Daybreak

UPI is the trojan horse taking small banks into HDFC, Axis's credit-card empire

After two years of slow adoption, Credit-Line-on-UPI is finally taking off, but not with the big banks. Small banks and fintechs are leading the charge, while the big i

How India's rich are finding returns in the country's court backlog

Make The Ken's Daybreak X First Principles Autumn Playlist here. India has roughly 54 million cases stuck in its courts. Inside many of them is money someone is owed but

Amazon’s quick-commerce win will be less about speed and more about Prime

Make The Ken's Daybreak X First Principles Autumn Playlist here. Amazon Now just crossed $1 billion in annualised gross sales, faster than Zepto did. But it's still mi

One year of GST 2.0. Who's it working for?

Tap here to help us make The Ken's  Daybreak X First principles Autumn Playlist One year ago, GST 2.0 rewrote the tax on almost everything Indians buy — from soap to ca

A cancelled peptide party, and the questions it raised that Indian sellers still can't answer

India was about to have its first-ever peptide party with fifty guests, a mystery venue marketed only as "not a hospital," and a menu of collagen, glutathione, and copper

Why Indigo went budget and premium at once

For two decades, an Indian air ticket told you what kind of airline you were flying. Low-cost meant cheap and bare. Full-service meant meals and baggage folded into the f

India's newest iPhone prices hurt the people selling them, buying them and even taxing them

Apple's newest iPhones landed in India with price hikes as high as 41%. And for the first time in years, there was no discount on older models to go along with it. The m

7.8% growth. So why doesn't India feel richer?

In February this year, India announced a sweeping overhaul of how it calculates GDP, fixing a measurement system the IMF had flagged as outdated just last November. It in

Your kids might be looting your bank account in the guise of gaming

Kids all over India are spending real money inside mobile games. And most of the time, they slip by the notice of the adults, until the bill or bank alert eventually arri

⁠India's data law has HDFC Bank, Amazon, Paytm, and others shopping for consent

India’s new data protection law is reshaping how companies talk to customers on WhatsApp. Messages that once felt routine now carry legal weight and are tied to consent,

This week in AI: activist robots, doom-laden researchers — so who's the good guy?

This week, a 27-year-old researcher quit Anthropic warning AI could "kill us all," and the company's own safety lead agreed. Meanwhile, OpenAI says it cracked a 200-yea

India has more tourists than ever. So why is tourism in trouble?

India's foreign tourist arrivals slipped by about 8% from the year before to about 9 million in 2025, and a wave of recent reporting has finally made it a talking point.

The Government sold Air India to escape its problems. The fix is to buy back in

In 1967, Air India paid Salvador Dalí for a custom ashtray with a live baby elephant, flown all the way to Spain. (Yes, really! Here's the proof.)   That was the airline.

Nykaa cracked fashion at last. Myntra sees no reason to panic

After years of struggling to grow, Nykaa Fashion has finally found its footing. The past year brought a real resurgence. For a long time, the platform bet on building its

Rapido broke the ride-hailing duopoly. Now it's coming for Zomato and Swiggy

For over a year, India's restaurant association couldn't get Swiggy to return its calls. Then Rapido launched a food delivery app that charges restaurants zero commission

India's call centres are using AI to make agents sound American

When you call an Indian call centre these days, the person answering might sound American — even if they've never left India. A new kind of AI can change an agent's accen

Meta's $18 billion child-safety settlement has India looking for the wrong answer

Last week, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle American lawsuits over how Instagram and Facebook treat children. The app will now be rebuilt around American te

India got cheap Ozempic. No one knows how to sell it

Ozempic went off-patent in India this year, and everyone from Novo Nordisk to Nestlé has rushed in expecting a billion-dollar market. Instead, growth has already stalle

A worker-owned Uber is India's fix for its ever-expanding gig workforce

Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah launched Bharat Taxi, a government-backed, driver-owned ride-hailing service built to take on private players like Ola and U

The best savings product your bank offers is the one it advertises less

At least 44% of Indians have their money sitting in savings accounts. These accounts earn only about a fraction of what a fixed deposit pays. But even though FDs earn mor