Daybreak

The Ken

Business news is complex and overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be. Every day of the week, from Monday to Friday, Daybreak tells one business story that’s significant, simple and powerful.

Hosted from The Ken’s newsroom by Snigdha Sharma and Rachel Varghese, Daybreak relies on years of original reporting and analysis by some of India’s most experienced and talented business journalists.

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804 episodes
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Episodes804

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June 10 · 13 min
Analysts say gas prices are about to crash. India still can't afford to celebrate
India just found natural gas off the Andaman coast. The energy minister called it "an ocean of energy opportunities." Considering India's energy vulnerabilities, this is a significant find, even if commercial production is a decade away. Because in the meantime, the war on Iran has doubled LNG prices, cut off Qatar (which supplied nearly half of India's imports) and pushed India into buying six times more American gas than it was before the conflict began. The US has already used energy as a bargaining chip in the tariff standoff last year, putting India again in a tough spot. But now analysts are predicting a global LNG glut. And while cheaper imports do sound like relief, they might just be another trap. Read Blas's piece here. Read Anand's piece for The Ken 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.
June 9 · 10 min
LIC has lost its throne to SIPs. It’s still the smartest investor in the room
Every month, millions of Indians pay their LIC premium without a second thought. What they don't realise is that money is quietly buying up India's most beaten-down stocks — the ones foreign investors are dumping, the ones mutual funds won't touch, the ones everyone else is running from. For decades, LIC was the only institution large enough to hold Indian markets together during a sell-off. That role now has company. SIP money has grown into a second pillar of domestic support, and LIC's grip on the market is loosening. But its investing instincts? Still the sharpest in the room. 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.
June 7 · 11 min
NEET’s switch from pen-and-paper to computer: damned if you do, damned if you don’t
Two million students. One lakh twenty thousand seats. And a paper that leaked before anyone sat down to write it. This is the second NEET leak in two years. The National Testing Agency was created specifically to prevent this. A parliamentary panel had already warned, after last year's controversy, that the NTA was too dependent on private vendors and lacked the institutional capacity to run exams at this scale. The government's response: move the exam online by 2027. But NTA's own tech partners have a track record that makes that solution harder to trust than it sounds. 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.
June 4 · 11 min
Why Big Tech is tokenmaxxed out
Amazon built a leaderboard to track how much AI its engineers were using. Employees gamed it. Costs exploded. Last week, the leaderboard was gone. Uber burned through its entire annual AI budget in four months — after telling staff to use AI "as much as possible." Microsoft cancelled most of its Claude Code licences six months after rolling them out. Three companies, the same couple months, the same lesson: that measuring AI adoption is turning out to be a very different thing from measuring AI productivity. 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.
June 4 · 24 min
Google is now Andhra Pradesh's first private electricity company. You'll be paying for that
Andhra Pradesh wants to be India's data centre capital. Google, Meta, and Reliance have all been promised space in Vizag. To make it work, the state did something it has never done before — handed Google its own electricity licence, letting it bypass the state grid entirely. The logic is straightforward. The consequences are not. When large consumers leave the grid, electricity gets more expensive for everyone else. Farmers lose subsidies. Factories pay more. Coal plants stay open longer than planned. And somewhere in Vizag, a data centre is being built 120 metres from the city's drinking water reservoir. Host Rachel Varghese and reporter Mrunmayee Kulkarni discuss. Read Mrunmayee's story on the electric grid load 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.
June 2 · 13 min
The AI gold rush is over. The emperors are cashing out
Anthropic raised $65 billion last week making it the largest funding round in AI history. It also filed for an IPO days later. So did OpenAI and SpaceX after its merger with xAI. Three of the most powerful AI companies in the world are heading to public markets in the same window. They're flush with capital but burning through more than they earn. Meanwhile, the startups that were supposed to be the next wave are being quietly absorbed. The funds that would have backed them are drying up. So what exactly does the future of AI entrepreneurship look like from here on? 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.
June 1 · 11 min
Why Swiggy wants to stay out of the Flipkart-Amazon spending war
Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety told Bloomberg in an interview last week that his company would stay out of the spending war being waged by Amazon, Flipkart, and Reliance in India's quick commerce market. He invoked the Airtel-Jio price war as a precedent, argued that chasing market share through discounts only postpones the problem, and said Swiggy has Rs 15,000 crore in the bank to play the long game. But Swiggy invented this category. And Blinkit, which came years later, now has twice the dark stores, twice the users, and losses that are narrowing. So is this a strategy or a rationalisation? 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.
June 1 · 10 min
Inside foreign universities’ desperate attempts to woo indifferent Indians
Seventeen foreign universities have set up campuses in India in two years. Most can't fill their seats. And a Rs 1,000 crore scholarship push launched last month is the most visible sign yet that something isn't working. The pitch is this: a western degree without the visa hassle, at Rs 15 to 25 lakh a year, which is roughly what Ashoka and Plaksha charge, but without the research environment or the actual campus. Students who wanted to leave India aren't particularly interested in a single-floor setup in a Gift City corporate building. So why are so many foreign universities suddenly this desperate for Indian students? Tune in to find out. *Correction: The host mentions that Emeritus is the parent company of Eruditus. Eruditus is the company that has partnered with seven schools for a revenue-sharing model, not Emeritus. Emeritus is a brand under Eruditus. *Clarification: The profit Eruditus posted of $400 million is independent of its partnerships with the universities. Classes under this partnership are yet to start and has made no revenue yet. 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.
May 28 · 10 min
India spent $33 billion trying to fix BSNL. It forgot the most important part
India has pumped over $33 billion into BSNL since 2019. But the person running the company finds out every three months if they still have the job.Multiple candidates have been interviewed for the full-time position but no one has been hired yet. The finances have improved in the last two years but the telco's market position has kept sliding. And the decisions that actually matter — where to launch 5G, which markets to chase, what kind of company BSNL even wants to be — are all waiting on a leader who might not be around to see them through. So what happens to a $33 billion bet when no one's really in charge? Tune in to find out. 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.
May 27 · 10 min
Why SIPs are not always right
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. *This episode was originally published on February 16th 2026. 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.
May 26 · 19 min
Microsoft called Copilot "entertainment only." Then killed it on Xbox
In 1998, a Metal Gear Solid villain named Psycho Mantis read your memory card out loud and made your controller vibrate on its own. Players were stunned. It felt like a genuine invasion. And they loved it. In 2026, Microsoft built an Xbox assistant that could do roughly the same thing. Plus some more. Track your history, read your screen, coach you through the game. Players were stunned. It felt like a genuine invasion. And they hated it. The viral hate train began in March 2026. Two months later, the new Xbox CEO killed it. The backlash wasn't really about the technology. It was about what the technology misunderstood. Game design requires a careful balance between challenge and ease that makes it worth playing. And an AI assistant wasn't really reducing friction, it just introduced a different, kind of insulting type. So where does AI actually belong in gaming? 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.
May 25 · 13 min
India's "family" problem
From airports to cricket broadcasts, India's family conglomerates keep turning up everywhere. According to the 2024 Barclays-Hurun report, one family's wealth alone equals nearly one-tenth of everything India produces in a year. India is running a version of the economic playbook that South Korea and Indonesia once ran — protect your conglomerates and let them do the building. South Korea came through it, at enormous political and economic cost. Indonesia's economy contracted by 13% in a single year. India is somewhere earlier in that story. In this episode of Daybreak, host Snigdha Sharma asks which ending we are heading toward. Listen to the episode on Adani's think tank 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.
May 24 · 11 min
District isn’t even 2% of Eternal’s business. But it’s enough to rattle Bookmyshow
Bookmyshow has spent two decades building India's live events business. It organised Coldplay's India tour, controls 70% of online movie ticketing, and has long-term exclusive deals with nearly every major multiplex chain. Then Zomato launched District in August 2024. In its first full year, it quadrupled revenue, edged past Bookmyshow on app downloads, and became the exclusive ticketing partner for half the IPL. It's still losing money. Eternal doesn't seem to mind. Because District isn't trying to beat Bookmyshow at its own game. It's building a different one entirely. 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.
May 21 · 11 min
Meta fires 8,000 on a record quarter. Unacademy sells for 90% less than its peak
On Wednesday, Meta began firing 8,000 people.This makes up 10% of its global workforce. The cuts started at 4am on 20 May, rolling across time zones. People found out by email. Meta's quarterly revenue that same week: $56 billion. It's capex guidance for 2026: up to $145 billion, almost all of it going into AI. This is the current trend in Big Tech: record profits, mass layoffs, redirect to machines, repeat. Then, closer home: Unacademy is being sold to upGrad for $218 million — over 90% below its 2021 peak of $3.44 billion. The edtech gold rush is over and what's left is the 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.
May 21 · 10 min
Adani’s big plan to own Indian aviation: invest in everything but an airline
Adani Group has spent the last decade building India's largest private airport empire. But owning nine airports turned out to be only the beginning. From aircraft maintenance to pilot training to ground handling, the group is now reaching into every corner of the aviation business. Airlines operating at Adani airports are already feeling the squeeze — on pricing, on vendor choice, on the terms of doing business. India has never had a single player control this much of the aviation stack. Are the regulators keeping up? 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.
May 20 · 13 min
Meta x Oakley and an ad starring Virat Kohli say “Athletic Intelligence is here”. Is it?
Virat Kohli's new Meta Oakley ad has 40 million views in two weeks — more than every other athlete in the global campaign, including the one that aired during Superbowl. The tagline says Athletic Intelligence is here. But the ad shows the glasses answering questions, playing music, and recording a slow-motion shot. The athletic part is mostly just Kohli. India's smart wearables market is set to triple by 2033. Fifty million Indians already make health decisions based on what these devices tell them. Studies show a 30-80% error rate on something as basic as calorie counting. So how intelligent is Athletic Intelligence, really? 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.
May 18 · 11 min
How one merger left FIFA with no game to play in India
Three weeks before the FIFA World Cup kicks off in the US, India still does not have a broadcaster for the tournament. JioStar offered $20 million. FIFA said no. Sony did not bid at all. A petition has reached the Delhi High Court asking that matches at least air on Doordarshan. The easy explanation is that FIFA got greedy. But that does not explain how the world's biggest sporting event ends up with no takers in a country with more than 300 million football fans. In today's episode, host Snigdha Sharma looks at what FIFA fundamentally misunderstood about India as a football market. And how one merger gave Reliance enough power that left FIFA with nowhere else to go. 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.
May 17 · 11 min
What does Zoho offer as India’s new official email provider: security or Indianness?
The Indian government just moved two million email accounts off NIC's servers onto Zoho's cloud. The reason the government decided to leave behind a system it had built and run for 40 years? A list of issues; including ransomware attacks, power outages, and even a blackout on a New Year's Eve that knocked out Parliament's website. The fix was a seven-year, 200 crore rupee contract with a private Indian company. Zoho actually scored lower than Google and Microsoft in the government's own assessment. Bur it won the assessment anyway. Thing is, India spent years building open-source infrastructure to stay independent. The question is whether it just traded one dependency for another. 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.
May 14 · 10 min
Bollywood invented the studio model, then abandoned it. Reliance brought it back — on steroids
Jio Studios is now the largest production house in India by revenue, catalogue, and box-office share. It got there fast. Stree 2, Laapataa Ladies, Dhurandhar, all Jio. The Dhurandhar franchise alone is closing in on Rs 3,000 crore worldwide. Meanwhile, Dharma, Excel, Maddock, and Bhansali have all sold significant stakes just to stay in the game. Jio simply does not need to. It has Reliance's telecom network, streaming platform, and marketing muscle all working together. The studio model that Bollywood once abandoned is back. But can Jio can build an identity to go with it? 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.
May 13 · 22 min
AI did what it promised. And that's a problem for Gen Z
Gen Z was supposed to be AI's most enthusiastic adopters. For a while, they were. Then the hiring froze, the jobs disappeared, and the tools got good enough to make the question uncomfortably personal. Excitement about AI among Gen Z is down 15% since last year. Anger is up 9%. But the more interesting story isn't the sentiment shift — it's what's happening underneath it. Writing skills degrading without anyone noticing. Complacency creeping in. A generation becoming, in one colleague's words, more boring. The curiosity is there and so is the dread. And, often in the same person. 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.