“Mile har cheez zaruri.” Everything essential, right here.

That was the promise on the signs inside India’s first 7-Eleven, which opened in Mumbai five years ago, with India’s biggest retailer behind it.

This September, the last 31 stores shut. In its last full financial year, the chain lost nearly ₹90 crore on just ₹92 crore of revenue.

Nobody has said why the stores are closing. But this is a chain that thrives next to corner shops in other countries. So what was missing here? Host Rachel Varghese explores.

This episode is edited by Arnav Prakash

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Every morning, a senior official in Mysuru’s city corporation swerves past the same potholes on his way to the office responsible for fixing them. Over three years, the money Mysuru gets from the state for everyday civic upkeep has fallen from Rs 25 crore to Rs 3 crore, leaving little for repairs.

Just outside Bengaluru, Karnataka is borrowing heavily to build an Rs 18,000-crore AI city in Bidadi, backed by a state guarantee, before a single company has signed up to move in. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are chasing similar projects as their own local bodies struggle for funds.

In this read aloud of Mrunmayee Kulkarni’s newsletter edition by host Snigdha Sharma, we ask why states are betting big on new cities when the ones people already live in are grappling with crumbling infrastructure and lack of funds.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

In India, even the phantom of the censor board is enough to make filmmakers rewrite scenese at the very last minute, including those making shows for streaming platforms the board doesn't cover.

A startup from Bengaluru called Neuralgarage says it has a fix. It's AI solution changes a line according to the way in which actor's lips move.

In this piece, Shiveka Bakshi looks at how it works, why well-known production houses are using it, and what it says about the film industry today.

This is a read aloud of a newsletter edition of Trade Tricks, by Rachel Varghese on Daybreak by The Ken.

📖 Read the full story on The Ken: Bollywood wants to offend nobody. AI is happy to help

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

What happens when India's top institutes start treating reunions as fundraisers?

The Ken's Santhom and Mutasim, both from IITs themselves, write about how one batch of alumni pledged Rs. 100 crores for a single idea, and look at the system growing around this kind of philanthropy like x-bankers that run development foundations, non-profit partners set in California taking donations in dollars.

The result is that some alumni feel that donation floors are taking the sentiment out of reunions, making them feel less about the connection between students and campuses and more like manicured events. Host Rachel Varghese sits down with both reporters to explore what has changed with universities doubling down on this model, whether it will last and what both reporters are likely to do once their own 25th reunion comes around.

Tune in.

This episode was edited by Arnav Prakash

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

On October 3, Jack Dorsey's Bitchat disappeared from Apple's App Store in India after the IT ministry demanded its removal. It vanished from Google Play too. Bitchat lets phones pass messages over Bluetooth, with no internet needed. That made it a lifeline in July, when the government switched off mobile internet around Delhi's Jantar Mantar during student protests. In one week, India accounted for 85% of the app's global downloads.

Even an order to pull its code off GitHub didn't stop it spreading.

So the government went after the app stores.

In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma looks at the technology protesters reach for when the internet goes dark, and how governments are learning to keep up.

Tune in.

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Delhi built a ‘safe’ surveillance city. It can now locate anyone in seconds

This episode was edited by Arnav Prakash

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

When the NBA complained about Micheal Jordan's black and red shoes, Nike turned the complaint into an ad, and sneakers ended up becoming a symbol of style and rebellion.

In India, sneaker culture took longer to arrive. But last year, more than 200 people lined up outside a store in Bangalore for a limited edition shoe from Comet, a homegrown brand.

And Nike could use that kind of enthusiasm right now. Its revenue fell 4% last quarter, and its losing ground in China, a major market, to local players. Which is why, its new Bangalore campus sounded like a bet on Indian sneaker heads. But other communications suggest that it's a "capability center", another back office, and this is after Nike has pulled away from India before.

So, today we ask: is Nike fighting for the market that Comet, Gully Labs and Ten x You are carving out for themselves? And if it was, what would it take for it to win?

This episode was edited by Arnav Prakash

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Your face caught on a camera, your vehicle number plate, a voter ID, a driving licence, even a police-clearance certificate—any of these can become part of a vast web of data that the police can search in Delhi.

That matters especially now, as the capital sees mass protests and public demonstrations, raising questions around safety. surveillance, privacy and the right to dissent.

The Ken's Pratap Vikram Singh spent a month investigating Delhi’s ₹857-crore Safe City Project, conceived in the name of women’s safety. Its mandate now extends far beyond that, to crime prevention, public-order surveillance and political and religious rallies.

What exactly is Delhi building, who can access it, and what happens when a system designed to find criminals can find almost anyone?

In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma reads Pratap’s report titled: Delhi’s mass surveillance: track 50 million faces, identify them in five seconds

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

For years, Flipkart has tried and struggled to scale the vertical it began to sell groceries.

But as quick commerce platforms started becoming successful, the e-commerce giant could not just stay out of the game. Today, around a quarter of its business comes from Minutes. What is driving the vertical is also an aggressive expansion of dark stores and in tier-2 and a change in management affecting selection on the platform.

In this episode, we look at how Minutes has made it work so far, and why Flipkart's push into quick commerce is becoming a way for it to secure its future.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.