The Ken

Why Amazon seems so calm about being awfully late to quick commerce

The global giant’s betting rapid expansion and a pre-existing subscription program will make up for the delay

Read in today's story: https://the-ken.com/story/why-amazon-seems-so-calm-about-being-awfully-late-to-quick-commerce

India has more than 300 million football fans. The FIFA World Cup starts in three weeks. And as of today, no one is broadcasting it.

JioStar bid $20 million. FIFA rejected it. Sony didn't bid at all. A petition is now in the Delhi High Court asking that matches air on Doordarshan.

The easy answer is that FIFA got greedy. The harder one involves a merger that left it with nowhere else to go.

Tune in to Daybreak today.

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/how-one-merger-left-fifa-with-no-game-to-play-in-india/id1658118308?i=1000768451747

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/16jxrKI88XreziJmrmLZXo?si=uo2dt_I4Sl2TD8T21OSj_w

Telecom companies like Airtel and Jio are vying to reach high-paying users, and bundling AI services was a part of that plan.

But, what happens when the barter is lopsided? Telcos have barely any skin in the game, while AI companies burn cash chasing scale.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is wary and for the right reasons, staying away from telco deals despite missed revenue and user-growth targets.

Read today's story by Debanjali Biswas: https://the-ken.com/story/airtel-and-jio-treated-ai-like-an-ott-bundle-was-openai-right-to-stay-out/

Come 24 May, Delhivery will have been a publicly traded company for four years. By revenue, the logistics firm is now 1.5X as big as at the time of its listing, and along the way, it started making money too, and not just from investing its IPO cash pile.

But you wouldn’t guess either just by looking at the stock chart, writes Seetharaman G in this week's 'Trade Tricks'.

Read the newsletter: https://the-ken.com/tradetricks/delhiverys-search-for-business-investor-fit/

Coal gasification promises energy security, fertiliser resilience, and industrial self-reliance.

So why does India have only one convincing success story?

Inderpal Singh writes in this week's 'Make India Competitive Again'.

Read the newsletter: https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/indias-rs-37500-crore-coal-bet-against-oil-shocks-has-one-big-lesson-be-more-like-jindal/

The Indian government just moved two million email accounts off NIC’s servers onto Zoho’s cloud.

The reason the government decided to leave behind a system it had built and run for 40 years?

A list of issues; including ransomware attacks, power outages, even a blackout that knocked out Parliament’s website.

Thing is, India spent years building open-source infrastructure to stay independent.

The question is whether it just traded one dependency for another.

Tune in: https://youtu.be/N6XCWvaKx5U?si=_1zeGvQlIvWFessp

The next foundational-AI platform war is about who owns the space where work gets done, writes @r0h1n in this week's 'Zero Shot'.

Read the column: https://the-ken.com/columns/zero-shot/anthropic-and-openai-as-anti-stripe/

Dharma, Excel, Maddock, Bhansali have all sold significant stakes in their studios to stay in the game.

Jio Studios hasn't had to. It now leads on revenue, catalogue, and box-office share.

Today's Daybreak on the studio model Bollywood once abandoned, now back at full force.

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/bollywood-invented-the-studio-model-then-abandoned-it/id1658118308?i=1000767820013

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/63SN52A7Y7ttzo7969eA6c?si=PvAsAfJZQwSsqZU7kSPPCQ

India has long manufactured generic drugs for the world, but that moat may have reached its limit.

The reason? The US and Europe now want newer and more complex drug molecules, which aren't just harder to make but also harder to keep onside of compliance with regulatory bodies like FDA.

Meanwhile, one virtual company is betting big on this by building its business around 'drug visas'.

Read today's story by Sudeshna Ray: https://the-ken.com/story/can-drug-visas-soon-outgrow-drug-manufacturing-this-pharma-company-is-betting-on-it/

“Drug visas” and GLP-1 ecosystems to diagnostics and patient-management software, companies are moving towards the layers that outlast the molecule, writes Sumit Chakraborty in this week's 'The Collection'.

Read the newsletter: https://the-ken.com/the-collection/is-the-real-money-in-pharma-no-longer-in-the-drug/

Adani has spent two decades building one of India's largest apple cold-storage networks in Himachal Pradesh.

But, apples are already a thin-margin business, yet Adani is now moving into even more perishable fruits.

Meanwhile, two pressures are rising at once: global competition and temperatures.

The catch? Adani's real bet is not on fruits, but on controlling what happens after harvest.

Read today's story by Sakshi Sadashiv: https://the-ken.com/story/can-adani-do-for-apples-what-mahindra-did-for-grapes/

Jio Studios is now the largest production house in India by revenue, catalogue, and box-office share. It got there fast.

Meanwhile, Dharma, Excel, Maddock, and Bhansali have all sold significant stakes just to stay in the game. Jio simply does not need to.

It has Reliance’s telecom network, streaming platform, and marketing muscle all working together.

The studio model that Bollywood once abandoned is back. But can Jio can build an identity to go with it?

Tune in: https://youtu.be/sjpx9w2JgjI?si=16lYZAag7jZdaLlo

Long before Bajaj Finance, there was Nanu Gupta. A single appliance store in 1960s Bombay. Credit at 24%. Ration card for KYC.

A satisfied customer bringing friends to vouch for their own loans. And debt collectors ringing the neighbour's doorbell first, so the whole street would know.

Read the full story on our Intermission microsite → https://the-ken.com/intermission/a-bank-in-all-but-name-bajaj-finance/