“Why should our reader care about this? So what?”

It’s a question we reporters are often asked when we set out ideating and reporting for a story.

We tend to visualise our reader as a busy Indian woman, in her thirties, with a thriving career, managing work and home, living in any city. And she pays for things with her time first.

Such imagery lets us do a few things when we report and write. We know that the story has to be compelling enough that she should be able to drop everything else to read it in the morning. And if we clear that first bar, then she should not once feel like she lacks the context to understand what is happening in the story.

This lets us walk that fine line between overexplaining and assuming prior knowledge.

Though this is what we set out to do with every story, some may hit the mark and some may not. As for the “so what”, it’s a check that lets us bring only the most important and consequential stories of our times to the reader.

With the IPO floodgates open, AI causing real impact by meddling with careers and changing businesses, and business leaders feeling the heat of all this, we had a busy year. And a lot of this struck a deep chord with you, <dear reader>.

These are the stories that resonated with The Ken’s readers the most in 2025, going by what you read and shared the most.

Para Divider

Instead of making consultants’ lives easier, generative AI led to shorter deadlines and vanishing creativity. Abhirami’s story brought up the all-important question: what is the future of consulting if AI can do everything a consultant can?

Images of the story

“A consultant’s job boils down to just a few things—interacting with clients, doing research, making Excel models and slides, and coming up with insights,” said a manager at Bain.