Market Outlook of this Week is now Live :)
On 15 August the Prime Minister speech leaned heavily on building capacity at home - seven to eight new semiconductor plants within one to two years and 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047
https://t.co/2U9t3j5I4f
India is most expensive country to launch satellites, at $13,302 per kg
USA is cheapest at $3,225 per kg thanks to SpaceX Falcon 9. India costs 4x more. Study published in Economics Letters by Cambridge and Turin researchers compared 6 countries with launch capability.
ISRO rockets are not reusable. SpaceX reuses its rocket boosters 25+ times. That is why costs differ so much. India is building NGLV Project Soorya, its first partially reusable rocket, targeting $1,900 per kg.
But it will not fly for several years
Skyroot Aerospace became first Indian private company to reach orbit on July 18, 2026. Its Vikram-1 rocket carried 350 kg into 450 km low Earth orbit. Impressive milestone.
But each Vikram-1 launch will cost about $4M, which works out to $11,000 per kg. SpaceX Falcon 9 charges $3,225 per kg and carries 22,800 kg per launch. Skyroot plans commercial operations from 2027 with monthly launches.
India now has private and government rockets. Neither matches SpaceX on cost per kg yet. Closing that gap requires reusability and it will be really hard to achieve by the way
India wants to earn $3.5B per year from launching foreign satellites by 2033. Right now, India is most expensive launch market among 6 space-capable nations at $13,302 per kg.
SpaceX charges $3,225 - Gap is 4x. ISRO launched roughly 60 missions over 30 years. SpaceX launched 165 in 2025 alone.
Volume brings cost down. Low cost brings more customers. More customers fund more launches. India has not entered this cycle yet. NGLV with reusable stages could change this but remains in development.
lets hope >>>
This expansion is driven by cloud growth, data localisation, and rising AI demand. Hyperscalers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc.) and large Indian players are expanding fast.
@debapratim_ Thanks for sharing this. India will reduce its costs too in the coming decade. It has just started, and the GOI has done a lot of reforms since 2020, including the recent meeting with space startups.
The scale is extreme. East Asia surplus is now so large it equals more than 2% of the entire rest of the world’s GDP
Concentration is extreme - almost the entire global surplus is in a handful of East Asian economies. The rise is recent and steep. From a relatively calm period in 2023–early 2024, the numbers jumped hard.
China is using gold imports in a way that temporarily lowers the reported current account number. Strip that out and the underlying surplus looks even bigger.
Korea + Taiwan combined surplus alone has more than tripled in a short time (driven heavily by chips)
This is happening while the rest of the world (especially the US, and also places like India, UK, Turkey, etc.) is absorbing the counterpart deficits.
Quick commerce dark stores carry 4,000-5,000 SKUs, Traditional FMCG retail carries 15,000-20,000
In that constrained shelf, only top 2-3 brands per category get listed. Honasa went from 2% quick commerce revenue contribution in FY24 to 10% in Q1 FY27.
That is 5x growth in 2 years - Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart now do 7.8M orders daily across India. Brands without high velocity and strong recall do not survive in 10-minute delivery format
Honasa built both - Most D2C competitors did not
Honasa reached 300,000 FMCG retail outlets by Q1 FY27, up from 200,000 just 12 months earlier. General trade secondary sales grew 40%+ YoY. Modern trade offtakes grew 40%+. Offline now covers ~80% of revenue.
But offline market share sits around 5% vs mid-teens online. That gap is where Rs 40B India BPC market gets decided.
Honasa rebuilt its distribution in FY25 through Project Neev, replacing middlemen with direct distributors in 50 cities. Growth dipped temporarily. Margin discipline returned permanently.
Honasa paid Rs 135 Cr for 58% of Fluence Pharma, valued at 3.4x FY26 revenue of Rs 40 Cr. Fluence runs patented Cyclical Nutrition
Therapy sold through 3,000 prescribing dermatologists. EBITDA margin above 20%. This is not another brand acquisition. It is clinical-grade distribution access.
India VMS market sits at Rs 16,000 Cr+ growing at 11% CAGR. Honasa plans to combine topical skincare with ingestible supplements under new subsidiary Honasa Health.
Convergence of outside-in and inside-out beauty is where next Rs 1,000 Cr brand gets built.
From FMCG to Nutrition to Welness to >>>>
AI has nudged robotics a lot, and in the last 3 years it has evolved massively
Now, from the AI war, the Physical AI war has started. The US currently does not have enough suppliers who can manage manufacturing and simultaneously produce components at scale with nano-level precision. Building that supplier ecosystem will take time
Let’s hope Indian companies that are already close to this level of precision manufacturing can enter this domain. It is highly possible through joint ventures, and I think soon we will start seeing this show up in company filings.
I don’t think any potent supplier will ignore the Physical AI space, especially robotics
The reason why I am saying this and putting up this thesis is because we have already seen the same pattern in the last 5 years.
Due to capex and new opportunities, many players jumped into railways, defence, and aerospace. A few bought companies, some entered through joint ventures, while others first got certifications and then started receiving orders.
We have seen this from Sona BLW to Belrise, Motherson, Sansera, Balu Forge, etc.
So I think in the next 3–5 years, this Physical AI and robotics supply chain will also start getting built, and Indian precision manufacturing companies could become part of it.
WATCH: A humanoid robot training for the “Robot Olympics” in Beijing runs too fast, fails to stop, slams into a safety cushion, and breaks at the waist
Be Ready for that this decade will be Historical for Brutal Supply Chain war, Slowly this not just expanding but Growing Means this decade will comes with chaos and opportunity :)
Welspun Corp won its biggest-ever order worth $1.8B for supplying pipes from its factory in USA
Not from India From Little Rock, where Welspun has been building since 2007. Total investment there now exceeds $400M. After recent expansion, this is only US pipe factory that can make pipes ranging from 6 to 56 inches.
Order will be delivered across FY28 and FY29. Company did not name who placed it. Order book now stands at record $4.4B or Rs 42,000 Cr
America is building more gas pipelines than any time since 2008. EIA data shows 44.9 Bcf/d of new capacity coming in 2026-27.
Yu just need few data to connect the dots :)
2 forces are driving this. First, LNG exports need pipelines to move gas from Texas fields to export terminals. Second, data centers need their own gas power plants because electric grids cannot keep up.
Companies have committed $50B to new pipeline construction. All of this needs large-diameter steel pipes. Welspun makes those pipes inside US borders, in Arkansas, with no import duty risk
thats called the Optionality in trade war tariff
Previous record was Rs 5,000 Cr Permian Basin order in 2022, New order is 3.4x bigger. Global order book crossed $4.4B for first time.
Spiral mill at Little Rock is fully booked till FY28. New LSAW mill adds 300,000 tonnes per year capacity.
Revenue visibility now stretches into FY29....
Welspun Corp earns roughly 3X more profit per tonne of pipe sold in United States compared to India.
That gap is not about quality of pipe, which is the same steel welded in the same way. Gap comes from trade protection. US imposes anti-dumping duties on imported pipes, so a manufacturer who already runs a plant inside America faces far less competition and can charge more.
Welspun now plans to add 200,000 to 250,000 tonnes of new capacity at its Arkansas plant this year, a 70% jump. Every tonne produced there earns at a level Indian operations cannot match.
Demand for large steel pipes in America is being driven by something that has nothing to do with oil prices. Data centres need gas powered electricity, and gas needs pipelines.
US developers plan to add about 45 billion cubic feet per day of new pipeline capacity in 2026 and 2027, biggest buildout since 2008. Welspun US spiral pipe mill is already fully booked through FY28.
Once the new LSAW line comes online, it will be the only American plant that can make pipes from 6 inches to 56 inches wide, covering every specification from small city gas lines to massive LNG export corridors.
Q1 FY27 reported profit tripled to 1,046 crore, but about 548 crore of that came from selling shares of its Saudi associate East Pipes on Tadawul stock exchange.
Strip that out and operating profit still grew 35%, which is strong but not as dramatic. Management reiterating 2,800 crore EBITDA guidance for full year without raising it, even after a strong first quarter, tells you they expect some quarters ahead will run softer as new capacity ramps up and integration costs flow through.
Discipline on guidance in a company running at 23% return on capital is worth more than one blowout quarter.
Did Cover in Market Outlook Nov 2025