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Updated 2025-12-08
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2025-12-16

How India became the world's biggest AI lab, and not an architect

India has the engineers, the users, and the ambition to be an AI superpower. But as OpenAI floods the market at ₹399/month, Google invests $15 billion, and global giants harvest Indian data, a critical question emerges: Will India settle for being the world's largest AI user, or can it become a builder that matters? From DeepSeek's $6M shock to the race for AI sovereignty, we connect the dots on India's AI moment—and what could be next. Tune in. Episodes mentioned: Deepseek: Spotify | Apple | Youtube ChatGPT 399 Plan: Spotify | Apple | YoutubeIndia's Sovereign AI: Spotify | Apple | YoutubeDeloitte's AI blunder: Spotify | Apple | YoutubeAI Browsers: Spotify | Apple | YoutubeWhy AI minds are refusing big bucks: Spotify | Apple | YoutubeCall Centres are being rewritten by AI: Spotify | Apple | YoutubeWrite to us with your thoughts at podcast@the-ken.com! 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.

2025-12-16

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13 min
2025-11-27

Your phone number is at the center of a fight between Zomato and Indian restaurants

India's restaurants just won a four-year battle for customer data access from Zomato and Swiggy. But here's the twist: this "victory" comes precisely as the industry becomes more platform-dependent than ever. While the NRAI celebrates phone number sharing, investors are pouring billions into QSRs and cloud kitchens—business models that assume permanent platform capture. With delivery platforms extracting 16-30% commissions and controlling discovery, logistics, and customer acquisition, data sharing is less a power shift and more a pressure valve. The real story? Restaurants are betting that platform-enabled scale will overcome platform-extracted margins. 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.

2025-11-27

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11 min
2D AGO

How surging property prices are turning dream homes into pipe dreams

Property prices across Indian cities have gone through the roof, up by nearly 30% in the last two years. This along with ever increasing rent and general cost of living has made planning for the future quite challenging for those in their 20s and 30s. So has the idea of home ownership changed among the younger generations, like in many Western countries where more and more people are choosing to rent rather than buy? Or are we still attached to the idea of owning a home? And what’s behind these record-breaking property prices anyway? 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.

2d ago

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33 min
2025-12-25

Can Duolingo keep India speaking when AI can translate everything?

AI is changing how people learn languages and India is where the shift is showing up first. Duolingo has scale here but very little conversion. At the same time AI tools now offer practice, feedback, and even conversation for free, while Indian platforms focus on jobs, exams, and real outcomes. In this episode, we look at how language learning is being reshaped in India, why translation is no longer the whole story, and what Duolingo is really defending. Tune in.

2025-12-25

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12 min
2025-08-31

When India’s billionaires fight over legacy, who do they call?

From the very public Ambani family feud to the private struggles of the Raymond family, the transfer of wealth and power has often been messy. With over 850,000 millionaires in India, and many of them looking to transition their wealth in the next decade, there's a growing, yet largely unaddressed market for a specific type of expert: the succession coach. Part mediator, part therapist, part strategist—they do more than just advise. They keep dynasties from tearing themselves apart. 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.

2025-08-31

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13 min
2025-12-15

Part 1: Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai on using empathy, customer experience, and resilience to both survive and thrive

Hello and welcome back to First Principles. This is the part 1 of the 49th episode since we started, or the 8th episode of season 3. In this episode, I sit down with Aloke Bajpai, Group CEO of Ixigo, one of India's fastest-growing and most downloaded travel platforms. While most Indian OTAs followed the Western template of flights-first followed by hotels, Aloke and his co-founder Rajnish took a radically different path. The one that would take nearly 14 years before Ixigo became a full-blown OTA. Aloke takes us through Ixigo's unconventional journey, starting as a meta-search engine in 2007 that couldn't raise funding for over a year. We explore how the insight that 96% of Indians don't fly, led them to build a train-first platform, spending four years creating utility features without any monetization. He breaks down the technical innovation behind solving India-specific problems. Right from predicting waitlist confirmations using machine learning to creating a crowdsourced running status system using cell tower IDs when GPS and internet failed along railway tracks. A central theme is resilience through empathy. Aloke shares how near-death experiences during the 2008 global financial crisis and COVID-19 shaped Ixigo's culture. We discuss the founder's decision to go to zero salary, the whiteboard moment where the entire team transparently decided on salary cuts, and the contrarian choice to proactively refund customers during COVID even when the company was running out of money. Finally, Aloke argues that peace of mind, not tickets, is what travel companies should really be selling.

2025-12-15

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1h 2m
2025-11-05

How BlackBerry’s revival story is running through India’s roads

Remember Blackberry? The phone that once ruled business meetings and earned the nickname “Crackberry”? It’s making a comeback—but this time, not in your pocket. In this episode, we dive into Blackberry’s surprising pivot from smartphones to car software. Its QNX system now runs the brains of over 250 million vehicles worldwide, powering everything from navigation to safety. And the nerve centre of this quiet comeback? India. With its Hyderabad hub, partnerships with Mahindra, Tata Motors, and Tata Elxsi, and a growing EV ecosystem, India is where Blackberry’s next growth story is being coded. From BBM to EVs, this is the story of how a fallen tech icon found new life—on the road. 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.

2025-11-05

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13 min
2024-10-22

How NRI quota became the golden ticket to med school for rich Indians

Late last month, the Supreme Court made a very strong statement about NRI quotas at medical colleges. It essentially said that the whole thing was a fraud. But the thing is, since the Supreme Court called it out, the practice has only gotten murkier. So The Ken reporter Alifiya Khan conducted an investigation. She scoured several social networking sites only to find countless posts promising seats in medical institutes to aspirants who scored way below the required cutoff and even those who were hardly eligible for the NRI quota. The only requirement? Well, applicants need to be ready to cough up some big bucks. The Ken wanted to see if there was something to these claims. So Alifiya went undercover. She posed as the sibling of a Maharashtra-based MBBS aspirant, with a measly NEET score of 180. She then contacted four education consultancies. And all of them, quite unsurprisingly, had boilerplate replies. The running thread – regardless of your score, they would hook you up with a medical college. And yet, most people high up in medical colleges don’t want to let go of NRI quota. Because in many ways it is what keeps the whole system afloat. What’s going on? Stay tuned.

2024-10-22

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10 min
2025-09-01

Why Peyush Bansal did the opposite of every rulebook move before Lenskart's IPO

When Peyush Bansal spent more than Rs 200 crore to buy back Lenskart shares from investors at a deep discount, it wasn’t just a bold trade. It was a rare move few founders manage. He essentially clawed back equity before heading into an IPO. And this extra stake pushed him into “promoter” status, a role many startup leaders once avoided but are now racing to embrace. Why the sudden shift? What does it reveal about founders, investors, and regulators in India’s IPO boom? 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.

2025-09-01

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10 min
2024-10-24

Truecaller beat Trai to the punch with spam-call fix

For a country that boasts of its digital public goods infrastructure like Aadhar and UPI, it is a wonder why telecom has been so ignored. After nearly 1500 crore rupees of was reportedly lost to digital fraud in the financial year 2024, the govt’s Trai is finally scrambling to catch up with CPAN or the Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) service, its own version of Truecaller. Truecaller, the Swedish call-screening company, meanwhile, has been holding the fort for a while now. Users count on it to save them from spam and fraud calls. While TrueCaller maybe looking like a hero in this situation, it is a private company after all. It is using this opportunity to make money from both users and businesses. But its success in India is also built partially on how inadequate privacy laws are in India. The company has been accused of breaching data privacy norms in the past. Can TRAI replace Truecaller? Tune in. (This episode was first published in July, 2024)DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for "coming of age"Rahel: Big Mouth, NetflixSnigdha: The Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro and Lady Bird (2017)Atish Deore: The works of PL Deshpande, a Marathi author and playwright Shubhangi: Derry Girls (2018)Brijesh: Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday's Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is "favourite translated books."

2024-10-24

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25 min

The Two by Two podcast is a premium business podcast from The Ken that investigates, discusses and breaks down the most important business stories around you. Hosted from The Ken's newsroom by business journalists Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan, Two by Two will feature guests and experts from across the industry and academia to talk about issues no one else is talking about.

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BUSINESS
You’ll spend 90,000 hours at work in your lifetime. How do you make that time count? 90,000 Hours is a weekly podcast from the newsroom of The Ken that helps you navigate today’s changing world of work, where the traditional 40-year career is gone, entry-level jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence, and staying relevant means constantly reinventing yourself. Hosted by Rahel Philipose and Vidhatri Rao, the show features conversations with the people creating, breaking, and rewriting the way we work.

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CAREERS
First Principles is a weekly interview podcast comprising authentic, candid, and insightful conversations between some of India’s most accomplished founders and business leaders, and Rohin Dharmakumar, The Ken’s CEO & co-founder. From personal philosophies, mental models and decision making frameworks, to reading habits, parenting styles or personal interests, each episode will delve into what makes each of these leaders unique.

5.0 (1)

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.

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TECHNOLOGY
The audio edition of The Ken’s Make India Competitive Again newsletter, spearheaded by Seetharaman G. Every Wednesday, our editors and reporters read the latest edition and chronicle what India is doing, will do, and should do—to not just survive but thrive in the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump.

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BUSINESS NEWS

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Top Shows

How India became the world's biggest AI lab, and not an architect

Your phone number is at the center of a fight between Zomato and Indian restaurants

How surging property prices are turning dream homes into pipe dreams

Can Duolingo keep India speaking when AI can translate everything?

When India’s billionaires fight over legacy, who do they call?

Part 1: Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai on using empathy, customer experience, and resilience to both survive and thrive

How BlackBerry’s revival story is running through India’s roads

How NRI quota became the golden ticket to med school for rich Indians

Why Peyush Bansal did the opposite of every rulebook move before Lenskart's IPO

Truecaller beat Trai to the punch with spam-call fix

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‘Made by humans’, Perplexity says the quiet part out loud, AI in courtrooms

Synthetic musical artists, the Nifty Fifty and Magnificent 7, Big AI’s ‘zero f***s given’ era

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A zebra-striped dinosaur, AI giants colonising the world, and Tiktok’s deal in the US

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