Category: GuestPost

 This guest post is written by Shantanu Shah—technologist, entrepreneur, and long‑time student of markets. Shantanu spent years at Google New York building multiple products at scale, co‑founded the NLP/AI startup Bewgle (later acquired by Acceldata), and led AI/ML initiatives as a Senior Architect. He holds an M.Eng. in Computer Science with a minor in Finance from Cornell University, has a patent in sentiment analysis, and has shipped production ML systems across distributed stacks.

Most stock research on the internet today is either breathless speculation or shallow summaries. Empor.top takes a different path. It is a home for long‑form, magazine‑style company histories and fundamental analysis, generated with AI but grounded in verifiable sources and old‑fashioned skepticism.

At its core are deep company narratives—typically 3,000–5,000 words—that trace a firm’s journey across decades: founding stories, leadership turns, capital allocation choices, acquisition logic, product-market fits and misfits, competitive dynamics, and balance‑sheet discipline (or the lack of it).

Alongside the stories sit distilled fundamentals and management’s track record for turning rupees invested into rupees earned. The goal is not a target price; it’s durable understanding.

Empor.top is AI‑first and pipeline‑driven. The system stitches multi‑year narratives, reconciles financials, and surfaces real drivers of value—consistently and reproducibly. No tips, no hype, no noise; just clear explanations you can audit at your pace.

By reconstructing long arcs (sometimes going back to pre‑IPO origins), we help readers learn how to think about businesses, not what to buy on Monday.

Every piece is written for a sound investor: We surface metrics that truly move enterprise value, break them down in plain English—and show how they evolved over time. If there’s a non‑obvious driver—distribution moats, working capital release, or pricing power hidden in product mix—it gets explained with evidence, not adjectives.

What to expect when you visit Empor.top

• No ads, no logins, no payments, no trackers—just clean, distraction‑free reading.
• A single company, explored in depth, with a clearly signposted narrative and data‑backed checkpoints.
• Context that travels well: even if you never buy the stock, you’ll leave with a better mental model for evaluating the next one.

And if you like the mission of clean, ad‑free, no‑login, privacy-first investing content, say hello on X (@emportop) – we would welcome improvements and suggestions

This guest post is written by my friend Jatin Khemani, the Founder  of  Indian Investing Conclave. He explains the product and invites you to check it out.

With a mission to make learning more practical and insightful, we had started Indian Investing Conclave in 2017 as digital-only conference platform.

It boasts of a unique format – a deep-dive by each Fund Manager into one of the listed companies to showcase how they go about analysing a business, industry, management, valuation while managing key risks & concerns.

This case-study method not only ensures superior learning experience but also acts as a way to find interesting stock ideas to research further.

‘IIC Prime’ is the new avatar under which all the 190+ sessions by leading Fund Managers & Research Analysts, have been consolidated.

New sessions get added on a monthly basis to keep its subscribers engaged with insightful content, so one gets access to existing library along with new sessions at a nominal subscription fee of Rs 490 per month.

11 New Stock Idea sessions have already been added so far in 2024:

IIC’s rich library of 190+ sessions can now be searched as well as sorted based on filters like Market Cap, Industry/Sector, Duration, Time of release & Speaker.

Each video session has captions & transcripts which can be searched for specific keywords & play relevant part of the video. Further, the system suggests related sessions to watch based on your interest & profile. Subscribers can also follow their chosen Fund Managers and be notified whenever any new session by them gets released, among host of other features.

Raunak Onkar, Fund Manager at Parag Parikh Mutual Fund once called IIC as the Netflix of Indian Investing Community, the transition to IIC Prime is an effort to truly become one.

Do check out the all new IIC Prime !

This guest post is written by the Founders  of  NGEN Research. They explain the features of their flagship product NGEN Markets and invite you to check it out.

( Disclosure: I am an angel investor here)

An exciting new analytics product has been blazing through the IFA and wealth communities, signing up users at an incredible pace.

Meet NGEN Markets: a full-strength research and analytics platform for Indian finance professionals. It provides deep and institutional-style analysis of Mutual Funds, stocks, and multi-asset portfolios – all delivered seamlessly on a browser.

NGEN Markets is the flagship product of NGEN Research, an Indian company created in 2018 by Debabrata Majumdar and Arunabh Mukherjee.

Deb, CEO, spent over 25 years in finance in India, with senior roles at IndusInd Bank, Edelweiss AMC, Phillip Capital and Motilal Oswal.

Arunabh, CTO, is an ex-Fund Manager from Morgan Stanley in London where he managed over $3 billion in algo-driven funds.

NGEN already has an enviable client list including DBS, SBI MF, Yes Bank, DSP MF and Motilal Oswal. While these big names are serviced using NGEN Research’s Enterprise model, NGEN Markets is something special, since it brings an institutional research experience – available only to larger companies – directly into the hands of smaller IFAs.

NGEN Markets focusses primarily on research – enabling advisors to make sense of the thousands of Mutual Funds in India and find the right investments for their clients. Their unique style of research applies to anything with a price – a fund, stock, index, or portfolio – with instant rolling analysis, scenario analysis, correlation analysis, Value-at-Risk, drawdowns, and much more.

Their portfolio analytics is what really sets them apart. With complete back-testing capability, including portfolio improvement, holding overlap and portfolio comparisons, it is a perfect tool to review existing clients as well as onboard new ones.

They also integrate client portfolios for IFAs through CAMS and Karvy. Their start page is instantly informative with live index data and one-click comparisons. The interface is smooth and lightning fast which is a refreshing change from old-style installed applications.

All the data is downloadable in Excel. They also provide branded PDF reports and a unique PowerPoint download.

NGEN Markets is sold as a SaaS product with an annual fee per login. Although launched only a while back, it already has one thousand fully paid customers and is growing rapidly.

Do check out NGEN Markets !

We have a special treat today. Kimi has written a guest post for us

Kimi or Krishnaraj Venkararaman is an investor based out of Bangalore.

 

I had a semi-awakening while standing on the footsteps of Chennai Central Station many years ago. An auto driver quoted ₹ 200 for an important address I had to go to. He circled the station and dropped me just a few meters ahead, to my destination. Surprised, but also a man of my word I handed ₹ 200 what should have been ₹ 5, and ventured to ask him about pricing. He said, “Sir, suckers like you come very rarely these days. And we have to make the most of limited opportunities.”

For long I felt a lonely sucker until I began investing.

The stock market attracted so many of us that I at once felt like home. Our community even has a name – minority shareholders. We are privileged to be wooed by everyone – promoters, management, brokers, fund houses and the media. It’s true that many of us move out after experience, but India has a demographic dividend that keeps on giving. However the flip side of a large supply is that companies take it too easy and make ‘suckering’ nakedly obvious.

And I want to send a message to them to do a better job.

Take 8K Miles Software Services Ltd (NSE:8KMILES), a ‘technology company born on Cloud’. In April 2018 their CFO was reportedly awarded for being ‘quiet’, ‘working behind the scenes’ to make sure that 8K Miles is ‘safe and sound’. Their auditor Deloitte however writes that this award winning CFO’s financial statements cannot be relied upon and may undergo big changes.

But that’s not my point.

My point is that the same Deloitte also helped pick up this CFO for awards, ‘after sifting through 1000s of companies’! Moreover the CFO’s real behind- the- scenes work was to sell his shares. Soon after the Board announced a ₹ 7/share dividend on May 10 2017 he started selling. After dumping nearly half his stake the dividend was revised down to ₹ 1 / share!

So why was the CFO selling shares of an award winning company? According to the CEO, “….Ramani (the CFO) has….eh there are…there are…see basically eh I own 55% of the company shareholding and I have not sold one single share from the inception. Ramani as part of his eh charitable eh and a eh trust what he was selling and he has made an announcement in the analyst analyst meet also….”.

We are led to believe that the CFO had a charitable commitment for about ₹ 60 crores. But the CEO also knew, as he was speaking, that the CFO provided an unsecured loan to 8KMiles soon after selling his stake. That’s what they have signed on, in the Annual Report.

As such, the structure of 8KMiles is like a complex asana.

A California based NRI takes control of an India listed trading company, converts it into a software company, which in turn starts US entities located in the same California. Almost all the action in the Balance Sheet / P&L happens there, including buying of various US businesses in exchange for cash / stake dilution. The Indian entity mostly only provides funding for the US entities whose accounts in turn have never been shared. Often the interests of Indian shareholders in the US entity are diluted even as they are not properly informed (as pointed out by the Secretarial Auditor). Till date no one knows who the remaining 37% owners are.

We are kept entertained in the annual report with buzzwords like Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning,Block chains, Platforms and so on. Plodding through the financial statements (that the auditor admits may change bigly) is not so entertaining.

For its work Deloitte charged shareholders around ₹ 22 lakhs. For that sum even suckers expect something in return. Like, to check if a copy paste job is done properly, or that management does not say one thing in one place and the exact opposite in another. But, no.

1. Deloitte does not think Sandeep Tandon who holds 6.01% of the company as per exchange filings,holds more than 5% of the firm. His name is missing from names of shareholders holding more than 5% share in the notes to accounts.

2. Management says 8KMiles advanced a sum of ₹ 708.25 lakhs made to a related party on page 177, but the same amount, is not a material transaction with a related party on page 179. How can something be true and not true at the same time?

3. Can a financial liability also be a contingent liability at the same time? On page 165 & 177 ‘Contingent Consideration for Acquisition’ of around ₹ 21 crores is shown as a crystallized liability. In other words something is simultaneously surely owed to and, may not be owed to.

Minority shareholders are always ready to be gullible but management has to put in more efforts to conceal the obvious. Look at this.

1. The CFO sells close to 80% of his shares partly to provide unsecured debt to the company which then provides debt to its US subsidiary, which then funds US companies owned/managed by the NRI promoter. Those companies are yet to pay full interest.

2. The CEO says there are about 500 people employed outside India. Most of these 500 are said in the US. The financial statements say it also develops and ‘capitalizes’ software products from these entities. So where do they work? The company’s website lists offices but these are office suites and not development centers that can house hundreds of people. The rent paid by these entities put together is in Rupee terms just 50% more than what it pays in India, while employing 250% more employees. I don’t know how that’s possible. Unless they have bunk desks (like bunk beds) – one on top of the other.

3. A company that has more than tripled revenues over three years and develops/buys so much of software (~ 60% of tangible/intangible assets), has less computers & accessories than it did then!

4. The company says it books revenues even on expired contracts that are ‘under renewal’.

The list is much longer but you get the drift. It goes like this –

Management presents financial statements that the auditors, whose namesake shortlists the CFO for awards for making sure the company is ‘safe and sound’, and such CFO who has sold most of his shares of this ‘safe and sound’ company, ostensibly for charitable commitments, but actually to provide unsecured loans, which in turn is ultimately used to fund the US promoter’s interests, such auditors who say such financial statements may change bigly, charge ₹ 22 lakhs but cannot spot a copy paste error, can hold something to be yes and no at the same time, such financial statements who subsidiary accounts where most money is made is not shared but whose shareholding keeps changing.

Shareholders are now asked to approve these financial statements.

The denouement is on 29 September 2018 when the AGM will be held, at 8:59 am. Why 8:59 am? Why not 9:00 am? That’s because Rahu Kalam starts at 9 am and management knows that protecting sentiments of minority shareholders is more important than protecting our shareholder value

The guest post below has been written by well known and highly respected Pune Financial Advisor Sanjay Rao. He can be reached at  9673895854 or sanjaycrao@gmail.com

I had an opportunity to attend the AMFI Mutual Fund 2018 Summit on Aug 23,2018 in Mumbai.

The theme of the event of #ThinkDigital .

The opening address was given by Mr A Balasubramanian, Chairman , AMFI

He gave a brief on the industry outlook. A presentation was shown on the Mutual Funds Sahi Hai campaign.

Key Takeaway points:
1>Two years ago, if you were speaking to someone and you said mutual funds, that person would complete it by saying – mutual funds are subject to market risks. But now they complete it by saying – #mutualfundssahihai
2>The next wave of growth in MF industry may be led by retailing of debt schemes…be ready…AMFI showcased their new investor awareness campaign.. “Mutual Fund Fixed Income schemes mein bhi FD wali baat hai “
3>47% of the record 16 million individual folios added during FY2018 were SIP accounts

The next speaker was Mr Deepak Parekh, Chairman of HDFC . It was a pleasure to see him in the flesh

He highlighted everything that he thought was wrong with the industry and along the same lines mentioning how much more growth can be achieved

Key Takeaway points:
1>Doubling the Assets under management in 5 years
2> To do away with providing incentive to distributors by taking them to foreign locations under the pretext of training. He said this was more prevalent in the Insurance industry and should be curbed.
3>The AMCs should rationalise the cost structure
4>The advisors should be well trained in order to prevent misselling
5> Bad financial decisions are made in good times so the industry should grow prudently and not irrationally
6> Diversification . The MF industry should hire more women

Then the keynote address by chief guest, Shri Ajay Tyagi, Chairman , SEBI
He expressed concerns over the growing concentration of assets under management (AUM) among the top seven players and emphasized on the need of having more competition to ensure uniform growth among industry players.

Key Takeaway points:
1>He commended the industry for achieving stellar growth over the last few years, but added that the Indian mutual fund AUM to GDP ratio continued to be lower at 11 percent of GDP as compared to global average of 62 percent
2>Risk management – Debt funds have to be more vigilant about the risks they are taking and how these risks are being valued.
3>Promote direct plans- He stressed that AMCs should promote direct plans more actively in investor awareness campaigns.
4> MFs must go to smaller towns

The next speaker was Dr Uma Shashikant, Chairperson ,CIEL who spoke via a video call from the USA

She compared the USA mutual finds with that of India and so to why the penetration was so much over there.

Key Takeaway points:
1>One of the reasons being that American investors because mutual funds are offered as part of retirement plans (401k plans). Unless Indian govt nudges Indian investors, cultural barriers favoring deposits will remain in place
2>It is important to build products that suit investor preferences like ‘retirement funds which keep changing asset allocation as the investor reaches closer to goal’

Post this Ms Usha Thorat, Former Deputy Governor ,RBI spoke on strengthening the Indian Debt market.

Quite an intelligent talk. She spoke in depth of debt bonds and the need for fund houses to monitor companies besides rating agencies

We had an hour lunch break where we could network with other IFAs

Post lunch was a Panel Discussion- Leveraging Digital for Intermediation with
Mr Anuj Kumar, CEO, CAMS
Mr V Ganesh , CEO , Karvy
Mr Ramesh V, CEO, MF Utility
Mr Neerav Kaushik , VP, Franklin Templeton Services(India)

A very good discussion on what being really Digital Digital means.

Taking money out of an ATM machine, POS counters where still you have to interact with physical intermediaries are not totally digital.

Spoke on how much more awareness needs to be made for IFAs to go digital
Out of 157 crore banking transactions only 5 crore through complete digital mode..Are we really digital? A great point brought in by V Ganesh

Next was the most dynamic sessions of the day ,Leveraging Technology for the next phase of growth by Mr Vijay Shekar Sharma, Paytm

The amount of energy and enthusiasm that he showed made us come out of our post lunch slumber and the crowd couldnt have enough of him

He was talking of how disruptive Paytm was going to be to the MF industry

Key Takeaway points:
1>He said -we want to become the wealth advisor to the auto rickshaw guy and a shopkeeper. If the auto guy earns extra Rs 500 on a certain day, we want him to pick up the phone and in 3 clicks invest it. I’m sure a lot of the IFAs were squirming in their seats despite a smile on their face.
2> He wanted promote zero based commissions funds with real time access to CKYC, Subscription and on the spot redemption. The points he made seemed logical but pointed he knew the regulators would have their own take on this
3>The country is not in English. It’s a good idea to give mutual fund statements in regional languages. Making them digital would cut costs and trees too.He gave very good examples of how Paytm was achieving all this.
4>The most amount of gold was sold on Paytm.
5> At the QnA when an IFA asked how can one invest in a MF by 3 click with no knowledge, he gave comparisons on how one wouldnt buy a shirt online cause the feel,style,fitting cannot be physically seen. Well now most of the online buys are in fashion. There will be disruption whether we like it or not. I’m sure the way he spoke,the energy and the Paytm accomplishments would give most of the IFAs a true sense of whats coming.
6>Paytm is the largest seller of Hero bikes in the country, even more than the distributors and here we are talking about something intangible asset like MF.
One of the best sessions of the day

The next panel discussion was Leveraging Digital for Intermediation – The Key to Customer Expansion
Mr Rajiv Bajaj, Bajaj Capital
Mr Jignesh Desai, NJ India
Mr Hemant Rustagi, WiseInvest Advisors

Key Takeaway Points:
1>Mutual Fund business is also psychological and needs tech plus touch – Rajiv Bajaj
2>If the mutual fund industry needs to double AUM, we need minimum of 5 lac advisors onboard – Jignesh Desai,

Contrary to what Vijay of Paytm was saying ,Hemant and Jignesh were talking on how important the role of an advisor was.

When people do a 3 click investment they are actually agreeing to knowing what the product risk is — but do they really.

The final Panel Discussion of the day with some of the veterans from the Mutual Fund Industry to discuss The Way Forward with moderator Tanvir Gill of ETNow :
Sanjay Sapre, President, Franklin Templeton MF
Kailash Kulkarni, CEO, L&T MF
Swarup Mohanty, Mirae Asset MF

They were generally talking on the MF trends and how important it was for an advisor to do their due diligence for the client as its the name of the entire industry/fraternity at stake and not just the advisors.

Headed back to Pune after a well worth time spent.