The Ken

Bajaj Finance gives out 150,000 loans a day. Its market cap is more than 2x Bajaj Auto — the company it was spun out of in 2007. How did a "footnote" become a bank in all but name? The full story, chapter by chapter → the-ken.com/intermission/a…

Read the column. the-ken.com/columns/zero-s…

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

Factory-less HRV Pharma bet a decade ago that Indian pharma's manufacturing moat is shifting upwards to regulatory ownership. How far can it run with these “drug visas" i.e. FDA's export stamp of approval — drug master files? I write in today's @TheKenWeb the-ken.com/story/can-drug…

Also on Spotify! open.spotify.com/episode/63SN52…

Tune in on Apple Podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/bol…

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.

Watch the episode on YouTube. youtu.be/jhgvdo9rb0w

Bajaj Finance gives out 150,000 loans a day. Its market cap is more than 2x Bajaj Auto — the company it was spun out of in 2007. How did a "footnote" become a bank in all but name? The full story, chapter by chapter → the-ken.com/intermission/a…

Meanwhile, one virtual company is betting big on this by building its business around 'drug visas', writes @sudeshna_ra the-ken.com/story/can-drug…

And, as regulatory needs have tightened, Indian pharma's next moat may be shifting upwards, from factories to compliance.

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

Read the newsletter. the-ken.com/the-collection…

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

Read today's story by @sakshi_sadashiv the-ken.com/story/can-adan…

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.

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.

Jio Studios is now the largest production house in India by revenue, catalogue, and box-office share. It got there fast. Stree 2, Laapataa Ladies, Dhurandhar, all Jio. But can Jio can build an identity to go with it? youtu.be/sjpx9w2JgjI?si…

Read the full story on our Intermission microsite → the-ken.com/intermission/a…

Long before Bajaj Finance, there was Nanu Gupta. A single appliance store in 1960s Bombay. Credit at 24%. Ration card for KYC. A customer bringing friends to vouch for their own loans. And debt collectors ringing the neighbour's doorbell first, so the whole street would know.

Also on Spotify! open.spotify.com/episode/21Db8N…

Listen on Apple Podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/ai-…

Writing skills degrading without anyone noticing. Complacency creeping in. The curiosity is there and so is the dread. Often in the same person. A generation becoming, in one colleague's words, more boring. Today's Daybreak on what AI is quietly doing to Gen Z.