| Wednesday, 24 December 2025 |
The story behind the numbers and motivations driving India's stock market Subscribe here
Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
Did you know that markets are not all about numbers? Of course, you knew that.
I didn’t really think about markets in general until I learned about Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”. Then I learned about liberalisation. All this made me realise that market movements have a story to tell. After all, it is us humans who are running everything, and anything that involves us is never without drama.
Indian companies have also realised they are bigger than the sum of their numbers, and many have started following the trend of releasing shareholder letters.
Launched last year, Long and Short makes sure we save you the trouble of decoding the stories hidden in our stock markets. The bets that worked, and the ones that didn’t. The ones that benefitted the masses, and the ones that frustrated us.
For instance, the piece on rising data prices by the data duopoly giants Jio and Airtel gave me a broader view of what I was personally facing. The data limit for yearly plans just keeps increasing. I used to buy the 1.5GB-per-day yearly pack, but now I have to buy the 2.5GB pack.
TRAI needs to read The Ken. Not just them, but other regulators, too. Don’t forget to gift a subscription if you know someone who works there.
Here are some market movements that highlighted 2025.
Dr Agarwal’s Healthcare and Dr Agarwal’s Eye Hospital proposed a merger in August, which some investors didn’t approve. The parent company Dr Agarwal’s Healthcare had listed this year, and Seema Singh was worried that their Doctors’ Incentive Plan (DIP) isn’t the best financial bet for a healthcare entity.
In India, while employee stock options (Esops) are common, especially for employees and key managerial personnel, incentive plans specifically for consultants, such as the DIP, are rare, if not entirely unheard of. The DIP provides doctors with a payout linked to the appreciation in the company’s share value as determined by independent valuation.
Read this well-argued piece here:
Dr Agarwal’s IPO papers show how dire doctor retention is in Indian healthcare
The healthcare firm has introduced an uncommon plan offering cash rewards based on stock performance
Polycab is on cloud nine. They had to send out a clarification to the BSE last week, stating they had no hand in the increase in their volume trading. Seetharaman G wrote about the loyalty of their investors back in October.
If the Birla Group could definitively win round 1 of its fight with a veritable colossus, it had to be taken seriously when it set its sights on any new business. Which it did when Ultratech Cement, another Birla company, announced the launch of its wires-and-cables business in February, with an investment of Rs 1,800 crore ($203 million) over two years. Weeks later, the Adani Group followed suit.
With 400 companies, a third of the industry being unorganised, and no company with more than a fifth of the market, wires and cables is fragmented enough to appeal to a large entrant. Naturally, shares of incumbents such as KEI Industries and Havells tumbled.
Polycab India, the market leader, plunged to its lowest in a year during that month. But this was little more than a knee-jerk response by its shareholders.
Polycab shares have since leapt 60% and reached their highest on 10 October. Last month, Polycab dethroned Havells as the most valuable company in consumer electrical goods. The rally in Polycab—whose market cap is now Rs 1.15 lakh crore—has made its chairman and managing director, Inder Jaisinghani, the 22nd richest Indian on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Read Polycab’s story here:
Birla and Adani aren’t enough to spook Polycab investors
There are enough reasons to salivate over the stock, even if it’s among the priciest in its sector
Congratulations are also in order for Shriram Finance, which sold a 20% stake to Japan’s MUFG, marking the highest foreign direct investment (FDI) in this sector.
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Executive Chairperson, Biocon Limited
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Co-founder and CEO, Obvious Ventures