The Ken
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Pharmeasy’s mis-selling puts its 3.9 million customers’ health at risk.
Once IPO-bound & valued at over $5 billion, the self-proclaimed integrated healthtech is now a story of dubious business practices.
At the centre of it all lies the prescription-generation system—'Docstat'.
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The Adani Group wants you to believe it has repaid all its loans against promoters’ shares. Here’s why you shouldn’t.
Despite the group's claim of “complete” repayment of $2.15 billion in share-backed debt, regulatory filings indicate that the debt has not been fully paid off.
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Mukesh Ambani is known for taking no prisoners.
Ask Amazon—which got shocked by Reliance's takeover of Future Retail stores.
Or the many telecom operators which vanished due to Jio.
Or even Anil Ambani.
Now, Disney+Hotstar is getting a taste of the Mukesh-Ambani medicine.
🧵
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Exclusive | Indian lenders are now piling misery on Byju's.
Byju’s is squeezed between two groups of lenders:
• International lenders from whom it took a $1.2B loan.
• Major Indian NBFCs who are now pulling out of financing Byju's products.
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BITS Pilani is tired of playing second fiddle to IITs.
Recently, BITS Pilani has taken some major leaps:
• A syllabus revamp
• A $100M endowment fund from alumni
• 10% of faculty from industry
• Allowing a year off for startups
But what can it do that the IITs can't?
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Zomato has managed to maintain its lead over Swiggy with a 55% market share in 2022. Swiggy is at 45%.
In the last two years, Zomato has been eliminating distractions and focusing more sharply on its core business.
But there's another reason why Zomato has an edge over Swiggy.
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Chartered accountants, once hailed as the finance world's elite, are facing a crisis.
Now, those with an MBA are breaking the monopoly CAs have enjoyed in top financial roles.
ICAI's placement data shows that CAs' salaries are stagnant and company participation is declining.
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Disney+Hotstar will stop featuring content from HBO starting March 31.
This is yet another setback for the platform.
Earlier, it lost the digital streaming rights of IPL; and Jio removed all of its bundled plans with the platform—which contributed to 15-30% of its subscribers.
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Free airport lounge access helped banks sell more credit cards. Now, it's come to bite them back.
Banks issuing credit cards pay between Rs 800-1,500 per lounge access.
The number of people who visited airport lounges rose to 8.5 million in FY 22-23 from 3.5 million a year ago.
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BITS Pilani is tired of playing second fiddle to IITs.
Recently, BITS Pilani has taken some major leaps:
• A syllabus revamp
• A $100M endowment fund from alumni
• 10% of faculty from industry
• Allowing a year off for startups
But what can it do that the IITs can't?
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You can retire at 40. And that's a lie.
The aspirational pursuit of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early)—to retire between 30 and 50—is impossible for most Indians.
The corpus needed to retire early is massive and runs into crores of rupees, even for the middle class.
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Exclusive | Deloitte has resigned as Byju’s statutory auditor.
In its resignation letter, Deloitte points out:
• The delay in filing the firm's financials for FY 21-22
• The lack of communication on resolving “audit report modifications” on the firm's FY 20-21 financials.
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In September 2015, Amit Kumar Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO of NoBroker, was at his office in HSR Layout, Bengaluru, when 40-50 brokers attacked his office.
They attempted to ransack the office and injure the employees.
An iron grill door saved Agarwal and Co's day—and lives.
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Kunal Shah, the founder of CRED, is unapologetic about building products for the top segment of India’s massive consumer pyramid.
Raising $600 million in venture funding can pressure a founder to show a massive, untapped potential market.
And yet, Shah did quite the opposite.
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The Indian state of Tamil Nadu is rolling out something never attempted before—with the help of a global tech giant.
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EV startups like BluSmart and Shoffr are disrupting Ola and Uber in Bengaluru.
But why EVs?
Because they create the margins that enable this disruption to happen.
Every single ride in an EV happens at a much lower cost compared to an ICE vehicle.
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Exclusive: The Adani Group claims it has repaid all its loans against promoters' shares.
But regulatory filings indicate otherwise.
🧵
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IIMs’ internship-to-placement pipeline is breaking down.
As of last week, ~30 students of IIM-Bangalore were still seeking internships.
IIMs are in this pickle for the same reason B-schools are struggling with placements—quality recruiters have become a rare commodity.
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India is gradually headed towards water scarcity as it sustains 18% of the world's population with only 4% of water resources.
To add to this, households waste ~45L of water per capita daily due to leakages.
A tiny 8-cm robot, however, may fix India's bleeding water pipelines.
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Apple has unveiled the look of its first official India store in Mumbai.
Indians’ love for Apple's iPhone is stronger than ever.
As a result, in FY22, Apple India's revenue saw a 45% rise to an all-time high of Rs 33,381 crore ($4 billion).
But, Apple retailers are not happy.
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Sachin Bansal's fintech, Navi, has reportedly laid off around 200 employees.
Bansal's Flipkart baggage is weighing Navi down.
His refusal to allow VC money into Navi, due to his Flipkart experience, puts him in a dilemma: cede control or settle for slower growth.
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Student enrolment for the CA course has seen a ~30% decline in the past decade.
The total registration of CAs fell to 224,000 in 2022 from 311,000 in 2013.
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Disney+ Hotstar is done with premiumisation.
After saying goodbye to IPL, HBO, and Formula One, it is changing its strategy by returning to its mass entertainment roots.
But is this enough to make up for the 30 million viewers it would get on average daily when the IPL was on?
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Banks made airport lounge access free to sell more credit cards. Now, it’s coming to bite them back.
Banks issuing credit cards pay between Rs 800-1,500 per lounge access.
Further, footfall across airport lounges rose to 8.5 million in FY 22-23 from 3.5 million a year ago.
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On 5 June, Byju's was supposed to pay a $40 million instalment on its $1.2 billion loan, which it hasn't yet.
Also, recently, BlackRock cut the fair value of its shares in Byju's by 62% to $8.4 billion. It was last valued at $22 billion.
Byju's now has only one hope: Aakash.
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Two events have set off the alarm bells at Disney+Hotstar:
• Viacom18, a Reliance arm, took away Hotstar's crown jewel—the digital streaming rights of IPL.
• Jio removed all of its bundled plans from Hotstar. These plans contributed to 15-30% of the platform's subscribers.
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Exclusive: Kota has seen at least a 20% fall in student admissions since June.
In fact, Kota’s Rs 6,000 crore coaching industry may never be the same again.
And a spate of student suicides is not the only reason why.
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If you think PVR-Inox is just a multiplex giant, you’re wrong.
It's a fast-food company too.
In fact, the combined food and beverage (F&B) revenue of PVR-Inox makes it India's fifth-largest fast-food company—bigger than Burger King.
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Pharmeasy has failed to raise equity worth Rs 1,000 crore and breached the covenant terms on a loan given by Goldman Sachs, according to The Economic Times.
On 26 June 2022, Goldman Sachs gave PharmEasy a loan of Rs 2,280 crore ($285 million) to clear out its previous loans.
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Amul wants to solve India's protein-deficiency problem.
About 73% of Indians have insufficient protein levels.
And “there can’t be a better [option] than whey protein” to include the essential macronutrient into vegetarian diets, says Jayen Mehta, MD of the parent firm of Amul.
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Is India's GIFT City ready to take on Singapore?
GIFT City is India's ambitious attempt to create an offshore financial centre.
After facing regulatory hurdles for a decade, it gained attention from banks and businesses once GIFT's unified regulator—IFSCA—assumed control.
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According to a survey by S&P, over 75% of Indian adults do not understand basic financial concepts.
This has led to a rise in financial influencers—who often underplay risks and overplay returns.
SEBI is now creating a framework of strict guidelines to bring them under control.
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Zomato's biggest concern is the decline in its new customers.
In a duopoly market far from saturation, its new customers declined from 23.6 million in 2021 to 23 million in 2022.
And Zomato's newly-launched loyalty programme, Zomato Gold, can't help where it needs the most.
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The SMS tariff for overseas firms like Amazon, Meta, etc., has been increased by 25% by telcos for sending messages to Indian customers.
The cost of sending out one SMS now stands at Rs 4.
Before the revision, Amazon spent Rs 800 crore ($101 million) yearly sending out SMSes.
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BookMyShow makes a comeback after the pandemic—but with a new face.
When the pandemic hit BMS, almost 90% of its revenue evaporated.
But in FY23, its revenue is pegged to be over 700 crore, matching its pre-Covid figures.
Now, it is also diversifying beyond movie ticketing.
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India's MasterClass—FrontRow—laid off 90% of its employees this week and is seeking acquisition.
FrontRow now may have realised two things:
• Pre-recorded broadcast-style teaching seldom works without an in-built system for practice.
• All celebrities can't be good teachers.
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CAs, once hailed as the finance world's elite, are facing a crisis.
On CA Day today, ICAI—which regulates the accountancy profession in India—is set to announce an update to its curriculum.
But why is the profession in a crisis?
🧵
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Two recent events have set off the alarm bells at Disney+Hotstar—India's largest OTT platform:
• Viacom18—partially owned by Reliance—took away Hotstar's crown jewel—the digital streaming rights of IPL.
• Jio has removed all its bundled plans from Hotstar.
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Blinkit vs Dmart 👇
A Blinkit dark store averages 3,500 sq ft in size against 41,650 sq ft for Dmart.
And the e-grocer’s warehouses occupy just over one-tenth the space as Dmart supermarkets.
But Blinkit’s gross merchandise value per square foot seems to be almost 2X Dmart’s.
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BluSmart has launched a cab pickup zone alongside Ola and Uber at the Bengaluru airport.
Ola and Uber are getting disrupted in Bengaluru.
What do EV firms like BluSmart and Shoffr do differently to make this happen?
Target the most lucrative routes and choose predictability.
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Google. Reliance Jio. A smartphone for millions. What went wrong?
In 2020, Google invested $4.5B for a 7.7% equity in Jio Platforms.
In 2021, this alliance brought out JioPhone Next—a smartphone worth Rs 6,500 ($80).
By 2023, this ambitious plan became an expensive misstep.
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Khan Academy has launched its ChatGPT-powered chatbot, Khanmigo.
If used well, this could be a paradigm shift for education.
But it’s an even larger paradigm shift for Khan Academy as it strings together all the disparate pieces it has built over the last 15 years.
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If the loans had been fully repaid, as claimed, the promoters and lenders would have disclosed the release of all pledged shares, as this is a regulatory mandate.
Why hasn't this been done? Are there other anomalies as well?
@BeatTheStreet10
report:
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Bournvita is having a Maggi moment, thanks to a viral video & a legal notice.
None of the information in the video questioning Bournvita's "health drink" claims is particularly surprising.
But it still led to a strong reaction because three new narratives didn't exist earlier.
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Zepto and Blinkit threaten kiranas in ways that Bigbazaar and Amazon never could.
Over 12 million kiranas face a new threat—quick-commerce firms.
Kiranas in cities like Delhi, Kanpur, etc., have been impacted, with their sales dropping by 10-30%, as per a survey by Kirana Club.
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BlackRock has slashed the fair value of its shares in Byju's (again) by 62% to $8.4 billion—a far cry from the $22 billion figure that Byju’s recently raised US$250 million at.
This 62% valuation drop will change many fates—beyond just Byju’s.
How did Byju's reach here?
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Zoom could soon be an alternative to Airtel and Jio.
With a telecom licence in hand, Zoom will finally launch Zoom Phone—its cloud telephony service—between August to October and provide 10-digit phone numbers to customers.
But before that, it must put in place multiple things.
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Many IITians from the top five IITs leave for the US for higher studies and seldom return.
A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research reveals that of the 1,000 top scorers in JEE of 2010, 36% migrated abroad.
For the top 100 scorers, that figure stands at 62%.
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Companies like Swiggy, Zomato, and Nykaa are losing their top executives. Why?
Because there are no wartime CXOs.
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Physics Wallah is on such a relentless expansion spree that even its investors want it to slow down.
A market leader in the NEET-JEE test-prep space, it is now entering other areas—from defence to banking.
But this 'master of one' to 'jack of all trades' shift could backfire.
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Urban Company is caught between angry customers and angrier partners.
UC's CEO has said that “customers are not repeating on UC’s platform”.
Unsatisfactory customer-support service, poor service experience, and unavailable time slots are haunting once-delighted UC customers.
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No one wants to just be a CA. Ask those enrolled in CFA.
Registration for the CA course has seen a steep decline—225,000 students enrolled in 2023, a ~30% decline from 2013-levels, as per the ICAI.
At the same time, younger students are driving a rise in CFA registrations.
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How does Swiggy plan to save itself from India's delivery personnel crisis?
After acquiring a 15% stake in Rapido for $125 mn in 2022, Swiggy gave its 'delivery partners' the option to double as bike-taxis during non-peak hours.
But can one rider deliver meals and ferry people?
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JioCinema’s $2.7B gamble to stream IPL for free has advertisers worried.
IPL 2023 presents the advertising industry with its biggest digital-campaign opportunity ever.
But, ad execs are worried that their clients may not get the return on investments even as viewership swells.
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"Hello, I’m calling from Bajaj Finance. Do you want a loan?"
Have you received such calls from India’s largest non-bank?
Its aggressive call-to-sell-loan approach has become a matter of meme and concern.
And such calls are here to stay as it has a growth rate to maintain.
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When Dunzo received $200 million in funding from Reliance Retail last year, it began expanding its dark stores and even ran ads in the IPL.
But the expansion spree didn't go as expected.
And now, Dunzo is retracting from quick commerce to cater to a B2B-heavy portfolio.
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Disney+Hotstar accounts for roughly half of India's 90 million paid OTT subscribers.
Around 15-30% of subscribers to the platform came from the bundles offered by Reliance Jio.
But that will not be the case anymore.
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Employees are increasingly engaging in 'reverse ref checks'.
This process now includes digging into the firm's financials, seeking reviews within online communities—engineers/marketers/others—than Glassdoor, etc.
Is there a generalised framework for evaluating your next firm?
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Sony Liv is all set to disrupt OTT power dynamics post the Sony-Zee merger.
Liv's global subscriber base has surged to 33.3 million from about 18 million at the start of 2022, most of which came from India.
And Zee5 has performed even better than Liv in monthly active users.
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The pandemic couldn’t kill Bookmyshow, but it definitely changed its face.
When the pandemic hit BMS, almost 90% of its revenue evaporated, and it let go of two-thirds of its workforce.
But in FY23, its revenue is pegged to be over Rs 700 crore—matching its pre-Covid figures.
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The merger of Sony India and Zee Entertainment will significantly impact India's TV and OTT market.
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Yesterday, Swiggy sold its cloud kitchen business—Swiggy Access—to Kitchens@ in a share-swap deal as part of its cost-cutting measures to achieve profitability.
There are three ways to become a profitable food tech company in India—and only one seems to have worked till now.
🧵
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Google and Reliance Jio's cost-friendly phone ends up being a costly misstep.
The flagship product of Google and Jio's alliance was JioPhone Next—a smartphone priced at Rs 6500 ($80).
Jio was expected to sell ~20 million units in a year, but it has only sold ~2 million so far.
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It’s Jio’s world now. We’re just watching it.
The writing was on the wall for Disney+Hotstar's India operations for a while now. And this week, Reliance Jio finally acquired it.
What will the new media empire look like? What does this mean for entertainment and OTT now?
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India’s premium credit card rewards party may end soon.
Here's why:
• Credit card issuers are seeing a decline in their most profitable users—revolvers—who carry their dues instead of paying the bills in full.
• Credit-on-UPI is encouraging small-ticket purchases.
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Brands like The Whole Truth and Noto promise guilt-free indulgence with foods made of sugar alternatives.
But are alternatives to refined sugar, like dates and artificial sweeteners, better?
Not if the chocolate bar sweetened with dates has 34g of total sugar per 100g.
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Allen Career Institute is changing its DNA to fight edtech unicorns like Unacademy and Physics Wallah.
Once a family-run empire, it has assembled a new team of professionals from Meta and Flipkart.
Allen aims for 100X growth—from~250,000 students in 2022 to 25 million by 2028.
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Packaged foods that claim to have ‘no added sugar’ often add natural and lab-processed sweeteners for taste and flavour.
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Byju’s employees are getting blacklisted by recruiters.
Its employees are struggling to overcome Byju's stigma in the job market.
The job market has over 24,000 active and accessible people from Think and Learn Pvt. Ltd—Byju's parent firm—as per Prasadh MS from Xpheno.
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Uber, Ola, and Rapido—among them all, which is the safest ride of all?
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Ashneer Grover’s new fintech is an optical illusion.
Zerope positions itself as a better alternative to health insurance, with a zero premium and no restrictions coverage.
But it’s nothing like health insurance. The minute you take a loan from it, it slips into a dark pattern.
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"Hello, I’m calling from Bajaj Finance. Do you want a loan?"
Despite the backlash, such annoying phone calls offering loans from India's largest non-bank—Bajaj Finance—are unlikely to stop.
That's because it has a growth rate to maintain: A ~30% growth in revenue year-on-year.
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The Ken has closed Rs 16 crore ($2 million) in Series B funding.
With this, we're setting our sights on becoming a business-news company that will be around for decades to come, writes our co-founder and CEO,
@r0h1n
.
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Free read 🔓
You need to download Digiyatra again, thanks to a 'scam'.
In Nov 2021, Digi Yatra Foundation handed a Rs 10 crore contract for building its tech stack to Dataevolve—a Hyderabad-based cloud-services firm.
In Nov 2023, Dataevolve got caught in a Rs 36.5 crore scam.
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In India, Y Combinator is faced with a question: Why Combinator?
Indian startups are not participating in the US-based startup-accelerator programme Y Combinator like they used to.
Only 12 Indian startups participated in its latest cohort compared to 41 two years ago.
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On the other hand, the Reliance arm—Viacom18—is in an intensive user-acquisition phase.
Besides shelling out $3 billion for the IPL rights, it reportedly spent another $54 million to broadcast the FIFA World Cup in India—via JioCinema.
But Viacom18 won't go unchallenged.
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Reliance-backed JioCinema—the online streaming platform for IPL 2023—wants to change how Indians watch cricket.
By making IPL streaming free on its app, it wants to replace TV with digital.
While it expects a historic viewership of half a billion, advertisers are worried. Why?
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With the IPL set to begin today, Reliance Jio has announced a move many say could be the next big disruption.
Jio has launched its cheapest fixed broadband plan: Unlimited data at 10 Mbps for Rs 198 per month.
Will the new plan get enough viewers to switch to digital streaming?
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Nearly 1.08 crore credit cards were sold in India, between May 2022 and May 2023, according to the RBI.
That's over 29,000 cards every day.
With the sale of credit cards hitting the fast track, marketing departments at India's lenders are feeling the heat.
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Many firms have started using Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) to lay off people silently.
In fact, a former VP of HR at Microsoft recently wrote that if one is on a PIP, they should leave the firm immediately.
How does a PIP work? And can it actually be made better?
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Bigbasket is now a bonafide alternative to Jiomart and Dmart Ready.
In the 125 products Prabhudas Lilladher, a brokerage, examined, Bigbasket's prices were closer to Dmart Ready—which offers a great bang for the buck—than a few months ago.
Now, a lot is riding on Bigbasket.
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The Indian Patent Office has rejected pharma giant Johnson and Johnson's application to extend its patent on 'Bedaquiline'.
TB patients will finally have affordable access to life-saving drugs after a long fight against J&J and the Indian govt’s 'charitable' but unjust system.
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B2B is great. Just not in grocery.
Udaan’s nearly Rs 10,000 crore ($1.2 billion) topline is among the highest for an Indian unicorn, but so are its losses—which are one-third of its revenue.
Also, Jiomart reportedly will soon cut its 15,000-strong B2B workforce by two-thirds.
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India gets BCG and McKinsey to fix digital infra. But the price is more than their fee.
The govt. wants to open up core digital infrastructure and services, earlier under the control of internal agencies, to private entities.
BCG has been awarded a contract to restructure NIC.
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The U.S. tech giant Google.
Google has been working with Tamil Nadu for a few years to create a population health registry (PHR) to aid this plan.
But while the state calls this association 'informal', Google has spent US$3 million in funding organisations building the PHR.
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"An honest businessman is an oxymoron".
His father would often tell him.
So, he decided he'd get a world-class education and work for a great firm, but never start something of his own.
But by the end of the millennium, he started believing otherwise—thanks to Narayana Murthy.
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What's more?
Byju's yet-to-be-released FY 21-22 results are not what its founder promised.
In Sept 2022, Byju’s claimed it had clocked revenue of Rs 10,000 crore ($1.2 billion) in FY 21-22.
But
@TheKenWeb
's sources peg its revenue closer to Rs 7,000 crore ($850 million).
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At ICICI Bank, a people-first strategy costs top people.
CEO Sandeep Bakhshi's revamped HR policies are making ambitious employees leave, even though attrition has decreased.
Some young employees now call it the ideal 'sarkari daftar'—where ambition gives way to contentment.
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DMart saw its slowest growth in profits since its market listing in 2017.
While the company's top line had grown 20%, its EBITDA rose less than 5%.
The problem lies with the declining sales contribution of DMart's general merchandise and apparel section.
Why is this the case?
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