In late January, a plane crash in Maharashtra killed the state's deputy chief minister, Ajit Pawar.

It also exposed something few had been paying attention to: India's booming private charter industry, where demand is surging, corners are being cut, and the regulator is struggling to keep pace.

There are now over 430 non-scheduled aircraft in the country. The top operator alone has 17 planes and 70-plus pilots. But between periodic audits, years-long crash investigations, and operators who'd rather fly with a broken light than lose a booking — the cycle of crash, probe, and forget has a way of repeating itself.

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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.

Private equity has been buying up some of India's most prestigious schools. The pitch: better governance, professional management, and much-needed capital for a struggling sector.

But inside some of these acquisitions, something else is happening. Teacher training budgets are shrinking. Salaries are stagnating. And in at least one case, a school is paying 65% of its revenue in rent — to a landlord owned by the same firm that owns the school.

Some investors have made it work. Others have changed something harder to measure.

In this episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rachel Varghese speak to The Ken reporters Valli Vikram and Mutasim Khan about how private-equity firms squeeze money out of schools and what that does to them.

Read the stories here:
Private equity’s priority for Indian schools: pickleball courts over teacher training by Valli Vikram
The private-equity handbook for turning non-profit schools into cash cows by Mutasim Khan

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel here.

Disclosure: Reporter Valli Vikram comes from a family that previously owned a school acquired partially by International Schools Partnership (ISP)

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.

This week, on Tuesday, India announced a sweeping overhaul of how it calculates GDP, fixing a measurement system the IMF had flagged as outdated just last November. It includes a new base year, better price data, and a wider net to count the informal economy. The number seems to be getting closer to reality.

But that raises a harder question.

For a country that has built its global identity around being the world's fastest growing major economy, what happens when the arithmetic changes? And does any of it actually reach 1.4 billion people?

Host Snigdha Sharma explores.

Tune in.

If you have any thoughts on this episode write to us at podcasts@the-ken.com with Daybreak in the subject line. You can also leave us a comment on our website or the YouTube channel here.

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.