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17/08/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

Tejas Networks’ diving share price is a Mayday signal. Is DoT’s antenna working?

India’s stock market seldom tends to influence the workings of its federal bureaucracy. But for the country’s telecom mandarins, who have just floated a new draft national policy for the sector, the investor response to one listed company could be the canary in the coal mine. At Rs 9,800 crore, the market value of Tejas Networks, a Tata-owned maker of telecom equipment, is now half the peak it reached 10 months ago. What’s odd is that Tejas Networks is now worth only a little more than its revenue. At the heart of investor frustration, and perhaps even fear, is the big pile of payments the company is yet to receive from its customers, including the government (the owner of telco BSNL). It’s striking, then, that the draft telecom policy includes a plan to handhold 500 startups and MSMEs working on emerging telecom technologies. But what’s truly conspicuous in the policy is what’s not in it. The Ken’s Seema Singh explains in this edition of Make India Competitive Again, as narrated by Seetharaman G. Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/tejas-networks-diving-share-price-is-a-mayday-signal-is-dots-antenna-working/ ( https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/tejas-networks-diving-share-price-is-a-mayday-signal-is-dots-antenna-working/ )

17/08/2025

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7 min
14/09/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

Cracking open the Reliance, Adani opportunity for India’s small businesses

India’s MSMEs operate in informal frameworks that have barely evolved over the past two decades. The result is that small businesses have largely the same struggles as they did before, whether it’s the absence of adequate credit, difficulties in entering new markets, or payment delays. Since MSMEs are the second-largest employer in India, solving these problems represents a significant opportunity. After all, opportunity has already come knocking. Take for example the shift of manufacturing out of China. India should be a natural destination, but the smaller manufacturers in the country simply were not prepared or equipped with the competencies that major clients demand from their vendors. There are startups in India taking steps to help small manufacturing businesses develop “full-stack factory solutions”.The Ken reporter Pranathi DVLS explores this space in this edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Rahel Philipose. Subscribe to the Make India Competitive Again newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletters/make-india-competitive-again/ Download our app and subscribe to The Ken to access our latest releases: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/the-ken/id1282944688 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ken.core&hl=en&gl=US&pli=1 Or subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts to access our latest releases: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/make-india-competitive-again-premium/id1810672381

14/09/2025

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10 min
30/06/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

India’s financial inclusion project is titanic. KYC could be the iceberg that sinks it

Long queues formed outside bank branches across India in 2014 and 2015, with a range of people opening their bank account for the first time. These were farmers, day labourers, homemakers—Indians who had largely been neglected by the formal banking system until then. This moment was part of the Indian government’s Jan Dhan Yojana Scheme, which enabled people to open zero-balance bank accounts at no cost. By the end of 2015, when the initiative ended, 250 million accounts had been opened. Jan Dhan Yojana was a success, so much so that the State Bank of India reported in 2021 that the country had surpassed China in financial inclusion metrics. Now, many of the bank accounts opened under the scheme are up for re-verification KYC (know-your-customer) procedures. Even though the process is straightforward—a check of listed documents such as one’s Aadhaar or PAN—many account owners can’t complete it. Besides, banks have little incentive to keep the accounts active. The situation on the ground is at odds with the intention of bringing more of India’s population into the formal banking system. Sarthak Gupta unpacks the contradiction in this edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Snigdha Sharma.

30/06/2025

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11 min
31/08/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

From BS6 to E20—India learnt the wrong lessons. Here’s how to course correct

It’s been a month since India’s nationwide shift to E20 petrol—20% ethanol-blended petrol. Vehicle owners have come forward to complain about falling mileage, damage to their vehicles, voided warranties, and the absence of insurance coverage. The change has sparked outrage, and nothing is being done to placate the country’s many millions of angry drivers. India’s move to E20 fuel took place much faster than originally planned. This pace may have been inspired by a previous success, when the government had to address worsening air pollution in the 2010s. At the time, regulators were able to skip a step to implement more stringent vehicle emissions standards. Even though there was some opposition from automakers, the change was largely unchallenged, and the public was onboard. The context is different this time around, and the confidence exuded by the government is misplaced. The Ken’s Suprita Anupam explains in this edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng. Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/from-bs6-to-e20-india-learnt-the-wrong-lessons-heres-how-to-course-correct/

31/08/2025

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12 min
17/06/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

What they don’t teach you about M&As in B-school

2024 was a record-breaking year for mergers and acquisitions in India, and the government seems to want to speed up the frenzy. One of the proposals put forward by the finance minister was an overhaul of M&A regulations. She wants to introduce fast-track mergers for a range of companies, including unlisted firms and fellow subsidiaries. But lethargy isn’t really the biggest problem afflicting Indian M&As. In fact, forcing these deals to move faster may worsen other fundamental problems. There are recent examples that show us how this can play out, such as Jet Airways’ failed revival under the Jalan Kalrock consortium. Meanwhile, there are other incentive structures that can ensure M&As deliver great results. Raghav Maggo explains what India’s M&A landscape needs in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Brady Ng. Subscribe to the Make India Competitive Again newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletters/make-india-competitive-again/ Download our app and subscribe to The Ken to access our latest releases: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/the-ken/id1282944688 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ken.core&hl=en&gl=US&pli=1 Or subscribe to The Ken Premium on Apple Podcasts to access our latest releases: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/make-india-competitive-again-premium/id1810672381

17/06/2025

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11 min
29/05/2024

How Wakefit and other new-age mattress companies are selling you sleep

New-age D2C mattress brands like Wakefit and The Sleep Company have successfully made orthopaedic mattresses into a mass product. They are changing the landscape of the mattress market in India with their innovative science and tech based approach and clever marketing techniques. Wakefit, for example, literally offers a “sleep internship" where all you have to do is "sleep for 9 hours everyday for a hundred days and earn up to 10 lakh rupees." It's come to a point where even older and bigger mattress makers have had to adapt these changes and start selling these orthopedic mattresses. But is this really about the science or more about the selling? 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.

29/05/2024

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9 min
08/06/2025 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

Don’t talk R&D, please, we are Indian industry

If you were to think about the world’s most technologically advanced economies, a few nations come to mind. The United States has Silicon Valley as its cradle of innovation, China’s scientists and researchers develop state-of-the-art IP every day, and Japan remains a global leader in robotics, especially industrial automation. India doesn’t register in that cluster. A few figures show us present conditions in more detail. Thirty years ago, India spent 0.6% of its GDP on R&D. In 2025, it’s at the same rate. The share occasionally inched up to 0.8% between then and now, but this is still low compared to major global economies. Why is that? Consider the US: it has a dynamic private sector that pours capital into R&D. Meanwhile, that type of spending is anathema in India—trade trumps research, copying is preferred over invention. The lack of R&D spending is in large part a mindset problem in private industry, government circles, and investors. For India to become an R&D powerhouse, there needs to be structural reforms. Seema Singh explains in this week’s edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Snigdha Sharma. * Read this edition as a newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/dont-talk-rd-please-we-are-indian-industry/ Subscribe to the Make India Competitive Again newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletters/make-india-competitive-again/ ( https://the-ken.com/newsletters/make-india-competitive-again/ )

08/06/2025

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11 min
08/02/2024 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

Full episode: How Vaibhav Gupta of Udaan builds, scales and improves execution playbooks

Welcome to First Principles! If you're here to sign up for the First Principles Newsletter, here you go ( https://the-ken.com/newsletters/first-principles/?utm_source=web&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=fp1 )! In this episode, you will hear Vaibhav Gupta, the CEO and co-founder of Udaan, an online trade platform whose mission is to "transform India".It hopes to achieve that lofty goal by bringing tens of thousands of shopkeepers and grocery store owners closer to their suppliers and offering them competitive pricing, guarantees on quality, and easy deliveries and returns. Vaibhav and his co-founders—Amod Malaviya and Sujeet Kumar—were all senior Flipkart leaders before starting Udaan. And yet, he insists Udaan isn't merely a "Flipkart for businesses". Since 2016, when it first began operations, Udaan has raised over a billion dollars in venture capital. It was one of the fastest startups to achieve the coveted "unicorn tag". It has also gone through its ups and downs in terms of valuations and headcount.In this episode—Part 1 of our conversation with Vaibhav Gupta, we discuss: --> Why Udaan evolved from a marketplace to a first-party business--> Why the firm instituted a formal CEO position after five years of its existence--> The five pillars of Udaan's culture--> What daily conversations inside Udaan's leadership team look like This is First Principles—The Ken's weekly leadership podcast.

08/02/2024

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1h 57m
01/03/2023 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

Shan Kadavil of Fresh To Home on selling fish, building moats, encouraging bottom-up “shots on goal”, and being honest with boards

Shan Kadavil, one eighth a co-founder and 100% a CEO at Fresh To Home, one of the largest online sellers of fish and meat in India, made a rough business plan in 2015. From roughly $2 million in sales in 2016 he wanted to grow to $200 million by 2022. That’s 100X in 6 years. This year Fresh To Home will do around $130 million. 65X is not bad at all. As TAMs – total addressable markets – go, you can’t go wrong selling meat and fish in the world’s largest country where the majority of the population are nonvegetarians. Go one level deeper and Kadavil says the consumption of fish outstrips that of poultry by nearly a factor of three. And fish offers gross margins of 40-50%, unlike, say smartphones or consumer products. Starting with a mission to “Clone Mathew” (Mathew Joseph being one of the Fresh To Home co-founders and its current COO) to running an OKR-driven organization modelled around gaming pioneer Zynga (where Kadavil was an early employee, and subsequently executive), this conversation covers a lot of bases around the first principles of running a business that isn’t easy. From obsessing over CURR, NURR and RURR metrics or encouraging employees to look for ways to disrupt their own business, Kadavil offers a lot of first hand insight from his multiple stints as an entrepreneur. This is episode 15 of First Principles. If you like our deep interviews with some of India’s best known founders across a range of domains, please consider rating us on your podcast platform. And if you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions, or tips, please email them to podcasts@the-ken.com ( podcasts@the-ken.com ). We might not be able to reply to all of them but we do read every single one of them.

01/03/2023

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1h 37m
07/06/2023 • THE KEN PREMIUM ONLY

Krish Subramanian of Chargebee on continuously firing yourself

The stories of entrepreneurial success around us are often slick, bulleted, and cleaned up to remove all references to false starts, serendipity or accidents. And at the centre of such stories are founders. These visionary leaders dream up startups worth billions of dollars out of nothing, like Krish Subramanian, the co-founder and CEO of Chargebee. Chargebee started by helping businesses manage their paying subscribers and now operates in the broader revenue management market. This Indian company was last valued at over $3.5 billion. Krish's own path to success, though, was anything but formulaic. He graduated in 2001, as the dot-com boom was cratering and when the 9/11 attacks on America spooked the world. Krish couldn't find a job. Six months later, when he finally did, his first salary was Rs 3500. It would be another ten years before he finally got together with his co-founders and started Chargebee. And even then, they spent the first five years going around in circles before finally hitting their groove. In today's episode, he reflects and explains the meandering path he took to success and the lessons he learned along the way. Krish talks about learning to let go of the need for world-changing ideas, hiring for strengths, why someone great for a zero-to-one project may be terrible for a one-to-10 project, why early-stage founders must set constraints and say 'no' instead of 'challenge accepted!', and treating business as a game. He also shares what he believes is the most critical role for a CEO: Trusting others, getting out of the way and letting go or, in Krish’s own words, continuously firing yourself. This is Episode 21 of First Principles— The Ken’s fortnightly leadership podcast. The Ken is India's first subscriber-only business journalism platform. Check out our deeply reported long-form stories, insightful newsletters, original podcasts and much more here: https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep ( https://the-ken.com/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=podcasts&utm_campaign=podcast_ep )

07/06/2023

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1h 33m

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
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
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
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.

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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

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Listen to full episodes 1-4 weeks before others

Top Shows

Tejas Networks’ diving share price is a Mayday signal. Is DoT’s antenna working?

Cracking open the Reliance, Adani opportunity for India’s small businesses

India’s financial inclusion project is titanic. KYC could be the iceberg that sinks it

From BS6 to E20—India learnt the wrong lessons. Here’s how to course correct

What they don’t teach you about M&As in B-school

How Wakefit and other new-age mattress companies are selling you sleep

Don’t talk R&D, please, we are Indian industry

Full episode: How Vaibhav Gupta of Udaan builds, scales and improves execution playbooks

Shan Kadavil of Fresh To Home on selling fish, building moats, encouraging bottom-up “shots on goal”, and being honest with boards

Krish Subramanian of Chargebee on continuously firing yourself

Listen to full episodes 1-4 weeks before others

Tejas Networks’ diving share price is a Mayday signal. Is DoT’s antenna working?

Cracking open the Reliance, Adani opportunity for India’s small businesses

India’s financial inclusion project is titanic. KYC could be the iceberg that sinks it

From BS6 to E20—India learnt the wrong lessons. Here’s how to course correct

What they don’t teach you about M&As in B-school

Don’t talk R&D, please, we are Indian industry

Full episode: How Vaibhav Gupta of Udaan builds, scales and improves execution playbooks

Shan Kadavil of Fresh To Home on selling fish, building moats, encouraging bottom-up “shots on goal”, and being honest with boards

Krish Subramanian of Chargebee on continuously firing yourself

Full episode: Soumya Rajan of Waterfield Advisors on turning a 'sceptical' idea into a resilient business

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