Daybreak

2023 has been declared the International Year of Millets after India, the largest producer of millets in the world, moved a resolution in the UN General Assembly.The Prime Minister himself has been promoting the use of millets as a staple through various channels like Mann Ki Baat and the Global Millets Conference that was recently held in the national capital.But making what were once called 'coarse grains' as the next big food trend is riddled with challenges and will take more than declaring 2023 the year of millets.Tune in.

After buying the digital rights for IPL for an eye-popping amount last year, Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema wants to change the way Indians watch cricket. It wants to replace TV viewing with online streaming.In order to pull it off, it came up with an almost disruptive move. It decided to make IPL streaming freeWhile viewership is expected to hit half a billion and ad impressions to quadruple after this, advertisers are skeptical about a host of unknown factors.What are they?Tune in to find out.

The Indian Met Dept has predicted that 2023, especially between March to May, is going to be unusually hot for most parts of India. Air conditioners and electric fans account for nearly one fifth of the total electricity used in buildings around the world today.Naturally, electricity bills have skyrocketed and it's only going to get worse.Meanwhile, a fascinating technology has emerged that can save 30 to 40% in energy consumption but it's not being adopted as fast as it should be. Energy transitions are proving to be much more difficult than a smartphone upgrade.Tune in

Last week, Season 2 of one of the country’s most popular reality TV shows, Shark Tank India, came to an end. The show has given rise to a significant demand for startup investing.Investors are able to put in as little as Rs 5000 via online fundraising platforms like Tyke Invest and Infubiz. They offer investments in startups through Community Subscription Offer Plans. But these fundraising campaigns are not subject to securities laws and investors in these instruments do not have any shareholder rights under the Companies Act, 2013.This is creating a high-risk environment for small-time retail investors.Tune in.

A few months ago, a whistleblower alleged that some of the top EV makers in India were misusing the FAME subsidy. The government began an investigation and withheld the subsidy for multiple EV manufacturers.Ever since, news stories have been reporting how the sale of EVs in India has declining and the FAME subsidy is under the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.But the government is only trying to correct a past mistake. The impact of the subsidy on the rising penetration of EVs in the country can't be ignored. In fact, the criticism of FAME could actually end up hurting the EV sector in the long run.Tune in.

For credit card issuers, 'revolvers' are the most profitable customers. They are users who carry over a balance from one month to another instead of paying the entire due amount.These users pay as much as 40% interest per annum by revolving and help the credit card issuer make obscene amounts of profits.But lately, dues from ‘revolvers’ have been falling. There is a shift in their behaviour pattern.Tune in to find out why

With summer around the corner this year, the Indian government is scrambling to make sure the country does not face power outages.But as this demand for power rises, the country is also working on increasing its green energy capacity. In fact, India is turning out to be one of the fastest to increase its renewable energy capacity. The transition to green energy is not just about how electricity is produced, it is also about how it is consumed. India emerged as the biggest market for corporate power-purchase agreements (PPAs) in Asia-Pacific for the second year in a row.This trend has the state-run discoms or power distribution companies seriously worried.

ITC's stock had been lagging for years. Many institutional investors stayed away from ITC because the company's shares are considered sin stocks. The company, meanwhile, has avoided acknowledging the importance of cigarettes, its mainstay business, in its communications.But over the last year, the ITC stock has made a dramatic comeback. Suddenly, investors can't get enough of the company.What changed?Tune in to find out.

The fourth draft of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is all set to be presented in the Parliament during the ongoing Budget session. While it makes a strong case for creating laws to prevent the personal information of citizens from being harvested and exploited, the Bill is playing blind to two Important factors. This in turn could end up creating a crony-capitalist economy where an individual's freedom of choice is put at risk.Tune in.

The introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s was one of the most significant events in the history of human society. But it still left the burden of birth control largely on women.Now, however, things are changing. The demand for male contraceptives is on the rise. But why have large pharmaceutical companies not paid enough attention to the research on male contraceptives for all these years?Tune in.P.S We apologise for the delay in the release of today's episode. We were faced with technical difficulties.

CP Plus, a CCTV camera brand, procures 80% of its supplies for its parent company Aditya Infotech Ltd (AIL) from the Chinese security-equipment manufacturer Dahua Technology. Dahua and Hikvision, another Chinese surveillance-tech firm, are facing sanctions in the UK, US, Australia, and other countries, for their connection to the Chinese government.But in India’s growing CCTV market, which is said to be worth Rs.5000 crores, both these companies are flourishing. Bringing them under control is turning out to be a huge policy challenge for the government.Tune in.

In 2015, the current government set an ambitious target. It said we would have 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022 and 40% of it would come from rooftop solars or RTS. Back then, the country’s solar capacity was just 3.7 GW. But as of October 2022, this capacity rose to only a little over 60 GW. The main reason for this is the slow adoption of RTS. High transaction costs and lack of data about the long-term performance of RTS make it difficult to access loans for small-scale solar installations.Tune in to find out more.

Years ago, a tug of war began between tech companies including OTT platforms and telecom companies.Telecom and internet service providers believe that content and tech companies should pay them for disproportionate traffic. But tech and content companies argue that this would violate the principles of net neutrality.The debate has now reached India and telecom regulator TRAI is expected releasing a consultation paper on the matter soon.Will content companies like Google, Netflix have to compensate telcos in India?Tune in.

Hotstar has remained the undisputed OTT leader in India boasting of half of India's 90 million paid OTT subscribers. A part of this success has come via the IPL streaming rights and from bundling with telecom and DTH service providers like Jio and Airtel. But last year, Jio's Viacom 18 won the digital streaming rights of IPL, the largest cricket tournament in the world. Not just that Reliance's Jio also dropped Disney+Hotstar from most of its streaming bundles.Why did Reliance choose to end this partnership and what does it mean for Disney+Hotstar?Tune in to find out.

From February 26, the Union Health Ministry will organise a two-day 'Chintan Shivir' to explore ways to build trust on Indian drugs, cosmetics and medical devices.Despite being called 'the pharmacy of the world,' time and again, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has received criticism for substandard quality. The most recent such incident was when the deaths of children in Gambia and Uzbekistan were allegedly linked to cough syrups manufactured in India.Why does Indian Pharma still struggle with quality control?Tune in to find out.

With its phenomenal success, UPI has changed the way Indians interact with money. Now, the NPCI along with other fintech platforms are making efforts to launch UPI for international use.But the government needs to ensure UPI remains secure and reliable as it expands beyond the country's borders.Note: In the previous version of this episode, the host mistakenly referred to NPCI as NCPI. The error is regretted and has been corrected.

A few days ago, Zomato announced that it was withdrawing its services from 225 cities in India on account of "not so encouraging" performance.Last week, the food tech giant also reported its financial results for the last quarter of 2022. It saw its losses soar 5X to nearly 350 crore rupees.The volume of orders also declined during this period. But in these numbers there also lies hidden a glimmer of hope for the company.Tune in.

With increased competition within the country, the over-hundred years old Ayurvedic brand, Dabur, is looking to acquire and expand. It wants to change its story.Just last year in October, it acquired a 51% stake in Badshah Masala, one of the country's leading spices companies.But why does the world leader of Ayurveda brands need to reinvent itself?Tune in.

Whether it is to decide where to eat or what to buy, online reviews play important role. But fake reviews are turning out to be quite a menace.To bring them under control, the Indian government released a set of guidelines for e-commerce platforms.But they forgot to mention an important point.Tune in to find out.

Lately, Indians have been spending increased amounts of money on travelling to foreign countries. In the month of November last year, Indian travellers spent 1 billion dollars abroad. The government and even regulator RBI took notice of the new trend.And now, in the Union Budget 2023, a new tax has been added to overseas spending through the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LTS).

Britannia's market share has consistently been inching up over the last decade or so. And its shares have doubled in value in the past five years. Apart from biscuits, the company also wants to crack the dairy business. But in the year ended March 2022, the biscuit giant’s revenue was nearly $1.7 billion and out of it only $60 million came from dairy. Despite this, the biscuit giant has grand plans to expand its dairy business.Tune in to find out more

With a dipping market share and no leader in India, many in the industry say Google Pay is losing its agility in the country. While the reasons range from slow roll-out of new features to overlooking merchants, one has played a big role in Google Pay's current position. And it has a lot to do with the relationship it shares with its banking partners. Tune in

Even with comparatively higher tax rates the old tax regime has remained popular amongst Indian taxpayers. The government, in the new budget, announced changes to incentivise the new regime. However, what will suit taxpayers still depends a lot on whether they find the changes attractive enough. Tune in.

In the last three quarters, the revenues of India's largest telco have been seeing a steady slowdown. A Rajasthan government's free-smartphones-for-women project came along just in time and won Reliance Jio managed to bag 60% of the contract value.But now Jio is waiting, fingers crossed, for the new budget with reports of the government shelving the project.If the project does come through, what would it mean for Reliance Jio?Tune in to find out.

From moment Nykaa went public on the stock exchanges in 2021, it became an investors’ favourite.Its stock had listed at an 80% premium to its issue price of Rs 2,001 per share on the BSE. Its parent company FSN e-Commerce Ventures hit a valuation of 1 lakh crore rupees. And founder Falguni Nayar’s net worth tripled and turned her into a billionaire. But lately, things have not been going so well for the fashion e-retailer. Its shares have been on a free fall.Tune in to find out why.

BharOS is being launched at a time when the tech giant Google is under the government's scrutiny for adopting anti-competitive practices as the market leader in India.But this is not the first time India is trying to develop an indigenous operating system, both for mobile and computer devices. The failure of the OS projects in the past may hold some important lessons for anyone making a future attempt.Tune in for the details.

The edtech industry in India is facing a host of challenges from all directions, from a decline in funding to the emergence of formidable competition.One that stands out, however, is the allegation of mis-selling and fraudulent loans. According to the Advertising Standards Council of India, 33% of the complaints filed with it in FY21-22 were related to the education sector. And one of the reasons for this is the overly aggressive sales playbook. Byju's mastered it so successfully that many of its its peers followed suit.But now with the government expressing concerns over these allegations, edtechs including Byju's need to rethink their sales pitch. Tune in for the details.

Despite winning the 'pharmacy of the world,' two out of five cancer patients in India have to borrow money and sell their assets to get treatment. The price of many innovative patented oncology drugs in India are as high as in developed countries making them inaccessible for a large section of patients.Where are Indian cancer patients turning to for cheaper cancer medicines?Tune in to find out.

Unclaimed funds at the government-run Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) are likely to have risen to Rs 50,000 crore ($6 billion) by now. But for an average investor, the settlement process is almost designed to discourage investors from claiming what's theirs.Now, after the Supreme Court took notice post the filing of a petition, the IEPF Authority has asked all stakeholders for suggestions to make the entire process more efficient.Tune in to find out why an average Indian investor finds it so difficult to recover their money from the IEPF.

For Mahindra Finance, the RBI directive against it couldn't have come at a worse time. The rural financier had barely recovered from the effects of the lockdown since it had higher bad loans than its rivals. Add to that the dent on its reputation.How did the NBFC deal with the RBI's restriction on using third party agents for repossession? Tune in to find out.

With the funding crunch and slow growth, edtechs like Unacademy and Vedantu are giving teachers monthly targets to sell online courses to students.Not meeting sales targets is reason enough for edtechs to fire teachers as part of cost-cutting exercises. Tune in to find out how teachers are being forced to become the new sales force in some edtech companies.

In May 2020, McDonald's decided to launch the McSpicy Fried Chicken in the southern states of India where majority of the population consumes meat.Two year later, the shares of McDonald’s India franchisee, Westlife Foodworld, shot up by 40%.Tune in to find out how fried chicken was one of the key drivers behind the fast-food chain becoming a the top-choice among public-market investors.

Last year, the CCI found Google guilty in two of the four antitrust cases against the tech giant. In one of the cases that involves Google's dominance in the Android OS market, the CCI has asked it to pay a fine of $161 million dollars.Google approached the NCLAT contesting CCI's order, asking the tribunal to squash it but NCLAT declined. Now, Google has moved the country's top court.What is the Android OS case all about?Tune in to find out.

PVR, the country’s largest multiplex chain, made up for the pandemic-induced revenue loss by raising the prices of tickets and food and beverages.But it saw its occupancy fall to the lowest levels in a decade even after movie theatres reopened at full capacity.What is keeping India's theatres empty?Tune in to find out.

ZestMoney, the BNPL platform, is in the final stages of being acquired by online-payments giant PhonePe. But ZestMoney has been unable to get enough scale online. Even after going offline, it failed to manage risks. It saw its losses shoot up by 3X in the last financial year.PhonePe, meanwhile, has ambitions to expand by venturing into lending.Can ZestMoney's loss be PhonePe's gain?Tune in to find out.

The packaged-food market is rapidly growing in India and along with it so is the edible oil market. It was estimated to be worth nearly Rs 2 lakh crores by the the end of March 2021. Meanwhile, oil companies have been using the media and sneaky branding techniques for decades to tell consumers that their products are healthy.But are they?Tune in to find out.

After 23 years of business in India, Sula has grown to become the giant that dominates the Indian wine market.Last month, the wine-maker decided to go public through an IPO. The money, however, went straight to some of the investors who cashed out.And on Dec 22, when it listed on the stock exchanges, Sula’s stock opened flat and fell into discount. What does the IPO mean for Sula's public-market shareholders then?Tune in to find outWith inputs from Aayush Agarwal

While the Indian telecom sector is expected to grow by 12.5 billion dollars every three years, the rate of attrition in the industry is at a six quarter high. But the nature of the exodus is slightly different at Bharti Airtel, the country’s second largest telco.Its regional CEOs who helped it fight the big war against Jio are leaving the company.Tune in to find out why.

70% of Metro AG’s business in India is made of kirana or mom and pop stores.But despite being Metro’s core customer base in India, kirana stores are actually turning out to be the straw that's breaking the German retailer’s back. Tune in to find out why.With inputs from Aayush Agarwal

The looming threat of a recession, rising interest rates, and the RBI’s new guidelines for digital lending are proving to be a roadblock for buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms.But many new startups are using this as an opportunity to push consumers away from the more credit-centric models that encourage impulse buying towards a new, planning-based purchase model called save-now, buy-later (SNBL).How does it work?Tune in to find out.

India's most valuable startup breached the loan terms, including a September deadline for filing its results for FY 2022.Byju's filings for the previous financial year, too, were delayed by one and a half years. And their last audit report does not paint a pretty picture of the company's financials for FY 2021.Tune in to find out what is causing this lack of confidence amongst the creditors of the edtech giantWith inputs from Gaurav Tyagi

More than 70% of the cigarettes that are sold in India are sold in loose and yet, no alarm bells went ringing in the tobacco industry when a ban on the sale of loose cigarettes was announced. Will the ban even succeed in pushing down cigarette sales?Tune in.With inputs from Ayush Agarwal

It’s been two weeks since the RBI launched a pilot version of the e rupee. But many things are still up in the air about it, including concerns about the anonymity of transactions and if it will hold against one of the largest digital payment systems in the world.Tune in.For more read: How will the e-rupee beat UPI?

The draft telecom Bill introduced by Communication Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in September this year had a lot of hopes pinned on it. The telecom sector in India is governed by archaic laws. One of them even goes as far back as 1885. But the draft bill left the industry divided.Why? And what are the changes that the government might be forced to introduce to the new bill?Tune in to find out.For more on this, read this report by Pratap Vikram Singh: 900 comments on draft telecom Bill may force communications ministry to make three key U-turnsAlso, listen to this brand new episode of First Principles with NoBroker's Amit Agarwal

In the year that ended in March 2022, Apple saw its India revenue shoot up to an all-time high by 45%. But for the longest time Apple's growth in India was sluggish.What's making Apple's fortunes in India turn around so drastically?Tune in to find out.For more on this, read this report by Soumyajit Saha: Indians’ love for the iPhone is stronger than ever. But Apple retailers are not happy

More than 53 lakh NDTV shares were tendered when Adani's open offer ended on Monday. But many of NDTV’s public shareholders sold their shares to Adani Enterprises at a price lower than the current market rate. Why? Tune in to find out.Also, read this edition of Ka-Ching by Anand Kalyanaraman: The puzzling case of NDTV investors selling shares below market price.