AI moment, what it gets wrong, and the one version of this technology that might actually be worth wanting.Tune in.Read Song's review of Friend here. I didn't start reading a tech review expecting a truly heartwarming take on real friendships, but it works.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.

China's stock market has delivered strong returns over the past year and a half. It has outperformed the US, which has long been the preferred global market for Indian investors. Even now, Chinese valuations appear relatively reasonable.But Indian investors face limited access. Only two mutual fund schemes currently accept fresh investments in Chinese stocks.Even if more options open up, experts advise restraint. The rally is tempting but experts warn investors from getting carried away.Tune in.Got a tip? If you have a lead for a great story that The Ken can pursue, please send it to tips@the-ken.com or share it through this form. To find out more about how to do this securely, read our blog post about sharing tips with The Ken.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.

Hosur built India's EV industry. Now it's running out of room — and a city many haven't heard of (mainly because it used to be Aurangabad) is quietly filling the gap.Sambhajinagar doesn't have Silicon Valley-style VC money or flashy government announcements. But what it does have is something harder to manufacture: a generational automotive ecosystem of factory owners, built over decades, now scaling up for an electric future.Toyota noticed. And Ather. And JSW. This is the story of how a small city in Maharashtra became the surprising centre of India's next industrial bet.If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

India hosted the world's biggest AI summit this week — 100+ nations, $200 billion in commitments, and enough billionaire handshakes to fill a highlight reel. But beneath the spectacle lies a sharper question: when will it be India's turn to build AI, instead of just buying into it? Snigdha breaks down the gap between infrastructure ambition and intelligence sovereignty. In other news, Mark Zuckerberg walked into a US courtroom as Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat face a landmark trial. The allegation? That teen addiction wasn't an unfortunate byproduct of the way social media works — it was built into the product. Rachel explains why this case could change everything.If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

Big Tech is preparing to spend $650 billion on AI infrastructure this year, a figure that rivals national economies. The focus is agentic AI, systems designed not just to generate answers but to execute tasks independently.The vision is software that can read your messages, access your calendar, contact your friends, move money and complete transactions without step by step supervision. In effect, technology that can act in the world on your behalf.To function, these systems require sweeping access to personal and corporate data. Critics warn this amounts to asking users to “put your brain in a jar.”What exactly is being built and who bears the risk?If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

Anthropic just set up in Bangalore, announcing partnerships across health, education, and government. The "ethical AI" company is positioning itself as the responsible alternative to OpenAI.But the Wall Street Journal revealed the US military used Claude to help capture Venezuela's former president—violating Anthropic's own guidelines prohibiting violence and surveillance.Now the US government wants Anthropic to drop those restrictions entirely. The company is caught between its founding principles and its home government's demands, which brings up questions about data sovereignty into focus. Host Rachel Varghese digs in. *The host mistakenly says NCPI instead of NPCIListen to my episode on Claude Cowork and the "SaaSpocalypse" here. Listen to Snigdha's episode on why ChatGPT is cheapest in India here. If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

Over the past six months, Blinkit has been making a structural shift that most customers would never notice. For years, its fresh fruits and vegetables were sourced by Hyperpure, its own parent company Eternal's business-to-business arm that also supplies restaurants. As Blinkit grew into Eternal's primary revenue driver, Hyperpure grew with it. In FY25, more than 60% of Hyperpure's revenue came from Blinkit.Then Blinkit decided to source its own inventory.Hyperpure's revenue more than halved in two quarters. It is now separating its books and rebuilding around restaurants.What does the split mean?If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

A mutual fund executive told our colleague something shocking: "SIPs are a problem." Part of the shock came from the fact that it  was coming from someone in an industry that was basically built on "SIP sahi hai."Now a new research paper backs up that controversial take—and the findings contradict what millions of Indian investors have been told about systematic investment plans.Turns out the marketing narrative around SIPs has some serious gaps. The math tells a different story. And with small-cap SIP assets exploding 6.5x since 2019, the stakes have never been higher.So when are SIPs actually appropriate?Tune in.If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

On February 12, 2026, Adani Power formed Adani Atomic Energy Ltd, a new unit to generate, transmit, and distribute nuclear power. This follows the SHANTI Bill opening India's nuclear sector to private firms. Both Adani Power and Tata Power, coal giants with long-life thermal plants, now lead the shift.Coal powers 74% of India's grid today. These firms profit big from it. So what happens when they control nuclear's pace too? Snigdha explores the conflict.In other news, top AI researchers have been quitting the big AI labs. Anthropic's Mrinank Sharma left over value clashes (X letter) and OpenAI's Zoe Hitzig resigned through an NYT op-ed, warning ads exploit chatbot user confessions for manipulation. Rachel breaks down how firms chase cash to scale and skip safety guardrails.Listen to our episode on AI taking over jobs here. And, here's another one we did on the previous exodus of AI talent.  Read Zoe Hitzig's opinion piece on NYT here. If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

On February 10, 2026, reports said nearly 100 NDTV employees were put on performance improvement plans, often seen as a prelude to layoffs. This comes after the Adani Group acquired NDTV in December 2022 for about ₹600 crore, followed by several high profile exits. A similar moment unfolded at Jeff Bezos-owned The Washington Post last week where hundreds were laid off and multiple sections and bureaus shut. Both Adani and Bezos run highly profitable core businesses. News is not one of them. So why invest heavily in an industry known for low margins? Host Snigdha Sharma explores.If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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 early February, Indian IT stocks crashed 6% in a single day—the worst selloff in six years. ₹2 lakh crore vanished. Wall Street lost $300 billion.The trigger? Anthropic launched Claude Cowork, an AI agent that can organize files, parse spreadsheets, and write reports autonomously. For the first time, AI doesn't just assist—it executes entire workflows with minimal supervision. Investors panicked, and experts coined the term "SaaSpocalypse." But is this really the end of software companies, or are we watching an overreaction? Today, host Rachel Varghese unpacks both sides.Tune in.Listen to our episode on Deloitte's AI blunder here. If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.

PhonePe is heading to the public markets as India's largest UPI player. On 21 January, the company made its IPO papers public, setting up one of the most closely watched fintech listings in years. PhonePe dominates transaction volumes, but it is listing after Paytm, whose 2021 IPO reshaped how investors value payments companies. Since then, Paytm's stock has fallen sharply from its debut even as its business has evolved. PhonePe is seeking a valuation premium while still reporting losses and facing pressure on some revenue streams. As investors weigh scale against profitability, one question looms. Will Paytm's market memory still decide PhonePe's IPO price?Tune in.If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel 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.