Congratulations on the promotion! Congratulations on the salary hike. You worked hard for it, and you deserve to enjoy it.

But as a finance nerd, the first question that comes to my mind isn’t “How much was the raise?”

It’s this:

How much closer are you to your financial freedom number?

Income Creates Comfort. Wealth Creates Freedom.

Over the past decade, we’ve created a generation of remarkable earners.

Technology, consulting, finance and startups have given young professionals salaries their parents could only dream of. A 28-year-old today can earn what took the previous generation decades to reach.

Yet many of these professionals are still years even decades away from financial independence.

Not because they don’t earn enough.

But because they’ve quietly confused high income with financial security

In my previous article, we discussed lifestyle inflation the tendency for spending to rise alongside income.

The first increment improves necessities.

The second improves comfort.

But somewhere along the way, spending stops being a choice and starts becoming an identity.

Financial Freedom Isn’t Based on Your Salary

It’s based on your expenses.

Suppose your annual expenses are ₹12 lakh.

Using a simple 4% withdrawal assumption, you’d roughly need a corpus of ₹3 crore to generate that income sustainably.

Now suppose your salary doubles.

Sounds amazing.

But your lifestyle doubles too.

Your annual expenses become ₹24 lakh.

Your financial freedom number is no longer ₹3 crore.

It’s approximately ₹6 crore.

Your income doubled.

But so did the amount of wealth you now need before you can stop depending on that income.

That’s why a higher salary doesn’t automatically bring retirement closer.

Sometimes, it pushes it further away.

The Metric That Actually Matters

Instead of asking,

“How much do I earn?”

Ask,

“How many years of my current lifestyle can my investments fund without my salary?”

That’s a far better measure of financial progress.

Because financial freedom isn’t about earning a large salary.

It’s about reaching the point where your investments not your salary pay your bills.

Promotions Don’t Create Freedom. Investing Does.

A promotion increases your earning capacity.

Only disciplined investing increases your freedom.

That’s why two people earning the same salary can have completely different futures.

One uses every raise to upgrade their lifestyle.

The other uses part of every raise to buy income-producing assets.

Ten years later, their salaries may look similar.

Their financial freedom dates won’t

The next time you receive a raise, don’t just ask:

• How much more can I spend?

Also ask:

• How much can I increase my monthly investments?

• Has this promotion actually brought my financial freedom date closer?

• If my salary stopped tomorrow not because I lost my job, but because I chose to retire could my investments support my current lifestyle?

Because ultimately, income determines how you live today. Because a high income creates comfort. Only disciplined investing creates independence.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

In reality, it’s often when the real work begins.

Buying a stock is relatively straightforward. You identify a good business, build conviction in the investment thesis and initiate a position. Selling that same stock after it has performed exceptionally well is often far more difficult.

At first, the journey feels rewarding. The stock rises 10%, then 20%, then 30%. Your research appears to be playing out exactly as expected. But when a stock continues to outperform say it gains 50% in a month while the broader market is up only 10–15% the investment is no longer just a success story. It becomes one of the largest sources of risk in the portfolio.

The first reason is simple: position sizing changes automatically. Even if you don’t buy another share, the stock now occupies a much larger weight in the portfolio. Your exposure to that company, its sector and even its market-cap allocation has increased simply because the stock has appreciated.

The second challenge is that expectations change. A company that has risen sharply is no longer being valued only on its current performance. Investors begin pricing in stronger earnings, larger order wins and continued positive surprises. At these valuations, even a small disappointment like a weaker quarter, an order cancellation or a promoter selling shares can trigger a sharp correction. The business may still be fundamentally sound, but expectations have become far less forgiving.

This is where the real decision begins.

Do you continue holding because the long-term story remains intact? Do you trim the position to manage portfolio risk? Or do you exit completely and allocate capital elsewhere?

These decisions aren’t driven by the stock price alone. They force us to revisit the original investment thesis. Why did we buy the company in the first place? Has anything fundamentally changed? Is the recent weakness, if any, temporary or structural? Do the current valuations still justify future returns? Has the position become too large relative to the rest of the portfolio?

Having a documented investment rationale becomes invaluable at this stage. It prevents us from making decisions based purely on emotion whether that’s greed from seeing further upside or fear of losing the gains we've already made.

There’s another reason selling winners is difficult: opportunity cost. What if you trim the position and the stock doubles again? What if the new investment doesn’t perform as well? What if you sit on cash during a rising market? Every decision has a trade-off, which is why selling often feels far more stressful than buying.

This is also where portfolio management differs from stock picking. A great company doesn’t automatically remain a great portfolio position forever. Sometimes the fundamentals continue to improve and holding on is the right decision. At other times, the position has simply become too large, valuations have become stretched or better opportunities exist elsewhere. In those cases, trimming a winner isn’t admitting the story is over, it’s managing risk.

The market doesn’t just test your conviction when a stock falls. Sometimes it tests your discipline when a stock rises much faster than expected.

Buying requires conviction. Selling requires discipline.

And for most investors, that’s the harder decision.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

Person A

• Net worth: ₹10 crore

• Monthly cash flow: ₹40,000

Person B

• Net worth: ₹2 crore

• Monthly cash flow: ₹4 lakh

Who feels richer?

Most people immediately say Person A.

In reality, Person B may have far more financial flexibility.

That’s because net worth and cash flow measure two completely different things.

What is Net Worth?

Net worth is simply: Assets – Liabilities

It measures what you own after subtracting what you owe.

What is Cash Flow?

Cash flow measures: Money coming in vs money going out.

It tells you whether your finances work every month.

Net Worth vs Cash Flow

Suppose someone buys a ₹20 lakh car.

On paper, it looks like they’ve “made it.”

They now own a ₹20 lakh asset.

Looks impressive.

But that’s only half the story.

Let’s say they earn ₹1.5 lakh a month.

The car comes with a ₹40,000 EMI.

Add insurance, fuel and maintenance, and the monthly cost rises to around ₹50,000.

Now suppose their other monthly expenses look like this:

• Rent: ₹35,000

• Groceries & utilities: ₹15,000

• Dining out & entertainment: ₹15,000

• Phone & subscriptions: ₹5,000

• Miscellaneous expenses: ₹10,000

That’s ₹1.30 lakh of monthly expenses.

They’re left with ₹20,000 a month to save and invest.

Now imagine they lose their job or face an unexpected medical expense.

The problem isn’t that they own a ₹20 lakh car.

The problem is that the car and the lifestyle that comes with it—has significantly reduced their financial flexibility.

This is the difference between net worth and cash flow.

Your net worth may look impressive because of the assets you own. But your cash flow determines how comfortably you can afford to own them.

The internet celebrates what people own. It rarely asks how they afford it.

The problem begins when we compare our financial reality with someone else’s highlight reel.

The next time you see someone posting a new car, a luxury holiday or the latest gadget, and find yourself comparing or feeling like you're falling behind, remember this:

You can see the asset. You can’t see the balance sheet behind it.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

Maybe.

Or maybe you’re only looking at half the picture.

A P/E (Price-to-Earnings) ratio tells you how much you’re paying for today’s earnings. But investing isn’t about buying today’s earnings—it’s about buying tomorrow’s.

If two companies have the same earnings today but one is expected to grow five times faster than the other, should they really trade at the same P/E?

Probably not.

That’s exactly the gap the PEG (Price/Earnings-to-Growth) ratio tries to fill.

P/E Penalizes Growth

One of the biggest limitations of the P/E ratio is that it treats every company the same.

A mature FMCG company growing at 6% and a niche manufacturing company growing at 30% could both trade at a P/E of 30.

Does that mean they’re equally expensive?

Not necessarily.

A higher P/E may simply reflect the market’s expectation of stronger future earnings.

Ignoring growth means you may end up dismissing some of the market’s best compounders as “too expensive.”

Enter PEG

The PEG ratio adjusts the P/E ratio for expected earnings growth.

It asks a much better question:

How much am I paying for each unit of expected growth?

Rather than simply asking whether a P/E is high or low.

Looking only at PE, Company A appears cheaper.

Looking at PEG, Company B offers more growth for every unit of valuation you’re paying.

Suddenly, the “expensive” stock doesn’t look so expensive.

But Here’s Where Investors Go Wrong

This doesn’t mean PEG is better than PE.

It simply answers a different question.

And like every ratio, it has its limitations.

Where PEG Works

PEG is particularly useful when comparing companies that:

• Operate in the same industry

• Have similar business models

• Are profitable

• Have relatively predictable earnings growth

In these situations, PEG adds an important layer of context that PE alone misses.

Where PEG Completely Fails

PEG assumes that all growth is equal.

It isn’t.

A company growing earnings at 25% by taking on excessive debt isn’t the same as one growing at 25% through better products, pricing power and efficient capital allocation.

PEG doesn’t consider:

• Return on Capital (ROCE)

• Return on Equity (ROE)

• Cash flow generation

• Balance sheet strength

• Competitive advantages

• Sustainability of growth

Growth without quality rarely creates lasting shareholder value.

Why Quality Still Matters

Imagine two companies.

Both have:

• PE: 40x

• Earnings Growth: 40%

• PEG: 1

One has:

• ROCE: 32%

• Debt-free balance sheet

• Strong free cash flow

The other has:

• ROCE: 11%

• High debt

• Negative free cash flow

Same PE.

Same PEG.

Completely different businesses.

That’s why no single ratio including PEG can tell you whether a stock is worth buying.
The PEG ratio is a useful improvement over PE because it recognises that growth deserves a premium.

But growth isn’t valuable on its own.

The quality of that growth matters just as much.

The best investment decisions aren’t made by finding the lowest PE or the lowest PEG.

They’re made by understanding what you’re paying for, how fast it’s growing, and whether that growth is sustainable.

At the end you should ask what is the Price of Growth? which we all are actually trying to answer

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

A few years later, you’re earning ₹1.5 lakh and somehow, ₹1.5 lakh doesn’t feel like enough.

You didn’t suddenly become irresponsible. Your definition of “normal” simply changed.

That’s what the textbooks call lifestyle inflation.

Lifestyle inflation happens when your spending rises along with or sometimes even faster than your income. But here’s an important distinction: some lifestyle inflation is perfectly normal.

After all, you earn more so that you can live better.

The problem begins when every increase in income automatically becomes an increase in lifestyle. There’s never a deliberate decision about how much of that raise should go towards improving your lifestyle and how much should go towards improving your financial position.

And over time, that seemingly small difference can have a much bigger impact than you realise.

Your lifestyle has its own inflation rate

We obsess over CPI inflation: “Inflation is 5%.”

But your personal lifestyle inflation could be 10–15%.

If your expenses grow at 10% every year while your income grows at 8%, your financial position is actually deteriorating despite earning more money.

Track how your annual expenditure has changed over 3–5 years.

If:
Income CAGR = 10%
Expense CAGR = 13%

That’s a warning sign.

The 10% Raise That Wasn’t Really 10%

You get a 10% salary raise. Great news. But how much of that raise actually makes you wealthier?

Suppose your monthly take-home increases from ₹1,00,000 to ₹1,10,000.

At first glance, this doesn’t look bad.

Now consider what happens if you don’t automatically inflate your lifestyle:

Same 10% raise. Completely different impact on wealth creation.

That extra ₹10,000 of income could have resulted in a 33% increase in your monthly investments, even though your salary increased by only 10%.

Instead, lifestyle inflation can quietly absorb most of that incremental income.

And that’s why the raise you receive and the raise that actually reaches your wealth are often two very different numbers.

Lifestyle inflation also changes your financial-freedom number

Suppose you need ₹1 lakh/month to maintain your lifestyle.

Annual expenses = ₹12 lakh.

Using a simplified 4% withdrawal assumption:

Required corpus ≈ ₹3 crore

Now lifestyle expenses become ₹2 lakh/month.

Annual expenses = ₹24 lakh.

Required corpus:

≈ ₹6 crore

You didn’t merely increase your expenses by ₹1 lakh/month.

You potentially increased the amount of wealth required to fund your lifestyle indefinitely by ₹3 crore.

So, Should You Not Upgrade Your Lifestyle?

Of course not.

The point of earning more isn’t to keep living exactly the way you did on your first salary. A better home, more travel, nicer experiences you should be able to enjoy the money you work hard to earn.

The problem isn’t lifestyle inflation. It’s lifestyle inflation you never consciously chose.

Remember, a ₹2 lakh holiday once isn’t necessarily the problem. The real impact comes from upgrades that permanently increase your monthly cost of living a higher rent or EMI, a more expensive car, memberships, subscriptions, frequent dining out or premium travel.

A one-time luxury costs you once. A lifestyle upgrade resets your cost of living.

And once that upgrade becomes your new “normal”, going back feels much harder. The new car eventually becomes just your car, the nicer apartment becomes home, and the expensive restaurant becomes where you usually go.

We adapt quickly to a better lifestyle, but the higher expenses remain. That’s what makes lifestyle inflation so easy to miss.

So, the next time your income increases, instead of automatically upgrading your expenses, decide how much of that increase goes towards your lifestyle and how much goes towards your future.

Because ultimately, financial progress isn’t just about how much more you can afford today. It’s also about how much more freedom you’re creating for tomorrow.

Your lifestyle should grow with your income. Just make sure your wealth grows faster.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

I hear this all the time.

As a value investor, you might expect me to agree. But I don’t.

If you had refused to buy Pidilite Industries at 40x earnings, Titan Company at 70x, or Page Industries at 60x simply because they looked “expensive”, you would have missed some of India’s greatest wealth creators.

So, was the market irrational?

Or were investors looking at the wrong metric?

The truth is, Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio by itself tells you very little. It simply, tells you how much you're paying for a company's current earnings.

The first mistake investors make is treating the P/E ratio as an absolute number.

A PE of 50 may appear expensive until you compare it with similar businesses. Certain sectors, such as consumer brands or specialty retail, have historically traded at higher valuation multiples than more cyclical industries, reflecting differences in growth expectations, capital efficiency and earnings quality.

That’s why a P/E ratio should never be looked at in isolation. Ask yourself:

• How does it compare with its peers?

• Is it above or below its own historical average?

• More importantly, why is the market assigning that valuation?

Without context, a P/E ratio is just a number.

The second mistake is assuming P/E is the only way to value a business.

In reality, there are several ways to value a business, and the PE ratio is just one of many market-based valuation multiples.

A loss-making company? P/E isn’t even usable.

Depending on the business, one may look at:

• Price to Sales

• Enterprise Value to Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization

• Price to Book

• Price to Free Cash Flow

P/E is simply the most widely discussed because it’s easy to calculate and easy to understand.

Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most misunderstood valuation metrics.

But here’s the bigger point.

Every ratio tells only half the story.

P/E tells you what you’re paying.

It doesn’t tell you what you’re getting.

For that, you need to look deeper.

• P/E → What price are you paying?

• Growth → How fast are earnings expected to grow?

• ROE → Is the company creating value for shareholders?

• ROCE → Is management allocating capital efficiently?

• Debt/Equity → How much risk is the business taking?

• Free Cash Flow → Are the earnings translating into real cash?

No single ratio can answer all of these questions.

Let’s take a simple example.

Which company is cheaper?

Most investors instinctively pick Company A because of the lower PE.

Many professional investors would choose Company B.

Why?

Because they aren’t just buying today’s earnings, they’re buying the business’s ability to compound those earnings over the next decade.

Think of it this way.

Imagine you’re at a movie theatre.

There’s one queue where the ticket costs ₹10, but you’ll have to wait three hours before you can get in.

Then there’s another queue where the ticket costs ₹100, and you walk straight in.

Which one is actually more expensive?

Price, by itself, tells you very little.

Value depends on what you get in return.

Investing works the same way.

The next time someone says, “This stock is trading at 60 times earnings. It’s too expensive,” don’t stop at the number.

Dig deeper and ask: Why is the market willing to pay 60 times earnings for this business?

Because a high P/E doesn’t necessarily mean a stock is expensive.

And a low P/E certainly doesn’t mean it’s cheap.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

Why settle for steady mid-teen returns when there’s always something more exciting grabbing headlines gold making new highs, crypto doubling overnight, or that one acquaintance who apparently turned a property deal into generational wealth? Why commit to decades of patient investing and the quiet discipline of compounding when speculation offers faster stories, bigger thrills, and the illusion of easy money?

Yet, despite all the noise, history keeps pointing investors toward the same uncomfortable truth: wealth creation is often surprisingly boring.

As Warren Buffett famously said:

“The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”

So instead of debating narratives, let’s look at the data and you can decide for yourself.

The Odds Improve With Time

83% of the time Indian equities gave more than 10% returns over 7 years

Rolling Returns (Compound Annualised) for Nifty 50 TRI Since Inception, i.e June 1999
Source: ET, MFI, FundsIndia Research. As on January 31, 2024. Nifty 50 TRI Inception Date: June 30, 1999.

Over rolling 7-year periods, Indian equities delivered more than 10% annualised returns 83% of the time. Stretch the holding period further, and the probability of generating meaningful returns improves even more. The longer investors stayed invested, the lower the role of luck, timing, and market noise.

As a general rule of thumb, investors should ideally give an equity fund manager at least three years preferably longer to navigate a full market cycle and allow the portfolio strategy to play out meaningfully. Over shorter periods, returns are often dominated by market sentiment, liquidity flows, and temporary style rotations rather than underlying fundamentals.

A longer holding period not only improves the probability of outperforming traditional fixed-income instruments like debt or fixed deposits, but also gives compounding enough time to start working in the investor’s favour.

The data highlights something most investors intellectually understand but emotionally struggle to follow: equities reward endurance far more consistently than prediction.

Yet investor behaviour often reflects the exact opposite.

According to SEBI data, nearly 50% of mutual fund investments redeemed in FY23 had stayed invested for less than one year, while almost 83% were withdrawn within three years. In other words, a large proportion of investors exited even before giving equities enough time to experience a full market cycle or allowing compounding to meaningfully work in their favour.

Source: Moneycontrol | SEBI Consultation paper on Review of Total Expense Ratio

Time in the market > Timing the Market

A large number of investors spend significant time trying to time the market — constantly worrying about whether this is the right moment to buy, sell, exit, or wait on the sidelines. But history shows that long-term wealth creation has often come not from perfect timing, but from remaining disciplined and staying invested through periods of uncertainty and volatility.

An investment of ₹10 lakh in the Nifty 50 TRI at the start of 2000 would have delivered vastly different outcomes depending on whether the investor stayed invested through market cycles or missed just a handful of the market’s strongest recovery days.

Source: Data to Decisions

What makes this particularly challenging is that many of the market’s best days tend to occur during periods of maximum pessimism often immediately after sharp corrections or during phases when investor confidence is at its weakest. Investors who step out waiting for “clarity” frequently end up missing the recovery that follows.

Interestingly, even strategies that attempted to “buy the dip” did not meaningfully outperform simple disciplined investing over long periods.

In investing, a 0.5–1% difference in annual returns may appear insignificant on paper but over 15–20 years, compounding can turn those seemingly small gaps into materially different wealth outcomes.

More importantly, strategies built around waiting for corrections come with a behavioural challenge of their own: markets rarely offer the perfect entry point investors hope for.

In the end, successful investing rarely comes down to predicting every correction, chasing every trend, or finding the perfect entry point.

So the real question is:

Will you be the tortoise patient, consistent, and ultimately winning the race?
Or the rabbit constantly chasing the next shiny opportunity, only to lose sight of the finish line?

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

The Business

Everyone wants exposure to the AI opportunity. But while most conversations revolve around software, models, and applications, the real backbone of the AI ecosystem remains compute infrastructure.

That is where Netweb Technologies becomes interesting.

Netweb Technologies is currently the only listed Indian company offering end-to-end high-performance computing (HPC) and AI infrastructure solutions spanning advanced computing systems, AI servers, storage, private cloud infrastructure, and enterprise data centre solutions.

As India’s AI, cloud, and data centre ecosystem scales up, Netweb effectively becomes a direct play on the country’s growing need for domestic compute infrastructure.

What differentiates Netweb from a typical electronics manufacturing services (EMS) player or system integrator is its vertically integrated approach. Netweb is not merely assembling imported components into boxes. The company designs complex 24-layer PCBs for high-end servers and also develops parts of the software stack in-house, allowing it to deliver optimized end-to-end solutions rather than commoditized hardware. Hence, the company’s moat is less about commoditized hardware manufacturing and more about deep design capability and ecosystem integration.

The company designs and manufactures advanced server systems and high-performance motherboards that are purpose-built for demanding workloads such as Supercomputing, AI model training, Enterprise data centers, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Storage systems andPrivate cloud deployments

Netweb has quietly played a foundational role in India’s supercomputing ecosystem over the last two decades. The company delivered India’s first indigenously built supercomputer, Kabru, in 2004. Since then, it has commissioned 21 supercomputers across the country, including systems deployed for government, research, defense, and scientific institutions. One of its most notable deployments includes AIRAWAT, India’s AI-focused supercomputer, which ranked among the world’s fastest supercomputers globally.

This operating history matters because HPC and AI infrastructure are not simple plug-and-play businesses. Execution capability, thermal management, software integration, workload optimization, and long-term reliability become critical differentiators.

Netweb maintains strategic partnerships with global chipmakers such as: NVIDIA, Intel and AMD

These relationships allow it to remain technologically relevant while competing against global incumbents such as: Dell Technologies, HP, Nutanix and VMware

At the same time, the absence of a scaled domestic competitor in this niche provides Netweb with a relatively differentiated positioning within India.

Beneath the Numbers

While the AI and data centre opportunity sounds exciting, the numbers suggest that Netweb’s growth is not just narrative-driven.

Over the last few years, the company has seen strong growth across its core businesses particularly AI systems, HPC, and private cloud infrastructure reflecting rising demand for compute infrastructure in India.

What stands out more is the return profile.

ROE and ROCE have consistently remained healthy despite rapid balance sheet expansion, reflecting efficient capital deployment and strong asset turns. FY26 estimated ROCE of ~39% remains particularly impressive for an infrastructure-linked hardware business.

Another interesting aspect is the company’s customer stickiness. Revenue contribution from repeat customers has remained consistently high, ranging between ~70–90% over the last several years. This suggests that once integrated into client infrastructure ecosystems, Netweb benefits from longer-term relationships and recurring demand.

At the same time, customer concentration remains something worth monitoring. The contribution from the top 10 customers has steadily increased from ~50% in FY22 to ~76% by FY26, indicating that a meaningful portion of growth is currently concentrated among a limited set of clients.

The order book also continues to provide visibility, increasing from ₹49 crore in FY22 to an estimated ₹472 crore by FY26, supported by rising adoption of AI infrastructure, cloud deployments, and high-performance computing systems.

That said, a large part of this opportunity is now well understood by the market, and valuations continue to reflect very high growth expectations. At such elevated multiples, execution consistency becomes critical, as even minor slowdowns in growth, margins, or order inflows could lead to sharp market reactions.

Looking Ahead

The broader opportunity for Netweb appears closely tied to India’s accelerating investments in AI infrastructure, data centres, and high-performance computing. With initiatives like the India AI Mission and rising enterprise demand for compute infrastructure, the industry could potentially see 30–40%+ growth over the next several years.

Importantly, HPC and AI infrastructure adoption in India still remains at a relatively early stage. Demand is gradually expanding beyond traditional research and government applications into sectors such as auto, pharma, FMCG, defence, and enterprise cloud infrastructure. The company also continues to invest heavily in R&D capabilities, which remains critical in a rapidly evolving technology landscape.

Management commentary suggests demand visibility remains strong, supported by a healthy AI-led order pipeline over the next 18–24 months. Capacity expansion through a new plant over FY26–FY27 is also expected to increase manufacturing capability by over 30%, providing further runway for growth.

At the same time, execution will remain the key monitorable. As the AI infrastructure opportunity becomes more widely recognized, sustaining growth, maintaining margins, managing customer concentration, and keeping pace with technological evolution will become increasingly important.

In many ways, Netweb represents an emerging infrastructure layer for India’s digital and AI ambitions, a segment that still remains underpenetrated, but one that could see disproportionately strong growth over the coming decade.

Disclaimer: This article is intended purely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any financial product or security. Please consult your financial advisor before making any financial or investment decisions. The author is a SEBI-qualified Research Analyst.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

Not necessarily.

The problem begins when we start assuming that these returns represent what the investment is capable of consistently delivering. In reality, they only represent what happened during one specific period.

Let’s take an example of Nifty Midcap 150, which has historically seen sharp drawdowns during difficult market phases falling over 35–45% during periods like 2018–19 and the COVID crash in 2020 only to recover equally sharply in the years that followed. Now imagine evaluating the index right after a recovery phase. The trailing 3-year returns would look exceptional and could easily create the impression that mid-caps consistently deliver such returns. But if you had looked at the same index during or immediately after a correction, the returns would have painted a completely different picture.

That is the illusion of point-to-point returns.

They fail to capture what happens between those two points. An investment may have gone through extreme volatility, deep drawdowns, or long periods of underperformance before arriving at the final number displayed on your screen. Yet point-to-point returns compress all of that into one clean figure, often creating an overly optimistic or pessimistic view.

In reality, neither tells you how the investment performed across the full market cycle.

This is also why t wo investors looking at the same fund at different points in time can walk away with completely different conclusions about its performance.

So if point-to-point returns can be misleading, what is a better way to evaluate products like mutual funds, PMSs, or AIFs?

This is where rolling returns become far more useful.

Rolling returns measure the performance of an investment across multiple overlapping periods rather than one single start and end date. Instead of asking, “What did this fund return over the last 5 years?”, rolling returns ask, “How consistently has this fund performed across all possible 5-year periods?”

So, if we calculate 5-year rolling returns with a monthly shift over a 10-year period, we are not looking at just one 5-year observation. We are evaluating how the fund performed across several overlapping 5-year periods shifting the start date by one month each time. In a 10-year analysis, this would generate 61 different 5-year rolling return observations.

This removes the bias of selecting one favorable or unfavorable time frame and gives a much clearer picture of consistency, volatility, and reliability.

Let’s now look at the table below, which compares the point-to-point and rolling returns of various indices, to bring all of this together.

Source: Linkedin

Because ultimately, investing is not just about what a fund achieved in one favorable period it is about understanding how consistently it performed across different market cycles. A single-period trailing return may simply capture one strong phase of the market rather than reflect the true long-term consistency of the investment.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

For the first time ever, we have constant access to other people’s lives their vacations, fancy offices, luxury skincare, café hopping, apartment upgrades, international trips, shopping hauls, gyms, cars, routines, and lifestyle all without knowing the context behind any of it.

You are watching someone drive to a fancy office in a fancy car after a Pilates class and dinner at a new restaurant, while sitting there wondering:
“Am I behind?” “Why don’t I have this yet?” “Should I be earning more?” “Oh, I wish I could do this!”

But the irony is, you rarely look outside your own office window and think:
“I’m actually grateful to have a stable job, work in an air-conditioned office, and not have to stand in this heat all day to earn a living.”

Society has always been one of the biggest money traps:

Spending money you don’t have to impress people you don’t even like.

And social media amplified it.

So, here are a few things that social media and modern spending culture have slowly made feel “normal” but probably shouldn’t be. Consider this your gentle financial de-influencing session.

1. The “I Deserve It” Spending

Ordering in constantly, buying new clothes every other week, upgrading phones frequently, or spending impulsively in the name of “self-care” probably isn’t helping you as much as you think it is. And honestly, most of the time what you are experiencing is simply the dopamine rush behind the purchase not actual long-term happiness or fulfilment.

2. Easy-Peasy EMIs

Buying things you cannot comfortably afford just because there is an easy EMI option attached to it is not normal.
And if you currently have more EMI debits leaving your account every month than SIP investments going in, that should honestly be a serious financial wake-up call.

Accessibility is not the same as affordability.

3. Vacations Before Stability

Travelling before even building a basic emergency fund is not a flex. Blowing three months’ worth of salary on a trip in the name of “experience” while having zero financial safety net underneath creates far more stress than freedom.

Experiences matter, yes — but financial stability matters too.

4. Having No Idea Where Your Money Goes

This one might genuinely be my biggest financial ick.

Having absolutely no idea where your money disappears every month is not “chill” or “living in the moment.” It is simply lack of financial awareness. Financial maturity is not just about earning more money. It is about taking ownership of where your money is actually going.

5. Buying Into Every Trend

Social media algorithms and advertisements are literally designed to make you spend money and feel inadequate at the same time. You do not need every new trend, every new product launch, or a completely new outfit for every event you attend.

A high income paired with equally high spending habits is often just a fancy treadmill.

6. “I’m Not Earning Enough”

Now I know the internet makes it feel like every 21-year-old is somehow earning ₹3–5 lakh a month. And hey if they are - genuinely good for them!

But what social media does not show you is how statistically uncommon that actually is.

90% of Indians earn less than Rs 25,000 per month. And even among higher earners, reaching your first ₹1 lakh monthly income usually happens much later than the internet makes it seem, often between 28–32 years of age.

A detailed analysis done by Sanjeev Patel on this, shows the below statistics:

The top 1% at age 25 is a very small and extremely exceptional group often IIT/IIM graduates, top-tier finance or tech professionals, startup founders, or freelancers working with global clients.

7. “It’s Basic Because Everyone Has It”

I was honestly a victim of this mindset too. Growing up, everyone around me seemed to have a car, so somewhere in my head owning one also became this “basic” life milestone I needed to achieve early.

My dream between 18–23 was basically: “I need to get a car.” By the way, I still don’t know how to drive.

And to be honest? Uber gets me around perfectly fine.

But that’s exactly how normalization works. When you constantly see something around you, you stop viewing it as a luxury and start viewing it as a necessity. The reality, however, is very different.

The average age for buying a first car in India is still typically somewhere between 30–36 years old.

Yes, some people absolutely come from privilege. Some people also simply prioritize different things in life. That does not mean you are behind. You are just on your own timeline. Financing your lifestyle is not wealth creation.

Wealth creation is usually far less glamorous than the internet makes it look.And you definitely do not need to financially exhaust yourself trying to keep up with people whose full reality you do not even know.

It is built quietly through consistency, awareness, patience, and learning how to delay gratification every now and then.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

The Business

At first glance, cables and wires probably don’t sound like the most exciting business in the world. They are not consumer-facing, they do not dominate headlines, and most people rarely think about them unless something stops working.

But almost every major infrastructure theme today — power transmission, renewable energy, data centers, real estate, industrial capex, railways, or urban infrastructure — quietly depends on one thing running underneath it all: cables and wires.

And this is where KEI Industries comes into picture.

Founded in 1968, the company has evolved from a relatively traditional cable manufacturer into one of India’s leading players in the space, positioning itself as a one-stop solution provider across cables, wires, and EPC execution. Today, it caters to industries ranging from power, oil & gas, petrochemicals, steel, infrastructure, and marine sectors, while also building a growing international presence with nearly ~34% of revenues coming from exports.

What also stands out is the company’s market share expansion over the years. From holding roughly ~4% market share in FY15, KEI Industries has scaled this to nearly ~21% by FY26

Over the years, the company has also built relationships with several marquee clients including ABB India Limited, Tata Power Company Limited, GAIL (India) Limited, Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, JSW Group, Reliance Industries Limited, and NTPC Limited which also gives a sense of how deeply embedded it is within India’s broader industrial and infrastructure ecosystem.

Product Portfolio:

Source: Company Website

What makes this business particularly relevant today is India’s broader power and electrification push.

India’s electricity demand has been steadily rising, driven by increasing urbanization, manufacturing activity, renewable energy expansion, railways, real estate, data centers, and industrial capex. But regardless of whether the theme is renewable energy, transmission infrastructure, AI-driven data centers, or smart cities none of it functions without one critical layer underneath: power transmission and connectivity.

And that is where cables and wires become extremely important.

Every new transmission line, renewable energy project, factory, metro network, residential building, or data center ultimately requires an extensive network of cables and wires to transmit, distribute, and manage power efficiently. In many ways, cables and wires become the backbone enabling the entire electrification ecosystem.

As India continues investing heavily into infrastructure and power capacity over the next decade, demand for organized and large-scale players in the cables and wires industry is naturally expected to rise alongside it.

Beneath the Numbers

Let’s talk numbers, What stands out is that KEI’s growth story has not just been about revenue expansion, but also about improving business quality over time.

Over the last decade, revenues have grown from ₹2,351 Cr in FY16 to nearly ₹11,748 Cr by FY26 translating into a ~17.5% CAGR. But more importantly, profitability has scaled much faster than revenues. Adjusted PAT has compounded at ~31% over the same period, reflecting operating leverage, improving product mix, and increasing contribution from the relatively higher-margin cables & wires segment.

Another interesting shift visible in the numbers is the company’s gradual transition away from the relatively volatile EPC business toward becoming a stronger cables & wires-focused player. As this mix improved, margins strengthened meaningfully, with PAT margins expanding from ~2.7% in FY16 to ~7.9% by FY26.

Another aspect worth highlighting is the company’s ability to maintain relatively stable EBITDA margins even while scaling aggressively over the years. Despite significant expansion in revenues, capacity, and operations, EBITDA margins largely remained within the ~10–11% range for most of the decade reflecting strong execution, disciplined cost control, and the company’s ability to scale without materially compromising profitability.

What also becomes evident is the balance sheet improvement. Debt-to-equity has reduced sharply over time, while the business continued delivering healthy RoE and RoCE metrics for most of the decade indicating that growth was not purely debt-fueled but supported by improving operational efficiency and scale.

Looking Ahead

There is optimism on the back of strong capex momentum across sectors like power transmission & distribution, renewable energy, thermal power, railways, metros, real estate, oil & gas, and increasingly, data centers. In many ways, KEI is positioned at the intersection of several large infrastructure and electrification themes playing out simultaneously in India.

The company has already begun expanding capacity through its Sanand facility for cables and the Chinchpada plant for wires. Phase 1 of the Sanand expansion was commissioned in December 2025, while Phase 2 is expected to come online by FY27-end. Management currently expects volume growth of nearly ~17–18% in FY27, with growth potentially accelerating further toward ~20% in FY28 as utilization ramps up across the expanded capacities.

What also becomes important here is operating leverage.

Even though the company has witnessed sharp increases in copper and aluminum prices over the last year, it has still managed to maintain margins through pricing actions and improved product mix. Management expects margins to remain broadly stable in FY27, while incremental improvement could potentially come from FY28 onward as economies of scale begin kicking in from the new capacities.

Exports also continue to remain an important growth lever for the business. The company is gradually expanding its international presence across the Middle East, Australia, Africa, Europe, and now increasingly the US market as well.

That said, the story is not without risks.

The cables & wires industry remains closely linked to broader capex cycles, commodity prices, and execution. Any slowdown in infrastructure spending, delay in private capex recovery, sharp volatility in copper prices, or aggressive competition within the industry could impact margins and growth expectations. Capacity expansion itself also carries execution risk, especially since ramp-up in this industry tends to take time due to product approvals, stabilization cycles, and customer onboarding.

There are also operational risks that come with a growing export business. Management highlighted incremental freight pressures during the quarter, particularly impacting shipments toward the Middle East. While the company indicated that this did not materially impact overall margins and may partly be offset through favorable currency movements, freight and logistics costs remain an important variable to monitor going forward, especially as exports become a larger part of the overall business mix.

Disclaimer: This article is intended purely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any financial product or security. Please consult your financial advisor before making any financial or investment decisions. The author is a SEBI-qualified Research Analyst.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

Almost instinctively, your mind starts racing: What did I do wrong? Where did all my money go? Did I miss something? Did I make the wrong calls?

If you’ve felt this way before, you’re not alone.

But one thing I keep reminding myself of is this: not everyone starts from the same place. Not everyone has the same financial responsibilities, opportunities, risk appetite, support system, or life trajectory.

What you hear in a conversation or see in a social media post is only a tiny snapshot of someone’s journey not the full picture.

And to be fair, I don’t think comparison itself is wrong. It’s human. Sometimes it even pushes us to aim higher or become more disciplined. But what changes as you move through your twenties is that the “standardized” path everyone once followed slowly disappears. In school and college, life felt structured. Everyone had similar exams, timelines, grades, activities, and milestones. There was a visible benchmark to compare yourself against.

But adulthood is different.

By your late twenties and thirties, people are living completely different lives. Some are building companies, some are supporting families, some are paying off loans, some are travelling, some are prioritizing stability, while others are optimizing aggressively for wealth creation.

The comparison scale becomes blurry because the journeys themselves are no longer the same.

And nowhere does this happen more than in investing.

The first thing that usually crosses your mind when someone’s portfolio performs better than yours is: “I should have invested in that.” or “I missed that trend.”

A very relevant example for our generation is Bitcoin.

And honestly, yes people who understood the product early and invested at the right time made life-changing money.

But there are two important parts to that sentence:
they understood the product, and they entered at the right time.

Many others entered later without understanding the volatility or product cycle and had a completely different experience.

That’s the thing about markets today there are endless products, themes, sectors, and opportunities available. In many ways, investing has become a paradox of choice.

And that is precisely where the idea of a “tailored portfolio” comes from.

A good portfolio is not built by owning whatever performed best recently. It is built by understanding: the product, the cycle it operates in, your own risk appetite, your financial goals and your ability to stay invested through volatility.

Because the “best” investment on paper may still be the wrong investment for you.

And whenever I find myself slipping into comparison mode, I keep coming back to one chart:

The chart is a reminder that wealth creation is rarely explosive or linear. It is usually slow, repetitive, and almost boring for very long periods of time before compounding becomes visible.

Markets, over long periods, tend to reward discipline far more consistently than impulsiveness.

Yes, decisions matter. Yes, asset allocation matters. Yes, being thoughtful about your investments matters.

But what matters most in the long run is your consistency in saving, investing, and staying the course through different phases of life and markets.

Comparison may create urgency, but consistency is what ultimately creates wealth.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

How much of your portfolio should actually be invested globally?

For most long-term investors, a global allocation of around 5–10% is a good starting point. This still keeps the majority of your portfolio anchored domestically while giving you exposure to global companies, industries, and currencies.

Of course, this number can vary depending on your personal goals. If you are planning for higher education abroad, intend to relocate internationally, or simply want a larger portion of your assets denominated in USD, a higher allocation perhaps in the range of 20–30% may make more sense.

Now, investing globally also comes with its own set of challenges.

Keeping track of a single economy itself can feel overwhelming, let alone monitoring multiple countries, industries, currencies, interest rates, inflation trends, and geopolitical developments across the world.

And this is precisely why I prefer keeping international portfolio relatively simple.

The way I personally approach global investing is through ETFs, while limiting direct stock exposure to only a few businesses that I have spent meaningful time understanding and tracking.

ETFs, in my view, are one of the simplest and safest ways to participate globally because they provide:

• diversification,

• exposure to broader themes or economies,

• lower single-stock risk,

• and easier participation in long-term structural trends.

They also remove the pressure of constantly tracking individual companies across geographies.

Another good hygiene factor while selecting ETFs is to stick to large, established issuers like iShares (by BlackRock), Vanguard, SPDR (by State Street) or Global X (by Mirae Asset) wherever possible.

Now coming to a few broad categories of ETFs that, in my view, deserve a place in most global portfolios:

S&P 500

No surprises here.

The US continues to make up roughly 60% of global equity markets (72% weight in MSCI World Index) and remains home to some of the world’s most dominant and innovative companies. The S&P 500 gives exposure to businesses that shape global consumption, technology, healthcare, finance, and communication.

For most investors, this should ideally form the core of their international allocation.

Developed Markets ETF

Adding exposure to developed markets outside the US helps diversify geographical concentration further, as leadership across global markets tends to rotate over long periods of time.

Developed market ETFs typically include economies like Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and other mature markets with established businesses, stable institutions, and globally relevant companies.

Emerging Markets

Emerging market provide exposure to faster-growing economies outside developed markets including regions like China, Taiwan, Brazil, and parts of Latin America.

These markets tend to be more volatile, but they also offer participation in manufacturing, commodities, demographics, and consumption-led growth.

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is an increasingly interesting region from a long-term perspective, driven by manufacturing shifts, rising consumption, urbanization, and supply-chain diversification away from China.

Countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines are gradually becoming more relevant in global manufacturing and trade.

Performance and Volatility Across Global Regions

Coming back to my point, different economies and regions can perform very differently across market cycles. As you can see, While the US delivered strong returns in certain years, Emerging Markets and Southeast Asia went through completely different phases of performance. It also highlights that volatility (Standard Deviation) differs across regions, with some markets witnessing sharper swings in returns than others. This is one of the key reasons global diversification matters different economies do not move in the same way or at the same time.

So what could a simple allocation framework look like?

For a relatively conservative investor, nearly 70% of the international allocation could remain concentrated in the S&P 500 Core and Developed Markets, with around 20% allocated toward Emerging Markets and Southeast Asia, while leaving roughly 10% for specific themes you strongly believe in and are comfortable tracking.

For a more aggressive investor, the allocation can tilt more toward emerging economies and thematic exposure. In such a case, around 40% could remain in the S&P 500 and Global 100, another 40% toward Emerging Markets and Southeast Asia, while the remaining 20% could be allocated to themes you have researched deeply and are comfortable holding through higher volatility.

And that last point is important.

Themes can be exciting, AI, semiconductors, uranium, cybersecurity, robotics, biotech but they also come with significantly higher volatility and cyclical risk. The key is not just identifying a good theme, but also having the temperament to stay invested through drawdowns and changing narratives.

At the end of the day, global investing does not have to be complicated.

Disclaimer: This article is intended purely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any financial product or security. Please consult your financial advisor before making any financial or investment decisions. The author is a SEBI-qualified Research Analyst.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

Now, while most people broadly understand the basics of saving and investing, the real problem usually begins with invisible money leaks. The kind where you suddenly look at your bank balance or credit card bill and wonder:

“Wait… where did all my money actually go?”

Most wealth destruction does not happen through one big reckless decision. It happens quietly through small, repeated, almost invisible spending habits that slowly compound over time.

Now, while I am definitely not a personal finance expert, I have been mildly obsessed with tracking money since a very young age — yes, very Type A personality of me.

What I realised over time is that overcomplicating budgeting is usually the fastest way to stop doing it altogether.

Because realistically, sitting down every week or month to manually enter transactions into spreadsheets can get exhausting very quickly. You miss a few days, overspend somewhere in between, then another week passes, and suddenly the whole system feels abandoned and you tell yourself:

“Ugh, I’ll restart properly next month.”

And that’s where I think most people get budgeting wrong.

The idea is not to eliminate spending, but simply to understand it better so your money is being spent more intentionally rather than unconsciously. Create buckets for different categories and define a broad spending range or limit for each. It does not have to be perfect, the purpose is simply to give your spending some direction.

One thing I personally found extremely helpful in sticking to my budget was tracking my expenses and becoming more aware of where I could spend better and where I was mindlessly leaking money.

Because “Paytm karo” culture is very real.

The point of tracking expenses is not perfection, it is awareness. It is not about building the perfect finance spreadsheet. It is about finding the simplest system you can realistically stick to consistently.

One thing I realised about myself, for example, is that I spend a lot on coffee. And no, I still cannot say no to a cup of coffee.

But once I started categorizing my expenses properly, I noticed the difference between spending emotionally and spending intentionally. Trying a new café and reading there for hours is something that genuinely adds joy to my life. So I consciously treat that as “fun money” or what we called the “toppings” while building the burrito bowl.

And just like my coffee problem, everyone usually has their own version: shopping, ordering in too often, beauty products, quick-commerce spending, random Amazon purchases at 1 AM.

One small trick I personally found useful is creating spending limits through wallets themselves. For example, if you know you overspend on food delivery or shopping apps, preload a fixed amount into the app wallet every month maybe ₹2,000 or ₹3,000 and once it’s exhausted, that category is done for the month.

Yes, it feels slightly like giving yourself pocket money again.

But surprisingly, it works.

Now coming to the actual tracking part I keep it extremely simple. I usually just note down my expenses in my Notes app itself throughout the month. Honestly, adding fun emojis and the auto-calculation feature on Apple Notes somehow makes the process feel a lot less boring and far easier to stick to consistently.

There are, of course, plenty of expense-tracking apps out there and trust me, I have experimented with most of them. But over time, I realised personal categorisation tends to work much better because context matters.

For example, your Nykaa order may technically get tagged as “beauty” or “shopping” by an app, but in reality it might just be a birthday gift for someone.

Let’s be honest — between UPI, debit cards, credit cards, wallets, subscriptions, and ten different apps constantly asking us to “pay in one click,” even collecting your own spending data has become a task in itself.

And that is exactly why simpler systems tend to work better long term.

I also understand that not everyone wants to constantly think about money all the time. Sometimes, budgeting itself can trigger financial anxiety, and that is completely valid too.

For those people, honestly, the simplest rule is this: prioritize your savings and investments first. Even better if you can automate them, then spend the rest guilt-free.

That way, even if you are not tracking every single rupee perfectly, you are still ensuring that your future self is being taken care of before lifestyle spending slowly takes over.

And please remember, none of these numbers have to be some unrealistic fixed target. Your “best” will naturally look different every month depending on life circumstances, and that’s completely okay.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

The answer is quite easily the internet.

Our lives depend on it more than ever before. You probably can’t step out without a charged phone because you use it for everything - booking a cab, checking directions, making payments, working, streaming music, or just staying connected.

Now zoom out for a second.

What’s the one thing required to keep all of this running?

Power

Of course, electricity was important even before the days when our lives became dependent on our phones. India is the third-largest consumer of energy globally.

So why this sudden surge in focus around power and electrification? Well, it’s not just data centre build-outs driving this demand. Multiple structural trends are playing out simultaneously: rising household electricity consumption as more Indians enter the middle class, AC penetration still in early innings across Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities, electric mobility gathering real pace, and increasing manufacturing activity.
All of this ultimately feeds into one thing: higher power demand and a much larger need for electrification infrastructure.

India’s electricity demand is entering a zone where peak demand has already crossed 250 GW and the trajectory now points toward 380–400 GW over the next few years, which is a 50–60% jump from where we stand today.

And among all of this, one segment is emerging as one of the biggest incremental consumers of power & electrification: Data Centres.

And the numbers highlight just how large this opportunity could become.

Industry estimates suggest India’s installed data centre power capacity could cross 2GW by the end of 2026, up from just over 1GW currently. Even more interestingly, analysts expect India’s data centre capacity to grow nearly fivefold by 2030 to over 8GW.

This scale of expansion is expected to drive more than $30 billion in capital expenditure, particularly across key hubs like Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru, which together account for nearly half of India’s data centre capacity.

What Actually Goes Into a Data Centre?

The ecosystem requires massive amounts of power, transmission infrastructure, cooling systems, electrical equipment, grid connectivity, and of course, cables & wires.

As India rapidly positions itself as a major data centre and semiconductor manufacturing hub, underneath it all lies a massive power and infrastructure story.

The Flip Side

While the opportunity looks exciting, there are two things that personally worry me as this space scales up in India:

1. Regulatory Ambiguity

India’s digital regulatory framework is still evolving, particularly around data localization, privacy, and cross-border data flows. Initiatives like the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act are definitely a step in the right direction, but companies still need to navigate a landscape where compliance requirements continue to evolve.

2. Environmental Concerns

Data centres are extremely resource-intensive, particularly in terms of electricity and water consumption required for cooling systems. This has already become an increasing concern in developed markets like the US, where large AI-focused data centre clusters have faced scrutiny over their impact on local power grids and water resources.

To put this into perspective, a single 1-gigawatt data center can consume nearly 5 million gallons of water per day for cooling. In water-stressed regions such as parts of India, this naturally creates political, environmental, and sustainability-related concerns. There have already been discussions around regions like Visakhapatnam, where multiple proposed AI and data centre facilities drawing from shared reservoirs could potentially worsen groundwater depletion and strain local infrastructure.

Investment Lens

What makes this particularly compelling is where India currently stands in its infrastructure investment cycle.

Demand visibility is multi-year and policy-backed. Private capital is increasingly co-investing alongside government spending. Return ratios and margins are expanding rather than compressing, and earnings growth is already visible in the numbers.

That combination of structural demand, earnings visibility, expanding return ratios, and an early-stage capital cycle does not appear very often in Indian markets.

That said, this is not an easy theme to blindly participate in.

Most names in the space are already trading at 50–90x earnings, where even a small execution miss can get punished heavily by the market. These businesses also carry real working capital risks, where project delays, slower order execution, or cost overruns can lead to sharp earnings disappointments even when the order book appears strong on the surface.

Dispersion within the sector is likely to remain very high, which means stock selection will matter far more than simply owning the theme broadly.

Metrics like margin trends, balance sheet strength, customer quality and stickiness, as well as order book-to-revenue conversion will become extremely important to track.

Emerging players may offer higher growth potential, but they are also likely to be significantly more volatile. On the other hand, established players provide relatively greater comfort from an execution standpoint, although volatility will remain inherent given the cyclical nature of the sector.

The Power & Electrification theme in India may not be the most obvious AI play at first glance, but the real opportunity could lie in these indirect enablers.
Because every AI query, every cloud server, every streamed video, and every digital payment ultimately runs on one thing: Electricity.

Disclaimer: This article is intended purely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any financial product or security. Please consult your financial advisor before making any financial or investment decisions. The author is a SEBI-qualified Research Analyst.

Thank you for reading and taking the time to go through this piece :)

I hope you found it insightful and valuable. As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback, feel free to reach out at datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

Happy investing! 📈

Source: Google Finance. S&P 500 is in USD terms and Nifty is in INR terms

Now, this is definitely not to say that all your wealth should you should only invest in the US. In fact, the point is quite the opposite.

Source: ET Wealth, Source: Reuters-Refinitiv. Calendar year returns calculated between the first and the last trading day closing values. Returns are normalised to Indian rupee. The 10-year return is the compounded average return

As the chart above shows, no single country consistently remains the best-performing market every year. Different geographies go through different cycles of growth, slowdown, outperformance, and underperformance.

And that, in my view, is one of the strongest arguments for global diversification.

When most investors think about diversification, they usually think in terms of sectors, market caps, or asset classes. But geography is equally important. Because while your income may largely be in INR, a significant part of your consumption is already global.

Think about the products and services you interact with every single day.

Your phone? Probably Apple or Samsung.
Your commute? Maybe Uber.
What you watch while travelling to work? Netflix, Spotify, YouTube.
The laptop you work on? Microsoft, Lenovo, Apple.
What you work on every day? Gmail, Outlook, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint.
The social media apps you spend hours on? Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest.
Even skincare, perfumes or clothing a large part of aspirational consumption today is driven by global brands and companies.

And if these companies are important enough to dominate our daily lives and consumer spending, shouldn’t they deserve a place in our portfolios too?

The second aspect is access to themes.

Some of the biggest structural themes shaping the global economy over the next decade - AI, semiconductors, uranium, commodity miners, biotech, cybersecurity, advanced robotics, clean energy infrastructure either have very limited representation in India or do not yet have a deep investable universe available domestically.

So when you avoid international exposure completely, you are not just avoiding another geography, you may also be missing access to entire industries and innovation cycles that could define global growth over the next 10–15 years.

The third angle is currency depreciation.

Just over last 5 year period, the INR has gradually depreciated against the USD. As an INR investor, owning global assets can therefore also act as a hedge against currency risk and preserve purchasing power over time.

Source: Google Finance

So perhaps the simplest way to think about international investing is this:

It is not about betting against India.
It is about ensuring that all your eggs are not placed in one geographical basket.

International exposure was earlier easily accessible to Indian investors through mutual fund feeder/fund-of-fund (FoF) structures investing into global markets. However, most of these avenues have seen restrictions or halted fresh inflows after the RBI’s overseas investment limits for the mutual fund industry were exhausted. As a result, direct international investing platforms have increasingly become one of the more practical routes for investors looking to build global exposure today. ICICI Direct offers international investing access, Zerodha is expected to launch soon, while platforms like Interactive Brokers and Vested are also commonly used & trusted options.

For those curious about the practical side — Indian residents can remit up to USD 2,50,000 per financial year under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). This includes investments abroad as well as other foreign currency expenses such as travel, education fees, etc.

From a taxation perspective, the process is fairly straightforward. Investments and transactions simply need to be disclosed while filing your ITR, and because of double taxation agreements between countries like India and the US, investors are protected from being taxed twice on the same income. Capital gains on international investments are typically taxed in India based on applicable STCG and LTCG rules, while dividends may be subject to withholding tax in the US. There is, however, applicable TCS (Tax collected at source) of 20% applied to all international remittances over a threshold of Rs 10 lakh made within a fiscal year. However, this is not an additional tax, it is adjustable against your final tax liability and can be claimed as credit while filing your income tax returns.

And if you have more questions around this topic, feel free to reach out to me at: datatodecisionsbyhiloni@gmail.com

I understand that international investing can feel unfamiliar initially, but it is becoming an increasingly important part of thinking about portfolio diversification in a global economy.

And the problem with most financial advice is that it focuses on what to cut, not how to structure.

At its core, managing your finances is about balance and one of the simplest ways to think about that is how you build your burrito bowl.

Graphic Source: Data to Decisions - by Hiloni

🍚 Start with carbs (Fixed Expenses)

Your base, the rice is your fixed expenses. Rent, utilities, groceries - the essentials that keep your life running. This forms the foundation of your finances and, like your bowl, it usually makes up the bulk of it. Because these are non-negotiable, they take up a large portion of your income.

🫘 Load up on protein (Savings & Investments)

Then comes the protein, the most important part of the meal. In your finances, this is your investments. SIPs, insurance premiums, emergency fund, equities - this is what actually builds your future. It’s what sustains you over time, it should be your top priority.

🥗 Add fibre (Variable Expenses)

Next come the veggies, your variable expenses. Dining out, shopping, subscriptions, small indulgences these are the things that make life enjoyable, but are flexible. You can adjust this layer depending on your situation, without disrupting the entire structure.

🥑 Choose your toppings (Fun Money)

And finally, the toppings - guac, salsa, extra cheese. This is your fun money. Vacations, concerts, splurges the experiences that make life enjoyable. These are important too. Just like in your bowl, they add flavour and spice to your life. The goal is not to deprive yourself, but to spend intentionally. But just like in a bowl, toppings come last only after your base and protein are in place.

The problem is, most people build their finances upside down.

Too much spent on toppings, not enough on protein, and a base that stretches beyond what they can afford.

A well-balanced financial life isn’t about cutting everything out, it’s about getting the proportions right.

Thank you for reading! Happy Investing!

But where do you draw the line between managing concentration risk and diluting returns through over-diversification?

What We See in Real Portfolios

Working in wealth management and reviewing multiple portfolios over the years, a clear pattern emerges.

When clients come to us with portfolios often DIY and built over time, we frequently see 40–80 stocks accumulated over the years. Many of these positions come from one-off decisions: “Someone recommended it, so I bought it and never tracked it again.”

In fact, in a meaningful number of cases, 5–10% of the portfolio consists of delisted or non-traded stocks, essentially capital that has gone to zero but still sits in the portfolio. It has quite literally, gone extinct.

The same behaviour shows up in mutual funds as well. Multiple schemes in the same category, heavy concentration in a single AMC, and portfolios with 30–40 funds are not uncommon.

At first glance, these portfolios look diversified. In reality, they are not well constructed. The top 15–20 holdings often make up the majority of the portfolio (~60%), while the rest form a long tail of small, inactive positions. This leads to a situation where your best-performing ideas have allocations so small that they don’t meaningfully impact your overall wealth.

What you’re left with is a portfolio that behaves like the broader market but with more effort, more complexity, and often higher costs. You end up doing active work for passive results.

Understanding Why Diversification Exists

Diversification, at its core, exists to protect you from being wrong. No matter how much research you do, markets are uncertain, and not every investment will work out as expected. By spreading your investments, you reduce the impact of any single mistake. It’s less about maximizing returns and more about ensuring survival across cycles. As Warren Buffett puts it, “Diversification is protection against ignorance.”

But there is a point beyond which diversification stops helping.

Research based on Modern Portfolio Theory, founded by Edwin J. Elton and Martin J. Gruber shows that most of the benefits of diversification are achieved with a relatively small number of stocks. A portfolio with a single stock can have volatility as high as ~49%, but by the time you add around 20 stocks, that risk drops significantly to ~20%. Beyond this point, adding more stocks whether 30, 50, or even 100 only reduces risk by a mere 0.8%.

In other words, the first 20 stocks do most of the heavy lifting. Everything beyond that adds very little in terms of risk reduction, but starts diluting returns. That is the trade-off. If you diversify too widely, you may not lose much but you won’t gain much either.

So, What Is Enough Diversification?

A well-constructed portfolio is not about owning everything. It is about owning enough to manage risk, but not so much that your best ideas stop mattering. This is where portfolio construction actually begins to show in how you allocate, how much conviction you assign, and how intentional your positions are.

In Stocks:

• ~15–25 stocks

• Max ~10% in a single stock

• Max ~20–25% in a sector

• Spread across large, mid, and small caps based on risk appetite

In Mutual Funds:

• 7–10 schemes across categories

• Avoid multiple schemes within the same category

• Limit exposure to a single AMC (~20–25%)

Diversification protects you from being wrong, but conviction is what creates returns.

Thank you for reading! Happy Investing!

What matters more - the foundation, or how many floors it has? Of course, the foundation. Because if the structure collapses, it doesn’t matter how many rooms you built or what colour the walls are.

Your portfolio works the same way.

Why Asset Allocation Matters

Asset allocation defines your portfolio’s structural risk and return profile.
It plays a far more important role in long-term outcomes than simply picking the “best” stock or fund.

While selection matters, multiple studies have shown that over 90% of a portfolio’s volatility is driven by asset allocation, not individual investment choices

If you invest entirely in equities, a sharp market correction can significantly erode your portfolio. Different asset classes perform differently across market cycles. What works well in one environment may underperform in another.

By diversifying across asset classes, you reduce risk, smoothen returns, and improve your chances of achieving long-term goals

Calendar Wise Return of Different Asset Classes:

Source: WhiteOak Capital

What Should Your Allocation Be?

Your allocation should be driven by two key factors:

1. Risk Tolerance

After assessing your risk appetite, you’ll have a sense of how much volatility you can handle and how much equity vs debt you should hold.

2. Time Horizon

• If you need money in 1 year → Higher debt (~70–80%)

• If your horizon is 5–10+ years → Higher equity allocation

Keep It Simple

At its core, asset allocation can be broken down into two parts:

1. Equity (Growth)

• Stocks

• Equity mutual funds

• PMS / AIF / private equity

2. Debt (Stability)

• Fixed deposits

• Bonds

• Debt mutual funds

• Gold

• Real Estate

Here is how different portfolios perform

Source: WhiteOak Capital

When Should You Review Your Allocation?

A simple rule is to review your portfolio twice a year. The goal is to bring your allocation back to its original levels, this ensures you are not unintentionally taking on more risk than you can handle.

Apart from this regular review you should also review when, major life events occur or your goals change.

Market corrections can be a good time to rebalance, allowing you to gradually increase equity exposure when valuations are more reasonable.

A good portfolio isn’t built on the best ideas, it’s built on the right allocation.

Thank you for reading. Happy Investing!

Think about your “What” and “Why”

>What is your risk tolerance?

Think of risk tolerance like swimming.
How deep can you go before you start panicking?

The goal is not to maximise returns at any cost, but to ensure that your investments let you sleep well at night. Markets should add value to your life not take it away.

A simple way to approach this is through a basic questionnaire
This exercise helps you understand your “money personality” and, more importantly, how you should allocate your assets. It guides how much you should invest in equity versus debt, and even within equity, what level of risk you are comfortable with. Can you handle the volatility of small and mid-caps? If you’re a conservative investor, the answer is likely no and that’s perfectly fine.

Your asset allocation should reflect your risk tolerance, not market trends.

>Why are you investing?

This is equally important.

Are you investing for:

• Short-term goals?

• Long-term wealth creation?

• Financial independence?

Your “why” determines your time horizon and your time horizon should drive your investment choices.

Start Simple

Understanding products is crucial. If you understand the risk and volatility of what you’re investing in, you will be able to align your investments with your goals much more effectively.

A good starting point is mutual funds. They are managed by professional fund managers who track markets and companies closely.

If you’re still skeptical and testing the waters, index funds are a great place to begin. They mirror market returns and eliminate fund manager risk. However, it’s important to remember that they also don’t offer downside protection.

For more complex products like direct equity, AIFs, or PMS, it’s advisable to work with an advisor who can guide you.

Focus on Quality, Not Quantity

You don’t need to own everything. Think of it like shopping you don’t buy the entire store, you pick what fits you well.

The same applies to investing. Focus on high-quality investments and stay consistent with them.

It may sound boring but boring is what works.

Build Gradually

A good portfolio is not built overnight. Invest systematically. Deploy capital in a staggered manner rather than trying to time the market. A good time period is 3-6 months.

Because the truth is, no one can predict where the market will be tomorrow, or even three months from now. Even God doesn’t know.

Consistency will always beat timing.

A portfolio is not just a collection of investments, it’s a reflection of your behaviour.
Build it with clarity, patience, and discipline.

Thank you for reading. Happy Investing!