Daybreak - 'I am the Byju of Byju's and I am here now'

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

In this episode we fill you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from The Ken newsroom. We’ll talk about the latest development in the Byjus story; how Reliance’s Campa is taking on the Coke-Pepsi duopoly; and finally, the battle between YouTube and streaming companies to be the next television.Stay tuned. Check out the stories and podcasts we mentioned in this episode: The latest edition of Ed Set GoPepsi’s biggest bottler is pouring more cola to fight Reliance’s CampaTwo by TwoThe Ken is hosting its first live subscriber event! Join two long-term and contrarian CEOs, Nithin Kamath of Zerodha and Deepak Shenoy of Capitalmind, as they discuss the mental models, decision making frameworks, and potential outcomes related to a very real possibility: an extended stock market winter that lasts 24 months or more. Click here to buy your tickets. 

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Hello and welcome to daybreak. I'm Snickda and I'm Rahil. And in this episode, we're going to be filling you in on some of the biggest business and tech stories from the Ken's newsroom. We'll talk about the latest from Bayjou's, how Reliance's Campa Cola is taking on the Coke Pepsi Duopoly.

And finally, the battle between YouTube and streaming companies to be the next television. Stay tuned. This month began with an unexpected twist in the ongoing Bayju saga. We've spoken about what went down with Bayju's extensively on this podcast. But through it all, its once larger than life founder, Bayju Ravindran, has maintained silence. But then late last week, Ravindran finally broke his first. silence on LinkedIn. I am the Bayju of Baidu's and I am here now.

That's how he started this rather lengthy post. He then went on to make some pretty startling allegations against the lender group that sued him in a U.S. court for non-payment and, worse yet, fraud. The lender group is a consortium called the Glass Trust. And in his post, Ravindran said he and several employees received a document with conclusive evidence of criminal criminal collusion between the Glass Trust and Yvi India. That's the consulting firm involved in the Ed Tech's insolvency proceedings. Now, for context, we've spoken on this podcast before about how this company really took off because of its signature method of hacking examinations.

Here's what the Ken reporter, Olina Banerjee, had told us when we spoke to her a few months ago on this show. I think it's interesting because it's connected to who Baidu Rajendran was. He was this guy who could help you crack the cat. exam, which is notoriously difficult to crack. And he did it at scale and he did it in a way that was just, I suppose, so impressive and so impactful. I suppose people did crack the cat after, you know, his coaching. And that's the whole kind of mentality that he brought to his business. So on the one hand, because he was the visionary, because he could crack the code of exams and

of scaling, everybody kind of listened to him. So his initial sort of a group of seven to eight co-founders were his students, right, were people who had studied under him. So they obviously were kind of devoted to him as a teacher, but also then as a founder. And then you can start to understand how top-down Bayju's became, right? How sort of everything, all ideas, all directions flowed from the top. But the real trouble began when Bayju's started applying this hack method. to its growth with unrealistic sales targets and billions of dollars in loans. That's when things started to fall apart. Because soon after becoming India's hottest ed tech startup valued at $222 billion in 2022,

Bayju's had a cataclysmic fall from grace. Interestingly, Olina happened to have received an email from a quote-unquote whistleblower just days before Ravindran's LinkedIn post came out. In a recent edition of her newsletter, Edset Go, Orlina wrote that Ravindran's post seemed to have been referencing the same email. In his post, Ravindran called for an investigation into the allegations.

He wrote, I'm sure a thorough investigation of this evidence will reveal the truth. It's important to note here that the post came on the same day a judge in a Delaware court, sided with the lender group Glass Trust and held that Bajus' US subsidiary Alpha

had indeed defrauded the lenders by hiding its stash of cash, and transferring it out of the company. In his post, Ravindran finally addressed the whole mess. He spoke about what he and his family have gone through the past year or so. He wrote that he did everything in his capacity to stop the company from going under and how he felt immense guilt for putting his family through what he described as unimaginable misery. Anyway, it's unclear if any investigative agency will actually look into these allegations of collusion.

It's also unclear whether that impacts. what happens to the ruling in the US. The court's order seems to imply that Bayju's may have to pay up or face a penalty for violating the law. In her newsletter, Orlina writes that maybe now, Bayju's spring will come from an actual round of spring cleaning within what's left of the company. And by that she means selling the American companies,

paying off the debtors, and starting afresh from Ravindran's current perch in Dubai. We are going to link Olina's newsletter in the show notes of this episode. Be sure to check it out. Next up, Snickda's going to tell you how Reliance is making the undisputed kings of India's aerated drinks markets, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, Scramble for survival. Stay tuned. Have you visited a neighbourhood Kirana store recently? There's something quite weird happening to Pepsi bottles at these stores. I don't know if you've noticed, but the bottles are getting fatter.

The $20-Rupea bottle now has 400ml of Pepsi instead of 250m. Now, if like me you are thinking this must be some kind of a promotional thing, you dear listener are quite wrong. Because this is a panic move. Varun beverages, which is Pepsi's largest bottler in India, is, well, bubbling with anxiety. So what happened? You see, Reliance has entered the cola scene and it is trying to do what it does best, which is disrupt the market. If you remember, the company reintroduced Campa Cola, the popular homegrown soft drink brand back from the 17th and 80s in 2022.

In true reliant style, it offered 250ml bottles just for 10 rupees. And that is half a watt Pepsi and Coke charge. The result? Kirana stores are loving the fatter margins and customers are loving the cheap sugar hit. Actually, in some states, Campa Cola has already gulped down 10%. 10% of the market. My colleague, the Ken reporter Garav Bagger, took a closer look at what is going on. You see, it is not just reliance-causing Pepsi headaches. Coca-Cola 2 is bulking up. Conglomerate Jubilant-Bartia Group just bought a 40% stake in Coke's biggest bottler,

Hindustan Coca-Cola beverages or HCCB. Two consumer goods analysts told the Ken that this move will only cement Coke's 50 to 55% grip on the Indian-aerated drinks market. Besides, the Bharthia group also owns Jubilant Food Works, which runs the pizza giant Dominoes in India and sells Pepsi products at its outlets. One of the analysts also told us how this could potentially lead to a shift in partnerships

with Domino's switching from Pepsi to Coca-Cola. Meanwhile, Pepsi's bottler, Varun beverages, is keeping its panic under wraps. Ravi Jaipuria, its promoter, said during an analyst, call in early February that there is always a market for lower price products and regional brands have maintained about 20% of the market in India. On an extra positive note, Jaipuria said that there is enough space for everybody to grow. But the stock market is not quite buying this

argument. Over the last year, no thanks to the rising competition and a broader market correction for high private equity stocks, Varun Beverages' stock has fallen by more than 20%. Even the nifty FMCG index slipped by 3.5%, which is an unusual stumble for a company that has been on a winning streak for the last five years. And that is why Pepsi is quietly stuffing more cola into its bottles. The $20 price point is Pepsi's stronghold. But with reliance undercutting it from below and Coca-Cola reinforcing its empire, Pepsi is feeling the squeeze. Next up, who will become the new television, YouTube or streaming? platforms. Stay tuned. There's a war for succession going on, and there are only two challengers.

On one hand, we have YouTube, and on the other, we have streaming companies like Netflix and Geo Hot Star. Neil Mohan, YouTube CEO, says this streaming platform is the clear winner. After all, TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the quote-unquote primary device for YouTube viewing in the US. It is, as Mohan writes in his annual letter from the CEO, an indication that YouTube is the new television. It's interactive and includes things like shorts, podcasts and live streams alongside sports, sitcoms and talk shows that people already love. It's getting there organically by adding things like

memberships, monetization tools, partner programs and superchats, and it's letting creators play with them to create content that takes eyeballs away from linear television. On the other hand, there are streaming companies like Netflix and Geo Hot Star, who also want to become the successor for new television. They do it by owning and producing exclusive content and IP, like Live Sports, Disney, Marvel, HBO, and a whole lot more. But only one platform can be the new TV.

Which one will it be? In the latest episode of our Premium Podcast 2x2, host Praveen Gopal-Krishnan and Rohan Dharmaqar discuss justice. They are joined by Swati Mohan, the ex-head of Marketing at Netflix India, and Vanita Koli-Kandikar. a contributing editor for business standard where she has written about media

and the business of media for over two decades now. I'm going to play a short clip for you. I'm going to ask on behalf of the listeners, is Swati team YouTube or team streaming companies? Imagine if UT went away for S-Fod streaming companies. Fair enough. Where would they drop their trailer, a trailer? What would happen?

There is a lot of mine. Look at the kind of content that they've been managed to get, whether it's quota factory, little things, a lot of the stuff that TVF has made, a lot of the talent that is emerging from there. It is actually fueling a lot of it saying, hey, my audience, it's not like my audience is not the YouTube audience. And so it will be foolish to not lean into what is coming out of there.

And at one level, YouTube is saying, look, I'm a platform in the truest sense. When it came to, I will provide you a platform to show your talent, tell your story, tell it in every language now today because they have these dubbing tools and AI tools and whatnot. They don't have content budgets, right? their revenue model is a little bit different. So I'm uncomfortable with the pitting against in a large sense.

If you want to listen to the full episode, you can download the Ken app or find it on Apple Podcasts. A shorter free version of it is also available across platforms. I'm adding all the relevant links to the show notes of this episode for you. Daybreak is produced from the Newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of. our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website.

Today's episode was hosted and produced by Rahal Philippos and I, Snikda Sharma, and it was edited by Rajiv Sien.