Daybreak The Ken

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. 

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. 

The newest battle ground between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jim is financial services. Airtel already has two thriving ventures. The first is the seven-year-old Airtel Payments Bank which happens to be one of the three profitable payments banks in India. And the second is new financial entity called  Airtel Finance which is mainly aimed at Reliance Jio’s fintech disruptor, Jio Financial Services. 
The one year old Airtel Finance has already serviced loans worth $300 million. It seems do be doing pretty well. In fact, just last month, in an earnings call, the Airtel boss, Gopal Vittal talked about how Airtel Finance was shaping up really well. He said It served 400,000 car and loan products in FY24.

The story is similar with Airtel Payments Bank. It registered its highest-ever annual revenue of more than $250 million in FY24 and also grew its deposits by 50% from the year-ago levels. The bank has been adding nearly a million new customers every month.

But all of this comes at a time when India’s other fintechs are struggling with profitability.

Apart from the fact that Jio is still leading, there is one more thing that sets the two of them apart from each other. Jio Financial Services’ focus is to lend to B2B players and engage in asset-management services. 
Airtel, meanwhile, is taking a different path. The company is using the oldest tool it has—SIM cards—to partner with lenders for consumer-centric products like loans and credit cards.

But why SIM cards? The answer lies in the Airtels nearly thirty year old distribution network.
Tune in.

Bluestone and Caratlane set out with the same dream. They both wanted to sell everyday fine jewellery online.
This was a pretty alien concept in a country like ours, where gold and diamonds are seen more as an asset rather than just an accessory. And for a lot of people, buying gold and diamonds online is completely out of the question, even today. 
But both these companies were committed to the idea that there was space for fine jewellery online. And turns out they were right. Today, pretty much any major jeweller you can think of is selling their jewellery online. 
But somewhere along the way, they went on completely different trajectories.