Hi, I’m Shahid, and I work on The Chatter.
Today, we’re publishing our 100th edition. Over time, we’ve expanded the conversations we cover, but the idea remains the same. We find the quotes that help you understand businesses better, with enough context to make sense of what’s being said.
A hundred editions in, it’s nice to see how far we’ve come. If The Chatter has helped you look at a business differently, we’re glad.
Welcome to the 100th edition of The Chatter — a newsletter where we dig through what India’s biggest companies are saying and bring you the most interesting bits of insight, whether about the business, its sector, or the wider economy. We read every major Indian earnings call and listen to the interviews so you don’t have to.
We’re always eager to improve—please share your ideas on how else we can innovate “The Chatter” format to better serve your needs.
In this edition, we have covered 10 companies across 5 industries.
Services
Eternal Limited
Swiggy Limited
Tourism & Hospitality
Indian Hotels Company Limited
Engineering & Capital Goods
KEI Industries Limited
Financial Services
HDFC Bank Limited
Axis Bank Limited
ICICI Bank Limited
Jammu & Kashmir Bank Limited
Piramal Finance Limited
Retail
Shoppers Stop
Services
Eternal Limited | Large Cap
Eternal Ltd. is a leading Indian technology platform operating in food delivery, quick commerce through Blinkit, and the going-out segment. The company is increasingly focusing on tier-two city expansion and developing specialised AI-driven consumer and enterprise applications.
[Concall]
Management feels they now have enough data on competitor behaviour to resume aggressive expansion in the quick commerce sector. The return to growth follows a year of cautious observation as new players entered the market.
“We went through a period of 12 months in which competitive intensity in Quick Commerce increased significantly, including the entry of new players and the market becoming a five-, six-, or seven-player market. We now have that 12-month period behind us. We know how it impacted our business. We know our strengths relative to other players. We have some idea of how other players are thinking about this market, what they are investing in, what they are building, and what their strategy is. All of that information and data helps us feel more confident about reaccelerating expansion. Doing this last year would have been fraught with risk because we did not know how some of these things would have developed. Payback on investments is very important for us. We were in a period during the last 12 months when visibility on those things had reduced. Now we feel that, as we also mentioned last time, competition is more predictable. That provides us with an opportunity to become more aggressive on infrastructure expansion.”
— Akshant Goyal, CFO
Lower competition in smaller Indian towns is allowing the company to capture early adopters more efficiently than in crowded metros. This first-mover advantage is leading to robust unit economics and justifies an accelerated rollout plan.
“What we have seen so far is that the economics are quite robust. As I said, paybacks are extremely good in these markets. The other point is also true: these markets are less competitive. Going in first does give one an advantage in locking in the early users of those markets. Both of these things are true, and that is why we want to double down on expansion into these markets at this point.”
— Akshant Goyal, CFO
Quick commerce is finding high demand in smaller cities for niche products that were previously difficult to find in local brick-and-mortar stores. This shift in product mix suggests the platform is solving for availability rather than just convenience in these regions.
“Jignanshu, not significantly. The assortment in our expansion cities is a subset of what we are selling in the metros. However, the product mix might be different because some of these cities are developing a different base. We do see that some products that are harder to find in these cities start selling much faster than they would in a metro because they are more easily available there.”
— Albinder Dhindsa, CEO, Blinkit
The management team is prioritising absolute profit growth over percentage margins, believing that market expansion is the better long-term value driver. This suggests the company will keep spending heavily on growth as long as it results in more total cash flow.
“What we are trying to do is expand the market and expand growth for the business, which eventually leads to higher growth in absolute adjusted EBITDA profits. That is what we are trying to solve for, rather than optimising for the percentage margin. We feel that we can drive more growth in absolute adjusted EBITDA by investing more in growth rather than optimising for margins. We have been doing that consistently for a few quarters, and we think we will continue on that path until we see the outcomes.”
— Akshant Goyal, CFO
Early testing of AI-based conversational ordering has shown low consumer interest compared to traditional browsing. This insight suggests that visual interfaces remain the dominant preference for food delivery users despite the rise of AI chatbots.
“On the current Zomato app, users can have a conversation to order their food, but we are not seeing much uptake of that. People still want to browse and order. This is an attempt to learn about consumer behaviour, and we will continue to adapt and iterate on how we can improve our interface using the capabilities that AI offers us today.”
— Akshant Goyal, CFO
The company is betting on several high-risk, high-reward AI projects that could become substantial standalone value drivers over the next decade. Management views these initiatives as essential ‘shots’ at a multi-billion-dollar market opportunity in enterprise and consumer AI.
“In these AI businesses, I do not think anyone has a right to win. It is a nascent market, covering both consumer and enterprise AI. Most of the new large businesses emerging are actually startups. As I mentioned in response to the previous question, this is something we have been working on for about a year. There are one or two more initiatives on the AI side, particularly on the enterprise AI side, that we have spoken about in the past, including Nugget. Those are businesses or products that we have been working on for many years. We expect the next 12 months to tell us whether any of these will become meaningful. However, any of these businesses, if they scale, will deliver a multi, multi-billion-dollar market capitalisation outcome. We definitely want to take shots at these opportunities where either we have some unique capability that gives us the right to win... or we have some unique insight on the consumer side that we think no one else is building and that we can take to market first.”
— Akshant Goyal, CFO
Swiggy Limited | Mid Cap
Swiggy is a leading Indian consumer technology platform that operates a nationwide food delivery marketplace and a quick commerce service known as Instamart. The company focuses on hyper-local delivery logistics and is currently expanding into affordable dining segments and brand-led assortment strategies.
[Concall]
Swiggy is prioritising operational resilience and reaching EBITDA break-even over aggressive capital deployment for new market expansion. This disciplined approach aims to close the execution gap with competitors by focusing on core market profitability first.
“Blinkit enjoys a very strong flywheel that has been compounding over the years. That is why it has been able to build a more resilient business. For us, the next step is to build that more resilient business before simply using the cash in the bank to set up new flags. As I mentioned in the previous answer, our first job is to build a stable, resilient business with a clear line of sight to EBITDA zero. The optionalities come after that. The most important thing for us in building resilience is to do the 3-4 things that Amritapa and I talked about earlier. Anything beyond that is a potential opportunity, or perhaps a number of opportunities. However, failing to make the business resilient in the areas where we already operate would be a bigger loss of opportunity. We still need to grow, as we mentioned, to roughly 2 times the current size. We need to improve contribution. Being able to do this is the most important thing for us.”
— Ashish, Management
The company is choosing to focus on maximising order density in its current 130 cities rather than matching competitors’ aggressive geographical expansion. This strategy aims to drive growth through higher capacity utilisation of existing dark stores rather than high capital expenditure.
“Sachin, at the risk of repeating myself, we maintain that store addition will be a factor of growth. We are present in more than 130 cities, and we do not have a near-term expectation of increasing our geographical coverage. Therefore, store additions that competition may be making due to store or city additions should not be considered comparable in our case. Wherever there is going to be growth and capacity is being maximised, we are adding stores. You will continue to see us expand the number of stores in the current quarter as growth continues in those hyperlocal ZIP codes. As you can also see from overall capacity utilisation, last quarter we increased it by close to 10% on an order-per-day-per-store basis. This still leaves sufficient room for us to continue the growth journey without necessarily increasing the pace of store expansion.”
— Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Food Marketplace
Management clarified that new dark store openings are triggered once existing locations reach a threshold of roughly 2,000 orders per day. This reveals a disciplined expansion framework where 5-7% of the network is currently hitting peak capacity every quarter.
“We typically start discussing opening a new store in a ZIP code when a store crosses around 2,000 orders a day. By the time the new store is operational, which typically takes 2-3 months, those stores start doing roughly 2,300-2,500 orders per day. Every quarter, as you have seen, we are adding 5-7% stores. That is the proportion reaching maximum capacity, given that the pace of growth continues at this level.”
— Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Food Marketplace
Swiggy is closely monitoring whether its high-frequency, low-ticket ‘Toing’ service can reach unit-level profitability by leveraging its existing delivery network. Investors should note that the low fixed-cost nature of this model allows the company to scale the investment up or down with high agility.
“To answer your question about whether it is an experiment or how ready it is to be scaled, I think we have asked for perhaps another quarter or two before we have seen enough to be able to determine whether this investment in Toing is delivering the frequency growth that we were hoping for, the category extension in terms of new user acquisition to the platform that we were hoping for, and, more importantly, whether some of the earlier cities are turning unit economics positive for repeat users. You can imagine that in an affordable offering, where the average basket sizes are a fraction of those on the main platform, it is extremely hard to build a business because it requires significant density. It also requires the cost to serve to match revenue, which is also a fraction of that on the main platform. Our ability to navigate this also comes from the fact that we are building it on the back of the original capacity that we have aggressively built in the main platform. The incremental overhead that we incur is only for user acquisition. The fixed cost is very low in this business; it is all delivery money. Therefore, our ability to scale up or dial down is very agile in this segment.”
— Rahul Bothra, CFO
Management is seeing that their low-cost food pilot, Toing, is attracting new users rather than just cannibalising the main Swiggy app’s customer base. This trend validates the company’s multi-tier pricing strategy to expand its total reachable market in India.
“There is some overlap, but we also talked about the extent of the overlap and how it has been changing over time. Every passing month, as we gain scale, we are seeing the overlap actually reduce, which is what gives us confidence that this is the opening of a new market. It was part of the goal that there would be some overlap, but we monitor it closely and it is at a very healthy level right now, as we see it. As it has scaled, it is starting to improve. The overlap percentage is reducing, which for us increases our confidence that this is the opening of a new market.”
— Sriharsha Majety, MD & Group CEO
Swiggy’s food delivery segment has reached record monetisation levels with take rates over 26%, fueling a steady path to its 5% margin target. The company expects additional profitability beyond this target through further densification and operating leverage.
“As you have seen, we added close to 50 crores to absolute EBITDA for the quarter in a market where competition from all forms is only increasing. The 5% trajectory is a natural outcome—5% of GOV, which is what we have stated—and you should continue to see operating leverage accrue in our business. At the same time, you may have seen our monetisation, which is at its highest ever, with the take rate exceeding 26%. There are sufficient levers available to us to continue this journey towards 5%, and that is something to which we are committed. Beyond that, we will start making choices around reinvesting in platform growth because I do not believe the margin journey necessarily stops at 5%. There is continued densification, cost synergies, and operating leverage that you should expect in the business.”
— Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Food Marketplace
Tourism & Hospitality
Indian Hotels Company Limited | Mid Cap
Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) is India’s largest hospitality firm, managing a portfolio of iconic brands including Taj, Vivanta, and Ginger. The company operates a vast network of luxury, upscale, and mid-market hotels across domestic and international markets.
Management believes current hospitality demand is driven by long-term shifts in business activity and a strong domestic wedding market rather than temporary events. This suggests that the company’s high occupancy rates and pricing power are becoming more predictable and sustainable.
“This represents a structural shift that has been underway for several quarters. Beyond landmark events like the G20 or recurring leadership summits, there is a fundamental transformation in how India is perceived globally and how business is conducted domestically. High-level diplomatic and trade delegations continue to arrive regularly in key commercial hubs like Delhi and Mumbai, driving substantial convention and room demand. In addition, the domestic wedding calendar remains exceptionally strong, with auspicious wedding dates increasing this year and projected to expand further next year.”
— Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
The company expects seasonal leisure travel and a recovery in international gateway properties to maintain momentum despite a very high performance base last year. Investors should look for continued growth from international assets to balance any domestic base-effect challenges in the third quarter.
“While major summits provide a boost to Q2, which is traditionally the seasonally weakest quarter of the fiscal year, momentum continued into October with major international business summits and foreign trade delegations. Delivering 25% RevPAR growth on the elevated base of Q3 is naturally more demanding than in Q1 or Q2. However, the third quarter benefits from strong post-Diwali wedding demand, Christmas and New Year holiday leisure travel, and robust performance across our key international gateway properties. Markets such as London, New York, San Francisco, and Cape Town experience substantial seasonal demand improvements during the second half of the fiscal year compared to the summer months.”
— Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Management has raised its full-year revenue growth guidance by 300 basis points due to the underlying strength of the core hotel business. This upward revision indicates high management confidence in achieving double-digit growth even if global macroeconomic conditions remain volatile.
“We have revised our full-year top-line guidance upward by 300 basis points to 17% to 19% growth for the enterprise. On a consolidated basis, factoring in airline catering, revenue growth is guided at 15% to 17%. The core hotel segment is expected to deliver stronger growth. If geopolitical friction in West Asia moderates, international airline schedules will normalize further, providing upside for our airline catering operations.”
— Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
A massive shortage of branded hotel rooms in India protects existing players from global economic shocks and keeps pricing power high. This supply-demand gap, combined with upcoming international summits, provides a long-term safety net for the company’s revenue targets.
“The Indian hospitality sector is insulated primarily because domestic demand continues to outpace available supply. India currently has roughly 200,000 branded hotel rooms, with the industry on track to add another 200,000 rooms over the next few years to reach 400,000. However, the country requires approximately one million branded hotel rooms to support its long-term economic expansion. That structural undersupply provides a durable buffer against external global volatility. Furthermore, domestic tourism has expanded at an 11% CAGR over the last decade. While foreign tourist arrivals currently grow at sub-4%, hosting the World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit in India next year will serve as an international catalyst to accelerate foreign inbound travel over the next twelve months.”
— Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
The company believes its unique heritage properties and locations create a high barrier to entry that new competitors cannot easily match. By focusing on expansion in underserved smaller cities, IHCL plans to capture new growth before the broader industry reaches a saturation point.
“Competition keeps the organization agile and drives innovation, but IHCL maintains a distinct competitive moat. The iconic locations and generational heritage assets of the Taj portfolio cannot be easily replicated. India’s hospitality landscape has ample whitespace across all segments, including luxury, upscale, mid-market, and budget formats. Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities remain deeply underserved, and substantial industry capacity must be added across these markets before the sector experiences any supply-demand pressure.”
— Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
TajSATS is diversifying its revenue by moving into corporate and institutional catering to reduce its sensitivity to airline industry cycles. This shift uses existing infrastructure more efficiently and provides a more stable, non-cyclical revenue stream for the catering division.
“Two factors are driving improvements in catering. First, revised airline winter flight schedules initiated in October have expanded both domestic and international flight frequencies, increasing catering volumes. Second, we are rapidly scaling our non-airline institutional catering business through TajSATS. Non-airline institutional catering grew to represent nearly 20% of total catering revenues in Q2. We are leveraging TajSATS industrial kitchens as central production hubs to supply corporate institutional clients and streamline food operations across our Ginger hotel portfolio.”
— Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
The upcoming merger with Oriental Hotels is set to add up to ₹700 crore in annual revenue while providing better control over iconic assets. For investors, this consolidation is expected to improve profit margins through direct management of properties that were previously only associate investments.
“The appointed date for the merger is April 1st of next year, with the complete regulatory and legal process expected to take approximately nine months. The financial impact will reflect in next fiscal year’s reported numbers on top of our organic guidance. While we already recognise our share of profits as an associate investment, consolidating Oriental Hotels will add approximately ₹600 crore to ₹700 crore in incremental top-line revenue. More importantly, integrating these operations will allow us to execute active asset management initiatives across iconic properties such as Taj Coromandel in Chennai and Fisherman’s Cove near Mahabalipuram, unlocking higher operational margins and substantial EBITDA expansion.”
— Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Engineering & Capital Goods
KEI Industries Limited | Mid Cap
KEI Industries is a leading Indian manufacturer of electrical wires and cables, ranging from low voltage to extra-high voltage power cables. The company serves a diverse client base across the retail, industrial, and infrastructure sectors with a significant presence in both domestic and international markets.
KEI achieved 30% revenue growth in the first half of the year, though high commodity prices contributed to the increase. Management is targeting a long-term revenue growth rate of 20% and expects double-digit volume growth to continue for the full year.
“While I do not have the exact quarterly volume numbers at hand, volume growth remains intact and we expect full-year volume growth to exceed 10%. Revenue growth has been very strong, expanding around 30% in the first half of the fiscal year, partly aided by commodity price increases in copper and aluminum. For the full year, we anticipate revenue growth close to 30%, and over the next three to four years, our revenue CAGR should comfortably exceed 20%.”
— Anil Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director
Management is sticking to their 11% EBITDA margin target for the full year despite a slightly lower performance in the second quarter. They view the target as a conservative estimate and expect growing production volumes to support overall profitability.
“Operating margins were around 10.0%, while EBITDA margins stood at 10.62% for the quarter. For the full fiscal year, we expect to maintain an EBITDA margin around 11%. This does not represent an operational downgrade; rather, I prefer taking a conservative stance in forward projections and letting execution speak for itself. We face no fundamental business pressures and will sustain our growth trajectory across all operational segments as new capacity continues to ramp up.”
— Anil Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director
The company expects the new Sanand plant to contribute over ₹1,500 crore to annual revenue once fully operational. While current high-voltage cable plants are at full capacity, the next major leg of growth from this segment will begin in the 2028 fiscal year.
“For Sanand, narrowing the target brings expected full-year revenue contribution to slightly above ₹1,500 crore. On Extra High Voltage cables, our Chopanki plant is currently operating at nearly 100% capacity utilisation. The new Sanand EHV facility is scheduled for commercial commissioning by the end of March 2027, with the financial and volume impact reflecting in FY28. We will provide detailed guidance on EHV’s expanding contribution to the product mix during our fourth-quarter earnings call once production commences.”
— Anil Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director
Management anticipates a significant acceleration in exports during the second half of the year based on a record-high order book. This indicates that international demand remains robust despite ongoing logistics and shipping challenges in regions like the Middle East.
“Export growth in the second half will be substantial because underlying demand across international markets remains completely intact. In the Middle East, business volumes have not declined; we are maintaining run rates despite global shipping and supply chain friction. Our total export order book currently stands at an all-time high of approximately ₹1,000 crore.”
— Anil Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director
The company dismissed fears about new competition, pointing out that their own capital investments significantly outweigh those of new market entrants. Furthermore, KEI’s business is mostly focused on industrial cables rather than the retail market where pricing wars are more common.
“The Street is taking the impact of new market entrants far too negatively. To put things in perspective, KEI has deployed ₹2,000 crore of capital expenditure in Sanand alone over the past two and a half years, which exceeds their announced plan. Furthermore, retail house wires represent only about 22% of our total turnover, with industrial and institutional power cables accounting for the remainder. We are not experiencing any pricing pressure on our products, and we remain fully confident in defending our market share and expanding our presence across specialised domestic and export applications.”
— Anil Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director
Financial Services
HDFC Bank | Large Cap
HDFC Bank is India’s largest private sector bank, with businesses spanning retail, MSME and corporate banking. Following its merger with HDFC Limited, the bank has been working to strengthen deposit mobilisation, improve its funding mix and increase operating efficiency.
[Concall]
Management believes that net interest margins have reached a turning point and will likely expand as rates rise and the loan mix shifts. Investors should watch for structural margin improvements as the higher-yielding retail portfolio matures.
“I am leaving behind a platform where we have invested over the past few years in re-architecting and reinforcing our technology from the core to the AI layer, ready to be harnessed in our products and service delivery; a distribution strength that will deliver as the branch network matures; and optimism stemming from the fact that net interest margins, which in recent times have borne the brunt of faster repricing of assets and a lag in the cost of funds during a down-rate cycle, are also positioned for a reversal as we enter the upward rate cycle. This will be further enhanced as the proportion of retail and MSME assets outweighs the proportion of corporate and home loans over a period of time.”
— Sashidhar Jagdishan, Outgoing MD & CEO
With 70% of loans being floating rate, the bank is well-positioned to benefit from recent interest rate hikes. Management indicates that margins have likely bottomed out and should begin a neutral-to-positive trajectory from here.
“The floating-rate book is approximately 70% of the total book. Therefore, the 25 basis point change that happened in October should largely be factored in by December. It will not be factored in for the full quarter; it should be factored in for part of the quarter. There is a tailwind coming from the rate change, which will be positive. The full-quarter impact of FCNR will be a headwind that will offset this. Net of that, we still think that the impact on margins can be neutral to positive as we move forward. I do not want to say what will happen in the next quarter, the following quarter, and so on, but from a trajectory point of view, I think margins are at the bottom and should—would you like to add something?”
— Srinivasan Vaidyanathan, CFO
The bank is facing structural challenges in growing low-cost CASA deposits due to changing consumer habits and the need to replace legacy HDFC debt. Ongoing balance sheet adjustments will be necessary to ensure funding remains affordable and stable.
“Over the last 3 years, we have had to substitute the borrowing maturities of the erstwhile HDFC Limited, which are nearing 2.6 lakh crore. This required the institution to take more time to complete that substitution. Apart from that, as all of us have seen and as you have also mentioned, incremental accretion to low-cost current and savings accounts in the system is becoming smaller and smaller because of a structural shift in household savings behaviour. When you put all of this together, structurally, I think this will be an issue in the system over a period of time. Having said that, Anup and his team will unveil this in the near future. There may be certain structural adjustments that one may have to make, not just on a one-time basis but perhaps continuously, on the balance sheet side.”
— Sashidhar Jagdishan, Outgoing MD & CEO
AI and automation are expected to reduce the need for back-office staffing, allowing the bank to redeploy employees to sales and customer-facing roles. This shift aims to drive market share growth without significantly increasing total headcount.
“The way I see it is that as adoption increases and the overlay of AI on these applications becomes much more mature, the need for enabler functions—whether business-enabler functions, operations, credit verticals, and perhaps in the future corporate-enabler functions—will not require the same level of capacity in their verticals in the future. Having said that, we still represent only about 11% to 12% of the market, which means that the runway for growth is massive. We will have more and more people in frontline, customer-facing roles and fewer and fewer people in the back end. I believe the institution will try to maintain the staff count and move more and more people to the frontline. However, there will be an inflexion point.”
— Sashidhar Jagdishan, Outgoing MD & CEO
Management is working on strategies to improve the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) following recent fluctuations. They emphasise that while the LCR ratio may look tight, the bank’s actual liquidity position remains robust.
“The institution is seized of the matter, and I am sure that over the next couple of quarters, you will see a strategic thought process regarding what one would like to do in terms of not only ensuring that core liability momentum continues strongly, but also making the balance-sheet adjustments required to ensure that LCR coverage remains very healthy. While you are looking at the LCR, there is another liquidity metric that may not be visible to all of you. The institution’s liquidity is extremely comfortable—probably more than comfortable. I want to leave the broader audience with the thought that a low LCR does not mean low liquidity. Liquidity is extremely comfortable.”
— Sashidhar Jagdishan, Outgoing MD & CEO
Proposed regulatory changes to insurance commissions could negatively impact bancassurance income in the short term. The bank plans to mitigate this through higher sales volumes and potentially adjusting its internal cost structures.
“The reduction in commission rates is indeed quite significant. There are three other things that we need to assess once we know where the commission rates settle. The first is what kind of improvement in persistency it will provide, which could have a positive effect. The second is the objective of better commission rates and, therefore, a lower cost of insurance. It is not about the commission; it is about ensuring that the end consumer has a lower cost of insurance. That could mean higher participation levels, which could mean more volume. The third point is the cost structure itself. If some commission structures change, we will have to address that through our cost structure as well. However, in its current form, if you look only at the commission change, the impact is expected to be quite high.”
— Anup Bagchi, MD & CEO
Axis Bank | Large Cap
Axis Bank is one of India’s largest private sector banks, providing a wide range of financial services to retail, corporate, and SME clients. The bank maintains a significant presence across India through an extensive branch network and various digital banking channels.
[Concall]
The bank is successfully growing its share of the Indian deposit market while keeping the majority of its loan book on floating rates. This positioning allows interest income to adjust quickly when central bank rates change.
“We continue to gain market share in the deposit franchise, gaining approximately 10 basis points of market share in the month of August and 53 basis points of market share on a year-on-year basis in the deposit franchise. Our loan book is granular and well-balanced, with retail advances constituting 54% of overall advances, corporate loans at 34%, and SME at 12%. Seventy-two percent of our loans are floating-rate loans, of which 60% are linked to repo, while 12% are linked to MCLR and other benchmarks. Forty-four percent of our fixed-rate book matures in 12 months.”
— Management, Senior Management
The bank has built a massive buffer of extra provisions that go well beyond what the law requires. This fortress-like approach provides a safety net against future bad loans and protects the bottom line from sudden shocks.
“The cumulative non-NPA provisions as of September 30, 2026, stood at Rs.15,860 crores, comprising prudent provisions for standard assets of Rs.6,775 crores, restructuring provisions of Rs.176 crores, standard asset provision at a rate higher than the regulatory rate of Rs.1,914 crores, an additional one-time standard asset provision of Rs.1,231 crores, and weak assets and other provisions of Rs.5,767 crores.”
— Management, Senior Management
Management is balancing high-quality corporate lending with a renewed push into retail loans to improve profitability. This shift is important because retail loans generally offer higher margins than corporate lending.
“We did not guide for any particular topping out or bottoming out of the retail share of the total mix. If you look at our retail disbursement growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis, it is quite strong across all the categories. So we continue to push the pedal on retail growth in terms of disbursements. The book growth has also gone up. Even excluding FCNRB, it is now above 10%. It has been going up from 6% to 8% to 10% over the last few quarters. On the corporate side, there is a good opportunity and a good pipeline, with very good companies with whom we are actually gaining wallet share. These are long-term relationships and, as we have mentioned, the downstream benefits of these relationships, where we are actually substituting other banks, cannot in any sense be undervalued. So we are continuing to make sure that the retail book growth starts to catch up once disbursement growth continues to remain as robust over the next couple of quarters. It is doing that; book growth is starting to grow at a faster pace.”
— Subrat, Executive Director
Corporate loan growth is currently diversified across many industries rather than being concentrated in just one area. This reduces risk for the bank and ensures that their lending growth is not dependent on a single sector performing well.
“We are seeing good growth in our corporate book. Effectively, we apply our internal filters on pricing, risk, and RWA, and we let go of several assets. In spite of that, we are able to see growth because the growth is very broad-based across several sectors and segments. We are also seeing growth across capex, project finance, refinancing, and working capital. So we do not have any dependence on any single sector, client segment, or financing category. The growth is sustainable, as we have shown over the last few quarters. I also want to add that, wherever we are taking the balance sheet to the market, we take the full franchise. We have spoken about One Axis in the past, and that is no longer a pilot; it is actually embedded in how we operate. We take our Neo platform, which is our trust and plants digital stack, for both flow business and B2B business. We are also taking our One Axis approach to achieve cross-sell across corporate salary as well as Burgundy. Corporate growth is sustainable because it is well diversified across sector segments and financing categories.”
— Management, Senior Management
The cost of dealing with bad loans is falling as the bank sees better repayment behavior and successful recoveries. Lower credit costs directly boost net profits and indicate a healthier loan portfolio.
“On credit cost, we have definitely seen an improvement trajectory on both a quarter-on-quarter and a year-on-year basis. We have seen the improvement come through. We do not give specific guidance on what exactly the credit cost is going to be, but directionally, what I can confirm is that we are on a trajectory toward improvement. I think there is some further improvement that we can expect, although some portion of the improvement that has come through is also because of the mix. However, in individual portfolios as well, we are seeing definite improvement, as reflected by the overall slippage ratios and the improvement in recoveries. So I think the trajectory of improvement continues, and we can expect some further improvement going forward.”
— Management, Senior Management
Upcoming regulatory changes in the insurance sector may reduce the commission income banks earn, but Axis is preparing to offset this with higher sales volumes. Management is looking at a 6 to 9-month window to adapt their strategy before the new rules fully take effect.
“On the insurance part, the consultation paper is out. I think over 30 days, various points expressed by various industry players have been sent to the regulator. They are also in a listening mode at this point in time. We have done some assessment of how things stand based on the consultation paper. We believe there will be some time before they actually come through. We also possibly believe there might be a few areas where a specific amount of time or a glide path might be given for us or for the insurance players to manage the change. Some of those things will happen. I do not think there is anything right now that we can state with greater specificity in terms of how they will play out. We have done some work on our side regarding what the potential impact could be and how we could mitigate it through a combination of volume, product mix, and other factors. We will try to manage it, and in the meantime we will see if there are other sources of fee income that we could increase.”
— Management, Senior Management
The bank is sitting on extra cash from foreign deposits that has not yet been lent out. This provides the bank with a ‘dry powder’ reserve that can fuel loan growth in the next few quarters without needing more immediate funding.
“If LCR goes beyond a certain threshold because of excess liquidity resulting from higher deposit growth, we will do something that will bring down some of the high-cost liquidity to make sure that our LCR stays within the band we have been discussing, which is 115 to 120. However, if you think from a growth perspective, we have not used the full FCNRB liquidity to grow our assets. To that extent, there is runway for the balance sheet to grow, given that there is an incremental liability that we have raised. Whichever way you want to look at it is up to you, but the reality is that this has given us the ability to grow as well as optimize our balance sheet.”
— Niraj, Head of Treasury
Axis is being very cautious in personal lending by only targeting salaried individuals, who typically have more stable incomes. This conservative approach is designed to prevent the rise of bad loans in the unsecured segment as the bank expands.
“Our PL strategy has been centered on building a healthy unsecured portfolio focused on giving loans only to salaried customers. In our case, PL is only for salaried customers. All non-salaried and self-employed customer loans are covered under the business-loan segment, which is a separate segment. We are focused on building that book, as we have been telling you over the past few quarters. We have done a lot of work to improve the health of the portfolio, invest in collections and technology, and sharpen our underwriting standards and filters. We are seeing disbursements grow quite sharply in that business, as we have mentioned in the notes and as Ambika and Rajiv also mentioned.”
— Manish Sarda, Head of Unsecured Lending
New accounting rules for loan losses (ECL) are approaching, but Axis believes its existing Rs. 3,000 crore reserve will cover the transition. Investors can take comfort that these regulatory changes are unlikely to cause a sudden dent in the bank’s capital.
“On the ECL transition and its impact, as we have maintained in the past, we do not expect any material impact from the transition itself. This is also supported by the fact that we have existing contingent provisions of almost 3,000 crores, which will help us move toward this transition smoothly. From a flow perspective, we will work through how exactly that will play out based on the flow rates for stage one, stage two, and so on. However, overall, for both the transition and the flow, I do not think we expect any material implications for the portfolio that we have. We are working through this, and as we come closer to the date, we will have greater clarity on it.”
— Rajiv Mantri, Chief Financial Officer
ICICI Bank Ltd | Large Cap
ICICI Bank is one of India’s leading private sector banks, providing a comprehensive range of banking and financial services to retail and corporate clients. It operates a vast domestic network alongside international branches and specialised subsidiaries in insurance, asset management, and securities.
[Concall]
The bank anticipates a temporary dip in margins due to shifts in deposit mix and overseas book expansion before a recovery starts in late FY27. This guidance helps investors set expectations for net interest margin trends over the next few quarters.
“The increase in the proportion of the assets of overseas branches in total assets and the large sequential increase in the retail term deposit base have led to a moderation in margins, and the full impact would reflect in the third quarter. After that, we expect margins to start moving back up, even based on the current level of policy rates.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
Management identifies 50 basis points as the steady-state credit cost after accounting for temporary accounting fluctuations. This metric allows analysts to model the bank’s underlying risk-adjusted profitability more accurately.
“Adjusting for one-off corporate recoveries, standard asset provisions on loans provided against FCNRB deposits and the seasonality of KCC provisioning, normalized credit cost to advances would be about 50 basis points.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
The bank clarifies that the jump in corporate lending is driven by fundamental demand and market shifts rather than temporary accounting moves. This suggests that the bank is successfully capturing a larger share of the corporate credit market as business activity accelerates.
“On the first question, Marukh, retail growth has been steadily picking up over the last few quarters. If you look back, perhaps three or four quarters ago, retail loan growth was running in the single digits, and that has now picked up to close to 15%. Within that, in segments such as mortgages and personal loans, we have seen a steady pickup back to mid-teen levels. On the corporate side, partly, I suppose, because until around Q2 FY26 our corporate growth was quite subdued, the base effect is also present. However, I do not think there is anything related to temporary parking of FCNR funds. It is really a response to client demand and our view on pricing. Of course, as in any quarter, there is a mix of working capital drawals, short-term lending and long-term lending in the mix of book growth. It is across all three. What is driving it, I think, is a mix of factors: working capital requirements, some shift from bond markets, some shift from foreign currency borrowing markets and some amount of investment activity.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
The bank is transitioning its credit card strategy to focus on deepening customer relationships rather than just volume. Management attributes the current decline in the card portfolio to timing differences rather than any structural weakness in the business.
“As far as the credit card book is concerned, we are fully engaged in the business. As you would have seen, we are launching some new products and variants aimed at particular customer segments. We are increasingly looking at it as a shift from a product lens to a customer lens for this product, and looking at it as part of the overall bouquet of our services to customers. It is a high-touch product that helps us establish primariness with the customer. That is the broad approach. The spending component will keep moving up and down. The specific reason for the decline this quarter was that last year there was a buildup in the book toward the end of September. This year, that will happen during the third quarter and not at the end of Q2. That is more of a seasonal effect, but I do not think there is an underlying issue with growth.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
The gold loan business saw a temporary slowdown as the bank updated its internal systems to match new regulatory requirements. This proactive compliance work should pave the way for sustainable and safer growth in the jewel loan segment in future quarters.
“On jewel loans, as you would have seen, the year-on-year growth is very strong. Sequential growth has moderated as we have been aligning our processes and distribution, as well as various operational risk management measures, with the new RBI guidelines and ensuring that we conduct the business in full compliance with them. I think it is a matter of time, and we would expect volumes to pick up there.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
ICICI Bank is trading short-term margin compression for long-term funding stability by aggressively raising fixed-rate deposits. This strategic positioning provides a cushion against future interest rate volatility and supports continued credit expansion.
“The main impact has come from the fact that the overseas book has expanded as a proportion of the overall book. Also, given the large increase in the term deposit base, that has led to the small reduction in the domestic margin that I mentioned, because mathematically the average CASA ratio has come down. The FCNR-B deposits were raised during Q2, so the full impact on the average balance sheet will come in Q3. We will see further moderation in margins, offset to some extent by the rate hike that has already taken place. From Q4, I would expect margins to come back in a healthy way as these factors start to reverse, even assuming there are no further rate hikes. From an overall perspective, as we have said before, this sort of decline in margins for a quarter or two on an optical basis does not worry us at all. We believe that we have raised a very large quantum of fixed-rate funding, which will support our growth and the expansion of our franchise over a period of time.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
Management views the large $18 billion FCNR-B inflow as a validation of their global NRI franchise strength. These low-cost funds are seen as a strategic advantage for supporting domestic credit growth despite the initial accounting impact on margins.
“The FCNR opportunity was a one-off opportunity. As I said, it was not something we evaluated in the context of the short-term impact on margins, but rather in terms of the strength it gave us for business growth over a period of time going forward. The impact on margins is in any case going to be transient. I think it is an outcome we are very happy with. If we look at the broad breakdown of deposit mobilization—and we had provided this number shortly after the end of August through a public disclosure—I am rounding off the numbers. There was about 18 billion in total. Around 10 billion was where we provided loans to customers, about 3.6 billion was where partner banks provided loans, and more than 4 billion was where customers put in their own money. We saw that as a very healthy outcome, including in terms of demonstrating the strength of the NRI franchise and the opportunity it gave us to engage with both existing and new NRI customers. We saw it as a significant opportunity to garner these resources, which would support our growth.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
Management argues that corporate lending offers comparable returns to retail when factoring in lower credit risks and additional transaction fees. This justifies the bank’s recent shift toward aggressive corporate loan growth without compromising on overall return on equity.
“To answer your question, corporate is definitely not worse than retail. ... First, the credit loss in the corporate segment is much lower. Even after adjusting for the one-off recoveries, our focus on return of capital at the client level is very high in the corporate segment. We do not take the same approach in granular portfolios, where we have to look at the portfolio level and have a certain tolerance for credit loss. In corporate portfolios, our focus on return of capital is very high. It is essentially a go-or-no-go decision. In that sense, I would expect credit costs in the corporate portfolio to be sustainably lower than in retail. Of course, in the case of corporate, there are many ancillary revenue streams, such as transaction banking, payment collection and so on, so we factor all of that into account.”
— Anindya, Management Representative
Jammu & Kashmir Bank | Small Cap
Jammu & Kashmir Bank is a private sector bank primarily operating in the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. It provides a wide range of financial services with a strategic focus on retail, agriculture, and MSME lending within its core geographic markets.
The bank is emerging from a period of margin pressure caused by regional economic headwinds and a reliance on high-cost deposits. Investors should note that the recovery in the local J&K economy and a pivot toward high-yield retail lending are expected to drive sequential margin expansion.
“Net interest margins have bottomed out. The margin compression observed over recent quarters was driven by regional economic challenges in Jammu and Kashmir last year, which prompted the bank to rely on higher-cost term deposits while deploying capital into highly competitive, lower-yielding corporate loans. That cycle has concluded. The local economy in Jammu and Kashmir has normalised, supported by a strong apple harvest season and healthy business activity. Consequently, we have seen robust credit demand across our retail, agriculture, and MSME (RAM) portfolios, where disbursement run rates have nearly doubled year-on-year. Supported by this shift toward high-yielding assets and upward repo rate revisions, margins will expand sequentially from here”
— Amitava Chatterjee, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
A significant majority of the bank’s loan portfolio is linked to floating benchmarks, specifically the repo rate and MCLR. This positioning is beneficial for investors as it allows the bank to efficiently pass on interest rate hikes, protecting yields in a rising rate environment.
“Fixed-rate lending accounts for roughly 14% to 15% of our portfolio, primarily comprising personal consumption loans extended to Jammu and Kashmir state government employees under an institutional MoU, which carry attractive yields. Floating-rate advances make up the remainder of the book, with approximately 65% linked directly to the policy Repo Rate and roughly 30% benchmarked to MCLR. This asset structure ensures strong yield transmission as interest rates adjust upward.”
— Amitava Chatterjee, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Management has shifted to more cautious margin guidance while simultaneously increasing its credit growth targets for the full year. This combination suggests a strategic focus on volume-driven growth backed by improving agricultural cash flows in their primary operating region.
“It reflects prudence rather than operational uncertainty. In Q2, we had anticipated faster margin expansion, but rising cost of deposits outpaced asset yield repricing. The operating environment in Jammu and Kashmir has normalised, and agricultural cash flows are supporting broad economic recovery. While we expect full-year margins to improve meaningfully, we are maintaining a conservative guidance stance rather than committing to a rigid numerical target until margin expansion materialises over successive quarters. On full-year balance sheet growth, we are guiding for deposit growth of approximately 12% and have raised our credit growth outlook to 12% to 14%.”
— Amitava Chatterjee, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
The bank is aggressively rotating capital away from low-margin corporate loans into high-yield retail and agricultural segments while scaling fee-based income. For investors, this transition is the key catalyst for improving the bank’s blended yields and creating a more diversified revenue base.
“It is not a structural disconnect, but rather a reflection of our portfolio transition. Historically, other non-interest income accounted for a smaller proportion of our total revenue, and we have actively diversified and scaled every component of fee income on a quarter-on-quarter basis. On the lending side, overall yields lagged because growth in high-yield segments—specifically retail, agriculture, and MSME—was subdued over the prior three to four quarters. That dynamic reversed in Q2, where our single-quarter retail expansion matched the entirety of last year’s retail growth. Our retail portfolio yields roughly 10%, while agricultural advances yield approximately 9.5%. As we actively shed low-yielding, highly competitive corporate loans and reallocate capital into these high-yield RAM segments, our blended portfolio yields and net interest income will steadily expand.
— Amitava Chatterjee, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Piramal Finance | Small Cap
Piramal Finance is a leading diversified non-banking financial company focused on retail and wholesale lending in semi-urban and rural India. The firm specialises in housing finance, business loans, and developer funding, utilising an extensive physical branch network and advanced AI technology.
[Concall]
Management expects higher domestic borrowing costs as the central bank shifts toward a tighter monetary policy. This indicates that while credit demand remains strong, the company will face pressure on its own cost of capital in the coming months.
“H2 FY27 is likely to see a broad-based increase in borrowing costs in line with the RBI’s shift from a neutral stance to calibrated tightening. Nevertheless, we do not expect any notable slowdown in borrowing activity, with liquidity conditions remaining adequate. Emerging global risks warrant close monitoring, particularly rising US and Japanese sovereign bond yields and the prospect of crude oil prices remaining high for longer, which could amplify inflationary pressures and tighten global financial conditions.”
— Anand Piramal, Chairman
Piramal is currently able to raise new debt at rates cheaper than the old debt it is paying off. This repricing of liabilities should support net interest margins even if overall market interest rates begin to rise.
“We have roughly 37,500 crores of long-term borrowings that are due for maturity in the next 18 months. If you look at Slide 17, the bottom-left chart shows that our current incremental cost of borrowing is meaningfully lower than the carrying cost of these borrowings that are going to mature and retire over the next 18 months. This continues to provide us with a strong tailwind on the cost of borrowing side.”
— Jairam Sridharan, MD & CEO
Proposed regulatory changes could reduce the fees the company earns from selling insurance to its loan customers. However, because Piramal owns half of the insurance provider, the resulting profit boost at the insurer level will partly offset these losses for the parent group.
“Moving on to insurance, following the September 23 consultation paper from IRDAI, we had disclosed on September 24 our initial assessment of how our insurance commission income is likely to be impacted. The company currently exclusively distributes life insurance products of Pramerica Life Insurance, where we have a 50% stake as a promoter. If the consultation paper is implemented as it is with an effective date of April 1, 2027, we estimate a gross reduction in insurance commission potentially having an 18 to 24 basis-point impact on FY28 return on assets. However, that is at a gross level. Any improvement in the economics of Pramerica Life Insurance will flow back proportionally to Piramal Finance during consolidation. Thus, the company has a natural hedge and a clawback available because of the way the company is structured. Apart from this, there are other levers available to the company as well. For instance, rationalisation of sales incentives for selling insurance and other forms of product clawback. We believe this can significantly cushion the impact on profitability on a net basis in FY28 and beyond.”
— Jairam Sridharan, MD & CEO
Management is warning about rising consumer debt levels, specifically through gold loans, which are often used by borrowers already struggling with other payments. While not currently hurting Piramal, this trend suggests potential systemic stress for small-ticket lenders.
“The fourth dimension on which I want to add some risk insight is gold loans. This is an emerging area of risk in our view, which is the rapidly increasing presence of gold loans on customer files. 2 years ago in our portfolio, depending on the product, 20% to 25% of customers had an active gold loan outside our portfolio. That number is now above 35% in all product categories. Secondly, in FY26, across the industry, approximately 4.7 lakh crores of gold loan disbursements were made to customers in deep delinquency, that is, more than 90 days past due. Today, the presence of a gold loan on file is not yet an indicator of higher risk in the portfolio. However, we believe that these data points that I just shared are worth noting and tracking.”
— Jairam Sridharan, MD & CEO
Wholesale borrowers are paying back their loans much faster than expected, which is limiting the overall growth of the corporate loan book. This high liquidity among borrowers confirms strong asset quality but makes it difficult for the company to expand its total wholesale AUM.
“Repayments continued to be elevated as we received 1,889 crores, or about 72% of the disbursed amounts, during the quarter. Due to the higher rate of prepayments to date, about 74% of our contractual repayments due in FY27 have already been paid by our borrowers to us as of today. The strong prepayment trend continues, as we have seen over the past few quarters as well, and is proving to be a growth headwind for our wholesale book, despite robust portfolio performance.”
— Yash Nadkarni, CEO, Wholesale Lending
Piramal does not immediately raise interest rates for its customers when market rates go up, due to a built-in time lag in its pricing model. This approach protects borrower demand in the short term but means the company must manage its own rising interest costs internally for several months.
“Unlike banks, NBFCs are on a PLR regime, so we will pass on rates when our PLRs increase, which will happen once our cost of borrowing falls. Essentially, we will wait for our cost of borrowing to fall, which will take a little bit of time. After that, there will be another lag before we pass things on to our customers. In the last cycle, we saw the lagged impact on our cost of borrowing take almost 1 year, followed by an additional lag of about 3 months for us to actually pass things on to our customers. Roughly 50% of our assets are going to be of this variety where we can pass on the rates, mostly our home loan and loan-against-property customers. Therefore, I do not expect anything to be passed on yet. We need to first see the impact on our cost of borrowing. If it starts increasing, then we will go ahead and increase rates; otherwise, you should not expect to see much action on that front.”
— Jairam Sridharan, MD & CEO
Management is confident that margins will naturally expand as the less profitable legacy business disappears from the books. A recent credit rating upgrade also allows them to borrow more cheaply than competitors, providing a competitive advantage as general interest rates climb.
“That is absolutely correct. Mathematically, that is bound to happen. Not really. I do not want to be too confident about this, but there are 2 or 3 natural hedges that exist in the rate cycle. One is this legacy book. The other is our recent ratings and, therefore, the ratings upgrade, which means that our incremental cost of borrowing is significantly lower than the cost of our book and the cost of our retiring debt. These 2 things are material items that provide a natural hedge against the rising-rate cycle.”
— Jairam Sridharan, MD & CEO
Retail
Shoppers Stop | Small Cap
Shoppers Stop is one of India’s largest department store chains, selling premium fashion, beauty and home products. It also distributes luxury beauty brands in India and runs Intune, a value-fashion brand.
[Concall]
Shoppers Stop achieved a financial turnaround this quarter, moving from a consolidated loss to profitability, even though the festive season fell in Q3 this year rather than Q2. Management calls this the early result of its Shoppers Stop 2.0 strategy, which is built around going upmarket.
“On a non-GAAP consolidated basis, our revenues grew by 7%, EBITDA grew by 56%, and as a result, we were able to turn around PAT from a loss of 7 crores last year to a profit of Rs 6 crores this year. On a GAAP basis as well, PAT recorded a positive swing from a Rs 20 crore loss last year to a Rs 3 crore profit this year.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
The festive season has started strongly, with mid-teen like-for-like growth during Pujo and Dussehra. Importantly, that growth is coming from both higher prices and more items sold.
“That 15% growth, or the mid-teen growth, is a mixture of both. Approximately 7% is from ASP (average selling price), and the balance 8% is from volume. What we are seeing is that we are able to sell more merchandise at a higher price. For Pujo, we have a 6-week period. The data I am discussing with you covers 5 weeks. This is very strong data; it is not 2-week data.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
The premium push is showing up in the numbers. Premium products now make up a record 73% of store sales, and the average bill rose 9%. The company is also pulling in new shoppers: 37% of bills came from first-time customers.
“With our consistent focus, the premium portfolio contribution in stores improved by 390 basis points and now stands at an all-time high of 73%. ATV for the quarter has increased by 9% and now stands at Rs 5,471, demonstrating core operational strength.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
In earlier quarters, premium demand was mostly in accessories like watches and fragrances. Management says it has now spread to clothing too.
“We are seeing broad demand for premium merchandise across the entire portfolio. Even within our business, if you rank the brands in our portfolio, our premium brands are performing better than our mid-segment brands. What we are seeing is that for both Dussehra and Pujo, demand for premium merchandise is quite strong. It is not limited to non-apparel; it is now broad-based and includes fashion and apparel.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
Shoppers Stop raised its store opening guidance from 9–10 to 12 this year, and expects a similar pace for the next 2–3 years. Management believes being the only department store going premium gives it the pick of mall space, including spots vacated by rivals.
“Given the fact that we are the only departmental store operator now working on premiumisation and attracting the kind of consumer that premium malls want, we will also get spaces from our competitors. We opened a store in Pune that was previously occupied by somebody else, and we obtained that space. I think this will continue to happen. Also, a lot of departmental stores that were signed in the early 2000s are now coming up for renewal.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
The fastest-growing piece is beauty distribution, where Shoppers Stop brings global luxury brands into India. Revenue grew 59% to ₹168 crore. On how it holds on to brands when Nykaa and Reliance compete for the same partners, management pointed to local know-how.
“Contracts are generally for 3 years, some are for 5 years, and some extend beyond that. The contract is obviously a binding factor, but what is more important is being able to do a good job for the brand, as the brand sees fit, with local adaptation. All these brands have very strong capabilities in terms of market knowledge, expertise, marketing strength, and so on. However, what makes us different is our ability to do many things locally, because we position ourselves as the expert in India.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
Intune, the value-fashion format, is recovering after a year of clean-up. One finding: customers are willing to pay above the ₹999 price ceiling the company had set for itself.
“We have not taken a price hike, but in our minds, we had artificially maintained a ceiling of 999. When we started testing a line priced at 1,299, we realised that both ROAS, or return on ad spend, as well as ROS, or returns on sales, and the sell-through were very high. Therefore, we are building a better product. It is not necessarily a price hike; rather, we are offering a better product and testing prices at 1,299 and 1,499. We are seeing very good success there.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
The call ended on a candid note. A retail shareholder pointed out that the stock had fallen 60–65% over two years and asked what the board was doing about it.
“We have gone through a difficult period for various reasons, but I think we are now on the cusp of a breakout. Please have some more patience. If we have this question in the next quarter or the quarter after that, I think we will be in a better position to address your concern. Thank you for your trust, and hopefully we will repay it handsomely.”
— Kavindra Mishra, Managing Director & CEO
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