Idea Brunch with Soumya Malani on Investing in India
Welcome to Sunday’s Idea Brunch, your interview series with great off-the-beaten-path investors. We are very excited to interview Soumya Malani!
A postgraduate from the London School of Economics, Soumya has become a formidable voice in India’s capital markets with a reputation for consistently spotting multi-bagger small-cap stocks. He has delivered stellar returns from companies like Avanti Feeds, Acrysil, Apollo Tricoat, Zen Technologies, Minda Industries, Laurus Labs to name a few, earning him the title “The Young Multibagger Hunter” by Money9 and a “Young Bull” by The Economic Times.
Soumya has also been a guest columnist for The Economic Times, Moneycontrol, Morningstar India, Live Mint and has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine. He is the co-founder of three successful start-ups, including: TABP Snacks & Beverages(Beverages and Snacks), ₹105+ Cr FY25 revenue; Chaigram (QSR Chain and FMCG), 32 outlets in 4 years with current ARR at ₹30 crs; and Filomilo (Pet Food Brand), currently at ₹15crs ARR.
Earn $150/hour Helping Train Frontier AI Models: Mercor connects experts in their field with leading AI labs like OpenAI to test, challenge, and improve frontier AI models. Mercor has partnered with Sunday’s Idea Brunch to highlight part-time, asynchronous, remote jobs where you can use your expertise to train AI models around your schedule. Open roles include: Finance Expert — $150/hour (IB, PE, or public‑markets background), Legal Expert — $100/hour (licensed attorney, 2+ years experience), and Audit/Accounting Expert — up to $60/hour (3+ years professional experience). Work asynchronously on your own schedule while you help shape the next generation of AI. (Sponsored)
Soumya, thank you for doing Sunday’s Idea Brunch! Can you please tell readers a little more about your background?
I grew up in the early 2000s in a business family where money wasn’t just saved—it was invested in the stock market. I was always very curious about the red and green numbers flashing on CNBC. My grandfather would sit for hours reading annual reports that companies used to send by post in those days. As a child, I never understood why he read those books, but they always caught my eye.
In 2008, I requested him to buy me one share of Nestlé. That was my first step into the stock market. But it wasn’t until 2012–13, after I finished my post-graduation from the London School of Economics (LSE), that I began to invest seriously.
At first, I invested in well-known large companies like Sun Pharma, ITC, and L&T. But very soon I realized the power of smaller companies with very high growth potential.
Over the years, I found that true multi-baggers share common DNA:
Visionary management + scalability + pricing power + tailwinds + high growth + higher incremental RoCE + low equity + under ownership + leader in a niche area = combination of a multibagger.
This strategy led me to life-changing picks like Avanti Feeds, Bharat Rasayan, Apollo Tricoat, Minda Industries, Acrysil, Laurus Labs, Zen Technologies —names that didn’t just grow my portfolio but shaped my entire investing philosophy.
In a recent podcast, you mentioned combining “fundamentals and technicals” as part of your strategy. Can you tell us more about this?
Even as a newbie, I always wanted to build a lifelong career in the equity markets and was always curious about learning the various approaches that one can follow. What I feel is each and every tool can be valuable - we should know how to use it based on our strategy and mindset. We should always be curious and open to learning without stressing too much about the end result as even if a particular tool or study doesn’t suit our style, it teaches us what not to do. That is still valuable.
Most of us know that any robust stock market strategy needs to answer four key questions:
What to buy?
When to buy?
How much to buy?
When to sell?
But before these, there is one more important question that often gets overlooked:
How do you decide what to study in the first place?
In a market that throws hundreds of ideas at you daily, clarity on where to focus is critical. This is where technical analysis has added real value to my process—it helps me listen to the market rather than impose my views on it.
I extensively look out for stocks hitting 52-week highs. It might sound simplistic, but if a stock has to become a multibagger, it has to cross its 52-week high at some point. Scanning this list regularly helps me identify potential winners early. It also reveals common sector patterns, helping me spot emerging themes that could lead the market in the future.
Once I have a list of technically strong candidates, I shift to fundamental screening—this is where I skim through companies trying to find out if they have multibagger traits. For the ones that pass my fundamental screening criteria, I go deep—reading annual reports, tracking management, understanding the business model and building conviction.
But technicals come back into play again for risk management.
Based on one of the deep dive studies that I did, I came to the conclusion that most of the high-growth stocks make their top before their best results come - which made me realize that waiting for quarterly results and then selling a stock would be too late, especially in the high-growth + momentum companies that I look for.
Also, we need to keep in mind the “50/80 Rule” - according to Mark Minervini, when a secular market leader reaches a major top, there's a significant chance of a substantial decline. He calls this the "50/80 Rule," where there's a 50% chance of an 80% decline, and an 80% chance of a 50% decline. This made me realize that having sell rules based on technicals is essential.
So in short, my strategy looks like this:
Use technicals to decide what to study
Use fundamental screens to narrow the list
Go deep into fundamentals for conviction and final selection
Use technicals again for risk management and exit
This is my way of combining the best of both worlds—letting market behavior guide my focus, while letting fundamental understanding drive my conviction.
As someone who already achieved success in the Indian investment landscape, what inspired you to explore the world of entrepreneurship? Could you also share more about the businesses you’re currently building?
As an investor, I always loved the process—identifying visionary founders, backing promising businesses, and watching them scale. Over time, I realized the massive scale of opportunity that a growing country like India presents. This realization sparked a shift in my journey: I decided to transition from merely investing in others’ stories to building my own. The key was always to build a strong foundation by finding great entrepreneurs with excellent teams who can run the businesses in the most efficient manner.
The idea was simple: take the learnings from my stock market journey—the traits of winners I had and apply them to my own startups. Equally important was avoiding the characteristics of the companies that had caused me losses.
For example, I made outsized returns in the consumer sector—one of the most dynamic and fast-growing segments in India. That is why all three of my startups are focused on tapping into India’s booming consumer market. Companies with no debt and advance-payment models turned out to be multibaggers for me in the stock market. I applied the same principle: all our startup sales are done on an advances model—money comes first from the distributor, then we dispatch the products.
For me, entrepreneurship was never just about chasing higher returns. It was about creating something meaningful—businesses that generate livelihoods and bring real value to consumers. We feel blessed to be providing livelihood to more than 1000 families through our 3 startups.
Our Startups:
TABP Snacks and Beverages. Based in Coimbatore, TABP sells carbonated juice bottles priced at ₹10. Today, it ranks among the top 10 beverage manufacturers in India, achieving a staggering CAGR of 234% since inception. In FY25, we sold 17.5 crore bottles, averaging 335 bottles every second.
Chaigram. Headquartered in Kolkata, Chaigram started with premix tea products and has evolved into a two-vertical model: QSR and FMCG.
Filomilo. Based in Coimbatore, Filomilo is a fast-growing pet food brand. Founded in 2021, the company has scaled to a ₹15 crore ARR, tapping into the rapid rise of pet ownership and demand for quality nutrition.
From your perspective, how do India’s public markets differ from those in the United States? Do you adjust your investment approach when evaluating Indian companies versus U.S. companies?
I have never invested in the U.S. market, but I follow it closely because many global trends start there, and those trends often lead to big multi-bagger opportunities. The U.S. and Indian markets are quite different. The U.S. is a more mature and efficient market.
India, on the other hand, is the fastest-growing economy right now and likely will be for years. That creates a lot of opportunity to find lesser-known companies with huge potential.
Overall, I feel the tricks of the trade as a growth investor remain the same whether it is India or the US — it is just that we need to modify our mindset and process just a bit to align with the cultural, political, and business landscape of the two countries.
In India, I feel it is important to focus on the quality of the promoters and the big picture tailwinds driving the business, especially when you are hunting for the smaller under-owned companies.
But above all, what matters most to me is how fast a company can grow — and for how long. The faster and longer the growth, the bigger the multi-bagger - This mantra remains the same for all markets across all countries.
In the U.S., there are very few investors who have compounded capital at over 20% per year for long periods of time; however, in India, it seems like a lot of the top managers commonly achieve these returns or better. Why are outsized returns so common in India?
If we consider recent years then outsized returns have been more common in India due to a powerful combination of strong economic growth, supportive demographics and ongoing structural reforms. The country is still underpenetrated in many sectors and hence presents a long growth runway.
There is also relatively low analyst coverage in small and mid-cap stocks, which creates opportunities for sharp, research-driven investors to discover multibagger opportunities. India’s equity culture is still developing, offering an edge to process-driven skilled traders and investors.
However, in the long run, it's important to maintain realistic expectations about the kind of returns one can generate from equity markets. Over time, returns tend to revert to the mean, and relying on recent outperformance can create unreasonable expectations — ultimately leading to disappointment.