menu_open Columnists

The Ken

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Heads, founders win. Tails, platforms win. AI fund Activate wins either way

Heads, founders win. Tails, platforms win. AI fund Activate wins either way

The country’s latest AI fund, founded by a former IndiaAI Mission advisor, is courting the next crop of Indian AI founders, while also backing...

latest 10

The Ken

Mrunmayee Kulkarni

Zepto wants Rs 8,100 crore—and investors to trust the numbers it won’t disclose

Zepto wants Rs 8,100 crore—and investors to trust the numbers it won’t disclose

Revenue is up 5X since FY24. So are losses. Yet the IPO filing leaves investors without key customer metrics and answers on FDI risks

friday 10

The Ken

Suprita Anupam

Firstcry’s winning formula is running out of road. It keeps doubling down on it anyway

Firstcry’s winning formula is running out of road. It keeps doubling down on it anyway

The babycare retailer spent years building stores and private labels. Even when the world around it was changing rapidly

11.06.2026 10

The Ken

Nuha Bubere

Anand Mahindra built an elite engg university. It isn’t attracting elite students

Anand Mahindra built an elite engg university. It isn’t attracting elite students

Mahindra University is offering generous scholarships to address the problem. It may not be enough

11.06.2026 10

The Ken

Atul Krishna

Blackstone’s next big IPO looks built more for its own exit than the public’s entry

Blackstone’s next big IPO looks built more for its own exit than the public’s entry

Horizon Industrial Parks is set to be India’s largest warehousing platform. But it’s saddled with Rs 6,700 crore of debt and over half of its 58...

10.06.2026 10

The Ken

Mutasim Khan

Bajaj’s website to Malabar’s AI: Accenture didn’t build the world’s biggest ad agency through ads

Bajaj’s website to Malabar’s AI: Accenture didn’t build the world’s biggest ad agency through ads

Accenture Song’s biggest competitors are no longer just WPP, Publicis, and Dentsu, but everyone trying to blur the lines between marketing,...

09.06.2026 20

The Ken

Debanjali Biswas

Lendingkart’s last stand: a founder, a Temasek unit, an outdated deal, and a $600M wipeout

Lendingkart’s last stand: a founder, a Temasek unit, an outdated deal, and a $600M wipeout

Harshvardhan Lunia and family have filed an NCLT petition alleging foul play by Temasek subsidiary Fullerton. The case will be heard on 18 June

08.06.2026 20

The Ken

Suprita Anupam

HCLTech, which sells to the world, invested $150M in Sarvam AI, which is built for India

HCLTech, which sells to the world, invested $150M in Sarvam AI, which is built for India

$150 million buys influence over Sarvam's roadmap and a stake in India's sovereign-AI story. Whether it buys revenue is the question nobody can yet...

05.06.2026 10

The Ken

Rohin Dharmakumar

Optimist wants to reinvent the AC. Daikin and LG don’t need to

Optimist wants to reinvent the AC. Daikin and LG don’t need to

The energy-efficient AC startup prioritised engineering and services before expanding its retail presence. But slow and steady brand building has a...

05.06.2026 10

The Ken

Priyal Mahtta

India built a Rs 50,000 crore MSME fund to fight VCs’ tech bias. It still became a tech backer

India built a Rs 50,000 crore MSME fund to fight VCs’ tech bias. It still became a tech backer

Of the 750 companies the fund has invested in, seven out of 10 are tech-heavy—defying the fund’s intention of backing traditional manufacturers

04.06.2026 10

The Ken

Inderpal Singh

Tesla and Figure AI are building robots to act like humans. Indian workers are teaching them how

…for a few hundred rupees. It may be a Faustian bargain, once again

03.06.2026 20

The Ken

Sakshi sadashiv

Equity investing is sold as a must. The affluent can do just fine without it

A fixed-income-only corpus can work if you get your numbers and objectives in line

02.06.2026 10

The Ken

Anand Kalyanaraman

Sun Pharma bought the dip in its $11.7B Organon deal. Just not the right kind of dip

Organon’s Q1 numbers on 30 April showed how Sun bought its worst quarter. But India’s biggest pharma company will hope it doesn’t get worse...

01.06.2026 20

The Ken

Seema Singh

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

29.05.2026 20

The Ken

Nuha Bubere

Bajaj Finance mastered self-disruption. Succession may be harder

An early stage ultimatum—meet this target or I’ll shut you down—still reverberates across the company, propelling it forward

28.05.2026 30

The Ken

Neha mehrotra

India needs Tata, Mahindra EVs to cut the oil bill. But EV owners are stuck at workshops

The lack of a robust EV ecosystem, from poor afters-sales service to paltry infrastructure, is fraying consumer interest

27.05.2026 20

The Ken

Suprita Anupam

Cipla had one of its worst quarters. Investors still rewarded it

India’s fourth-largest drugmaker lost two of its most-profitable drugs within months. Its new pipeline is what investors care about

26.05.2026 20

The Ken

Sudeshna Ray

Tata and Murugappa’s chip race starts with what India doesn’t have

While Tata is trying to build a self-contained chipmaking ecosystem from the ground up, Murugappa is acquiring disparate pieces and stacking them...

25.05.2026 20

The Ken

Priyal Mahtta

NEET’s switch from pen-and-paper to computer: damned if you do, damned if you don’t

The government is moving NEET online to fight question paper leaks, but the real problem might not have to do with the mode of exam

22.05.2026 20

The Ken

Atul Krishna

Maharashtra lured Amazon, NTT with cheap green power. Then it changed the data-centre deal

The state built India’s largest captive solar market for its data centres. Now it’s dismantling the economics that made it work

22.05.2026 20

The Ken

Mrunmayee Kulkarni

Two ex-Tesla engineers show what is waste for Reliance or Praj is gold for them

By making high-value chemicals from biomass, at mouth-watering gross margins, and replacing petroleum-derived products

21.05.2026 20

The Ken

Seema Singh

Drones already move groceries, blood samples. D2C brands want them to move customers too

As drones shrink delivery times and logistics costs, D2C brands like Mamaearth and Giva are beginning to see a way around Amazon and Flipkart

20.05.2026 20

The Ken

Mutasim Khan

Airtel and Jio treated AI like an OTT bundle. Was OpenAI right to stay out?

The onus of bankrolling the partnership has fallen on AI companies. All telcos have to do in return is leverage their existing ecosystem

19.05.2026 40

The Ken

Debanjali Biswas

LIC has lost its throne to SIPs. It’s still the smartest investor in the room

Mutual funds have grown faster as domestic institutional investors in Indian stocks than LIC of late. Yet, in moments of market stress, the insurer...

18.05.2026 30

The Ken

Aakriti Bhalla

Can ‘drug visas’ soon outgrow drug manufacturing? This pharma company is betting on it

Factory-less HRV Pharma has turned managing regulatory paperwork into a successful standalone business

15.05.2026 30

The Ken

Sudeshna Ray

Can Adani do for apples what Mahindra did for grapes?

Not by trading, but by storing

15.05.2026 20

The Ken

Sakshi sadashiv

Why Vijay Sales’ billionaire owners have no use for a family office—or even a wealth manager

Nilesh Gupta and his family know that putting money back in the Rs 13,600 crore electronics chain is time-tested and lucrative. They aren’t so sure...

14.05.2026 80

The Ken

Seetharaman G

From Bengaluru to Mumbai to Pune, metro projects are colliding with India’s monsoons

Cities building metros acquire land, divert drains, and tear up roads. Fixing what the rain does to all of it is somebody else’s problem

13.05.2026 20

The Ken

Mrunmayee Kulkarni

Meesho built Valmo to keep deliveries in-house—until orders surged to 5,000 a minute

The e-commerce platform’s management is on a quest to lower costs of its in-house logistics arm, Valmo, but it has much to learn from 3PL players...

12.05.2026 20

The Ken

Nuha Bubere

Is Swiggy snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

Once a pioneer, Instamart now takes 15 months to add as many users as Blinkit does in three. Swiggy’s growing losses are no comfort, either

11.05.2026 40

The Ken

Suprita Anupam

Is Swiggy snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

Once a pioneer, Instamart now takes 15 months to add as many users as Blinkit does in three. Swiggy’s growing losses are no comfort, either

11.05.2026 40

The Ken

Suprita Anupam

Inside foreign universities’ desperate attempts to woo indifferent Indians

Strapped for cash back home, universities like Deakin, Bristol, and Aberdeen are looking at India to pad their wallets. They are finding it a tough...

08.05.2026 30

The Ken

Atul Krishna

Jio Blackrock and Zerodha took the same path. Only one stayed on it

Even though direct plans have jumped from nothing to half the mutual-fund industry’s AUM, Jio Blackrock’s dependence on active schemes needs...

08.05.2026 30

The Ken

Anand Kalyanaraman

The $4.7-billion Tata AI firm that no one is talking about

Tata Communications has Nvidia’s most advanced chips, a growing AI-infrastructure stack, and enterprise demand. Its stock is still down 16%

07.05.2026 20

The Ken

Sumit Chakraborty

TVS Capital spent 20 years learning what it’s good at. It wants to undo it now

After staying conservative for 20 years, this homegrown PE firm now wants to be an institutionalised one, with bigger bets and a wider portfolio....

06.05.2026 30

The Ken

Valli Vikram

Why did India give BSNL $33 billion but not a full-time boss?

The cash-infusion has enabled the public-sector telecom company to improve its financials, but not, so far, its market position. The lack of a...

05.05.2026 20

The Ken

Priyal Mahtta

What Anthropic’s Mythos can hack in hours, Indian banks take months to fix

While super-intelligent LLMs have shrunk the time it takes hackers to mount an attack to under 10 hours, Indian companies still need 180 days to patch...

04.05.2026 30

The Ken

Mutasim Khan

Mythos has cut hackers’ attack time to hours. Finserv firms’ defence still takes months

While super-intelligent LLMs have shrunk the time it takes hackers to mount an attack to under 10 hours, Indian companies still need 180 days to patch...

04.05.2026 30

The Ken

Mutasim Khan

District isn’t even 2% of Eternal’s business. But it’s enough to rattle Bookmyshow

In under two years, Eternal’s going-out business has scaled to nearly half of Bookmyshow’s revenue and over 60% of its users by redefining outing

01.05.2026 40

The Ken

Suprita Anupam

What does Zoho offer as India’s new official email provider: security or Indianness?

As the world migrates to open-source software, India is going the opposite way—to a closed, proprietary stack it claims is safer

30.04.2026 30

The Ken

Inderpal Singh

Adani’s big plan to own Indian aviation: invest in everything but an airline

The airport operator wants to have its hands in all the pies, and is taking over everything from pilot training to aircraft maintenance and repair

29.04.2026 30

The Ken

Nuha Bubere

With Jio Studios, Reliance conquers the final frontier of its media empire

From the two-part blockbuster Dhurandhar to prestige flicks like Laapataa Ladies, Reliance’s film business is a throwback to the good old studio...

28.04.2026 30

The Ken

Debanjali Biswas

Get a loan, buy more stock: Groww and Angel One’s latest pitch to investors

Sebi’s F&O clampdown is pushing brokers into margin lending. It’s not exactly low-risk for investors

27.04.2026 30

The Ken

Aakriti Bhalla

Delhi vs new Noida airport: one gets flights, so the other fights for your time

GMR-operated Delhi airport oversaw all flights in the region for decades. Now with Noida in the mix, it’s trying to stay relevant by monetising...

24.04.2026 20

The Ken

Sakshi sadashiv

How many ‘bad’ schools make a good PE investment?

Fresh off a fundraise from Chryscapital and Warburg Pincus, the company behind Orchids schools needs to find more struggling schools, and fast

23.04.2026 30

The Ken

Atul Krishna

What’s left of Jio Financial when you strip away Reliance?

Over three fourth of the company’s value comes not from its core business but from the 6.1% stake it holds in Reliance Industries

22.04.2026 30

The Ken

Anand Kalyanaraman

Jio Financial’s roar begins to sound like a whimper

Over three fourth of the company’s value comes not from its core business but from the 6.1% stake it holds in Reliance Industries

22.04.2026 30

The Ken

Anand Kalyanaraman

The AI founder with an Nvidia-shaped dream—and just $4 million in the bank

Kamalakar Devaki’s Sandlogic automated workflows for Bajaj Finance, Indira IVF. Now he wants to take the next step and sell a full stack by building...

21.04.2026 40

The Ken

Suprita Anupam

Google, Meta are building huge data centres in Vizag. Nobody told the power grid

Andhra Pradesh has promised the world’s largest technology companies a digital capital. What they have right now are hills, fences, and no power

20.04.2026 40

The Ken

Mrunmayee Kulkarni

Zydus jumped the gun to make its cancer drug affordable. It’s still not enough

Hospitals and stockists are making steep margins off initiatives meant to make life-saving medication affordable

17.04.2026 20

The Ken

Sudeshna Ray