Daybreak The Ken

Four years, 15 cohorts, and roughly 1,500 students later, Stoa School has shut down. The poster child for alternative business-school education in India is no longer accepting new students. 
What went wrong? And what does it mean for India's altMBAs? 
Tune in to find out.
P.S. While you are here, check out the latest episode of The Ken's careers podcast The First Two Years, where host Akshaya Chandrasekaran delves into how to build trust with colleagues who don't trust you. 

The pandemic, as brutal as it was, forced a lot of businesses to double down on convenience and accessibility. Whether it was your online education or quick deliveries or at home blood tests. Just to be able to skip that dreaded visit to a hospital or a diagnostic centre meant so much to most people.
Accredited labs popped up all over promising to come right to your doorstep and collect your samples from the comfort of your home and that too for super affordable prices. Healthians, a testing lab startup has seen bookings triple since the pre-pandemic era. Now, the company handles 12,500–13,000 bookings daily, with nearly 75% of its business coming from home collections.

But while home tests are gaining popularity, whether you can trust them 100% is still under question. Phlebotomists and runners hold the keys to a sample’s fate and accuracy.
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.

On June 3, about 200 employees of the American management consulting firm Bain and Company’s India division received a rather ominous calendar invite. 

They each would have a 10-minute meeting with HR. But no one, other than the heads of the regional offices and the head of HR, knew what the meeting was about. 
During the meeting, they were all told they were being laid off. The layoffs took the consulting community by surprise, because it just wasn’t a very ‘Bain’ thing to do. 
What's going on? Tune in to find out.
P.S. While you are here, check out the latest episode of our careers podcast The First Two Years, where host Akshaya Chandrasekaran delves into how to build trust with colleagues who don't trust you.

Nothing about Nykaa is strictly its own anymore. 

Back when it went public, it had no real rivals in the beauty space. But since then, things have changed. 

Last year, India’s largest retailer, Reliance Retail, officially entered the beauty space. It launched an omnichannel beauty retail platform called Tira
Reliance isn’t playing around. In the last year, it has made one thing clear: it wants to completely shake up the country’s  beauty segment. 

But even the Reliance legacy to back it up, Tira’s success in this space isn’t a given. 

More than a decade has passed since Starbucks came to India. But the world’d biggest coffee chain has been struggling to achieve profitability. In the latest financials,  the company saw its slowest sales growth in India since the pandemic.
So far, Starbucks has managed to open around 400 outlets across the country. Meanwhile, Third Wave, a much smaller specialty coffee startup that started around eight years ago, already has more than 100 stores around the country. Its new CEO Rajat Luthra recently announced that that chain plans to open 50 new outlets in existing markets. Third Wave has more than doubled its operating revenue in the last financial year. In the year before that, it saw its revenue grew more than fourfold. It raised $35 million in a funding round led by private equity firm Creaegis in September last year.
How far can a startup like Third Wave go against a a 50 year-old global coffee powerhouse with the backing of Tata?
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 the Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, almost a week ago, Apple made a very important announcement. It launched what it calls 'Apple Intelligence', which is basically an umbrella term for all of the new generative AI features that will be available on certain models of the iPhone, iPad and Macbook.
It was a revolutionary announcement because with it, Apple has finally entered the Gen AI race. What took it so long?
'Daybreak' hosts Snigdha and Rahel speak to The Ken co-founder Rohin Dharmakumar in this special episode.
P.S while you are here, check out the latest episode of our early careers podcast 'The First Two Years', aka TFTY. In it, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran talks about how to fight for your next promotion.