Daybreak

Why your Diwali shopping is more important than implementing MDR on UPI

Around mid-September, shops in parts of Ghaziabad started putting up signs: carry cash, because UPI wouldn’t be accepted.  They were protesting a new 0.4% merchant fee o

After making a fortune at the dock, Adani's next bet is a fleet of 100 ships going offshore

In October last year, a ship owned by Adani Ports slowed to less than one knot near Malta. It held that position for over seven days, directly above the cables linking Ma

Air India needs saving. Singapore Airlines is playing saviour

Air India's recent losses nearly doubled to 22,000 cr rs, and Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran keeps showing up at its Delhi Headquarters. Singapore Airlines, which o

What happens when you put Indian business on a 2x2?

In this Daybreak x Two by Two crossover, host Snigdha Sharna turns the tables on Praveen Gopal Krishnan to look beyond individual companies and industries, and at the big

India’s food inflation has layers. The onion is only the first

On October 12, government data showed India’s food inflation rose to 7.7% in September, led by onion prices that more than doubled from a year earlier. Back in May, onio

7-Eleven promised "Everything essential". It still lost to India's corner shops

“Mile har cheez zaruri.” Everything essential, right here. That was the promise on the signs inside India’s first 7-Eleven, which opened in Mumbai five years ago, with

Karnataka can’t fix its potholes. So it’s building an AI city

Every morning, a senior official in Mysuru’s city corporation swerves past the same potholes on his way to the office responsible for fixing them. Over three years, the m

Bollywood wants to offend nobody. AI is happy to help

In India, even the phantom of the censor board is enough to make filmmakers rewrite scenese at the very last minute, including those making shows for streaming platforms

Why your next IIT, IIM reunion will feel like a sales pitch

What happens when India's top institutes start treating reunions as fundraisers? The Ken's Santhom and Mutasim, both from IITs themselves, write about how one batch of

Apple and Google's app stores are the next battleground for protests

On October 3, Jack Dorsey's Bitchat disappeared from Apple's App Store in India after the IT ministry demanded its removal. It vanished from Google Play too. Bitchat lets

Nike needs India’s sneaker heads. But do they need Nike?

When the NBA complained about Micheal Jordan's black and red shoes, Nike turned the complaint into an ad, and sneakers ended up becoming a symbol of style and rebellion.

Delhi built a ‘safe’ surveillance city. It can now locate anyone in seconds

Your face caught on a camera, your vehicle number plate, a voter ID, a driving licence, even a police-clearance certificate—any of these can become part of a vast web of

How Flipkart Minutes became the company's redemption arc

For years, Flipkart has tried and struggled to scale the vertical it began to sell groceries. But as quick commerce platforms started becoming successful, the e-commerc

Adani’s think tank flexes its muscles in Delhi

A two-year-old think tank backed by Adani just got 14 of its suggestions, some of them word for word, written into a law passed by Parliament. That law opened India's nuc

India is burning through its coal buffer

This September was supposed to give India's power grid a break. Instead, on some nights, the gap between the electricity people wanted and what the grid could supply reac

Ekta Kapoor built her own OTT app. Now she's betting on YouTube

In the 2000s, Ekta Kapoor's serials ruled Indian TV every night on weekdays. Then as, audiences moved from TV screens to smaller ones and streaming, her company, Balaji

Can India build a ‘UPI’ for your cows and your gold?

Earlier this month, at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, India's regulators and industry leaders rallied around one idea: tokenisation, which turns assets like bonds, go

AI is Bollywood's cheapest new hire

Bollywood has been seeing tough times since Covid. Theatre footfall still haven't recovered, even as box office numbers soar, and budgets for filmmakers are only gettin

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