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Stock Market Basics
108 courses
Portfolio Management & Asset Allocation for Indian Investors
The flagship course on running a whole portfolio instead of collecting individual stocks and funds. Built for salaried professionals, HNI investors, those nearing retirement and fresh graduates starting their first SIP, it replaces the accidental portfolio most Indian households hold with a written process. You will price your goals in rupees, separate risk capacity from risk appetite, compare the real long-run behaviour of Indian equity, debt, gold, REITs and cash, and choose an allocation framework you can actually stick to. From there you will build a core-satellite equity sleeve, rebalance with STCG, LTCG and costs in view, set drawdown rules in advance, and follow a complete worked portfolio for a 35-year-old salaried investor from first SIP to retirement glide path. It is the companion course to The Capital Gains model portfolios.
- Diagnose an existing portfolio for fund overlap, orphan holdings and hidden concentration
- Convert life goals into inflation-adjusted rupee targets with clear horizons
- Distinguish risk capacity, risk tolerance and required return, and account for EPF, PPF, NPS and physical gold
Advanced Bond Valuation: Credit Spreads and the Yield Curve
An advanced, India-first course on the two things a single yield to maturity hides: the term structure of interest rates and the credit spread. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who can already price a bond and compute duration, and now want to bootstrap a zero-coupon curve from G-Sec prices, extract forward rates, read curve shapes and curve trades, decompose a corporate bond's spread into default, recovery, liquidity, and tax components, and value any bond cash flow by cash flow off the curve plus a spread. Uses FBIL and CCIL data, NSE and BSE corporate bond quotes, RBI Retail Direct, debt fund factsheets, and real Indian credit events including IL&FS, DHFL, and the 2020 credit risk fund episode, with every calculation worked in INR.
- Bootstrap a zero-coupon spot curve from G-Sec prices and explain why YTM is a blunt average that spot rates sharpen
- Compute implied forward rates and read what the curve is pricing about future RBI repo decisions
- Identify normal, flat, inverted, and humped curves and express a curve view using gilt, constant maturity, and target maturity funds
Advanced Portfolio Construction: Factor Investing and Smart Beta
A practitioner's course on factor investing for experienced Indian investors who already run a portfolio and want a more deliberate way to construct it. Covers what a factor actually is, how value, momentum, quality, low volatility, size, and dividend yield have behaved on the NSE, how to read the methodology of every major Nifty smart beta index and the funds that track them, and how to combine factors into a multi-factor portfolio around a Nifty 50 core. Closes with the operational realities: turnover, transaction costs on Indian brokers, capital gains tax drag, rebalancing discipline, and regression-based monitoring of your own factor exposure. Built on Screener.in screens, NSE index data, and real Indian fund examples throughout.
- Separate market beta, factor exposure, and genuine alpha in any portfolio, including your own
- Build value, momentum, quality, and low volatility screens on Screener.in that match how NSE factor indices are actually constructed
- Read a Nifty smart beta index methodology document and judge whether the fund tracking it is worth owning
Advanced Screener.in: Building Custom Financial Screens
For investors who already know how to run a basic Screener.in query and want to build screens that actually find good businesses. Learn how the query engine really evaluates a screen, which historical and quarterly variables to use, and how to create custom ratios and column sets that answer one clear question. Then build complete strategy screens for quality compounders, value, growth at a reasonable price and turnarounds, plus forensic screens that flag weak cash conversion, promoter pledging and working capital stress. Covers why banks, NBFCs and cyclicals break generic filters, the testing traps that make a screen look smarter than it is, and a repeatable monthly routine for turning a screen into a shortlist. Built on real NSE and BSE listed companies, written for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors moving into direct equity, and salaried professionals who want a disciplined, time-efficient research process.
Advanced Screener.in: Custom Formulas and Forensic Screens
For investors who already write basic Screener.in queries and want screens that hold up. The first half is about writing formulas properly: handling nulls, zero denominators and negative values, building composite scores in one query, and testing multi-year consistency. The second half turns those skills into forensic screens: cash conversion, accruals, other income dependence, capitalisation creep, receivable and inventory build-ups, the cash-and-debt paradox, Piotroski and Beneish style scoring, and promoter pledge and dilution filters. It closes by testing screens against real Indian collapses such as DHFL, Manpasand and Yes Bank, and by building a quarterly review routine that separates genuine red flags from false positives.
- Write Screener.in queries that handle nulls, zero denominators and negative values without silently dropping companies
- Combine several conditions into a single composite score inside one query
- Screen for poor earnings quality using cumulative cash conversion, accruals and other income dependence
Building Automated Excel Models Linked to Live Market Data
An advanced build course for investors and active traders who already live in Excel and are tired of copy-pasting prices. You will design models in three layers (raw data, calculation engine, output), then feed them from real sources: Excel Stock Data Types and STOCKHISTORY, Power Query pulls of NSE bhavcopy, AMFI NAVs and RBI rates, and real-time broker feeds from Zerodha Kite Connect through Python. On top of that data you will build five working models: a live peer valuation sheet, a reverse DCF that recalculates implied growth as the price moves, a Nifty options chain with Black-Scholes Greeks, a rolling portfolio risk dashboard, and a position sizing calculator. Finally you will automate refreshes, snapshots and alerts with VBA, Office Scripts and Python, and harden the whole thing with audit checks, performance tuning and a maintenance playbook for corporate actions and index changes.
- Design live models in three layers so a broken feed never corrupts your calculations
- Choose between Stock Data Types, Power Query, RTD and broker APIs based on latency, cost and reliability
- Pull NSE bhavcopy, AMFI NAVs and RBI rates with parameterised Power Query that refreshes on a schedule
Building Watchlists and Screens on Screener.in
A hands-on guide to using Screener.in to build watchlists, run pre-built screens, and write your own custom queries to filter Indian-listed companies by the metrics that matter to you.
- Navigate Screener.in and read a company's ratio page correctly
- Build and organize watchlists to track companies you're interested in
- Use Screener.in's pre-built screens to shortlist stocks fast
Building a Concentrated High Conviction Portfolio
A rigorous guide to building and running a concentrated equity portfolio in Indian markets, built for experienced investors who have outgrown a 40-stock spread and want their best ideas to actually matter. Learn why diversification stops adding much beyond 15 to 20 stocks, what the Kelly criterion and its practical half-Kelly version say about position sizing, and the temperament and capital tests that decide whether concentration is right for you at all. Go deep on how conviction is actually built: writing a one-page thesis, identifying your variant perception versus the Nifty consensus, and setting kill criteria before you buy. Then construct the book itself: how many stocks, sizing by conviction tiers, spotting correlation traps where ten NSE stocks behave like three, and staggered versus lump-sum entry. Finish with the discipline that keeps a concentrated portfolio alive: quarterly thesis reviews, rules for trimming and adding, and the real tax and cost drag of churn under Indian LTCG and STCG rules.
- Size positions using conviction tiers and a half-Kelly framework instead of equal weights
- Write a one-page thesis with explicit kill criteria before committing capital
- Spot correlation traps and run a quarterly review process that avoids overtrading
Building a Dividend Income Portfolio
A practical guide to building a portfolio of Indian dividend-paying stocks for steady income, aimed at investors who already understand the basics of equity investing and want a structured approach to income investing. Covers how to read dividend yield and payout ratio correctly, how to screen for quality dividend payers on Screener.in, which NSE and BSE sectors have a genuine track record of consistent payouts, how to diversify and rebalance an income-focused portfolio, and how dividend income is actually taxed in India after the abolition of DDT. Uses real Indian companies and screener workflows throughout.
- Learn dividend investing fundamentals and what drives dividend income
- Screen for quality dividend stocks and build a portfolio
- Understand how dividend income gets taxed in India
Building a Personal Research Dashboard Using Python and Free APIs
A build course for investors and active traders who already write basic Python and are tired of stitching research together from screener.in, NSE, BSE, AMFI and a dozen broker screens. You will design and build one private research dashboard on free data: NSE bhavcopy and delivery data, yfinance prices, AMFI and mfapi.in NAVs, BSE and NSE corporate filings, and RBI macro series. You will store it all in a local DuckDB database, adjust for splits and bonuses, and run data quality checks that catch silent errors. On top of that data you will build valuation bands, relative strength versus the Nifty 50, portfolio XIRR and drawdown, and a transparent watchlist score. Then you will ship it as a Streamlit app with Plotly charts, schedule daily refreshes, send Telegram alerts on filings and price triggers, and keep the whole system running when free sources change. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNI investors who want a research process they own end to end.
- How to decide what a research dashboard should answer before writing a single line of code
- Which free Indian market data sources are reliable, what each one cannot tell you, and how to use them within their terms
- How to build a fetch, store, compute, display architecture that survives source outages and format changes
Building a Portfolio Tracker Using Google Sheets and APIs
A hands-on build course for investors who have outgrown broker dashboards and scattered app screens. You will design and build one Google Sheets tracker that holds your entire portfolio: NSE and BSE stocks priced live with GOOGLEFINANCE, mutual fund NAVs pulled from AMFI and mfapi.in, and FDs, PPF, EPF and SGBs tracked alongside. You will build a clean transaction ledger from your Zerodha tradebook and CAMS or KFintech CAS, compute FIFO cost, realised and unrealised P&L, and XIRR the right way, then benchmark against the Nifty 50 TRI. Finally you will automate it with Google Apps Script: daily snapshots, API calls, alerts, and a dashboard with allocation, STCG and LTCG views and rebalancing flags. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors and salaried professionals who want a tracker they fully understand and control.
- Design a tracker around a transaction ledger instead of a static holdings list
- Pull live NSE and BSE prices, index levels and history with GOOGLEFINANCE and handle its limits
- Fetch mutual fund NAVs from AMFI and mfapi.in and track FDs, PPF, EPF and SGBs in the same sheet
Case Study: Bajaj Finance, Evaluating a High Growth NBFC
Bajaj Finance grew from a captive two-wheeler financier into one of the largest and most richly valued lenders on the NSE, compounding its loan book at a pace few Indian financial companies have matched. This case study takes the business apart: how an NBFC borrows, lends and earns a spread, how zero-cost EMIs at consumer durable counters built a customer franchise of tens of millions, and how that franchise was turned into a cross-sell machine across personal loans, mortgages, SME and gold loans. Then it reads the numbers the way a lender should be read: AUM growth, cost of funds, NIM, Stage 2 and Stage 3 assets, credit cost, ROA, ROE and leverage. It walks through the shocks the company absorbed, from demonetisation and the IL&FS liquidity crisis to COVID and the 2023 RBI action on its digital lending products, and closes with how to value a lender on price to book and a checklist you can apply to any high-growth NBFC using annual reports and screener.in.
- How an NBFC makes money, and how it differs from a bank in funding, regulation and risk
- How zero-cost EMI financing built Bajaj Finance's customer franchise and cross-sell engine
- How to read AUM growth, cost of funds, NIM and operating expenses for a lender
Case Study: Bhushan Steel, Insolvency and Resolution Under IBC
Bhushan Steel borrowed its way into becoming one of India's largest secondary steel producers, then collapsed under more than 56,000 crore rupees of claims and became one of the twelve accounts RBI ordered banks to drag to the National Company Law Tribunal in 2017. Within a year, Tata Steel had bought it through the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, lenders had recovered roughly 63 percent of their admitted claims, and the promoters had been locked out by the new Section 29A. This case study rebuilds the whole arc: the balance sheet red flags that were visible years in advance, the broken recovery system IBC replaced, the CIRP process step by step, the bidding war with JSW Steel, what actually happened to lenders, operational creditors and public shareholders, and the fraud investigation that followed. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNIs who want to read insolvency situations on NSE and BSE with clear eyes instead of chasing them.
- Spot the balance sheet warning signs in Bhushan Steel's annual reports years before default: interest cover, capital work in progress, debt to EBITDA and related party flows
- Explain why SICA, BIFR, DRTs, SARFAESI and CDR failed to resolve bad loans, and what RBI's Asset Quality Review and the dirty dozen list changed
- Walk through the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process from NCLT admission to plan approval, including the moratorium, the resolution professional and Committee of Creditors voting
Case Study: DHFL, Forensic Red Flags Before the Collapse
A forensic case study of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation, the AAA-rated housing finance company that went from a ₹690 stock and a ₹1 lakh crore loan book in 2018 to default, RBI supersession, and the first financial firm ever resolved under the IBC. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who want to learn how to see the next DHFL before the rating agencies do. Works through the annual reports, quarterly disclosures, shareholding patterns, auditor reports, bond yields, and mutual fund holdings that were public before the collapse, and shows which red flags were visible, which were hidden, and what each one should have made you do. Covers the asset liability mismatch, developer loans dressed up as retail, shell company lending, related party and circular funding, the fictitious Bandra branch, auditor and rating agency lag, the September 2018 crash, the June 2019 default, and the Piramal resolution. Ends with a reusable NBFC and HFC forensic checklist applied to a live-style example using Screener.in and exchange filings.
Case Study: DMart's IPO and Consistent Compounding Story
Avenue Supermarts (DMart) is one of the few Indian IPOs that lived up to the hype and kept compounding for years after. This case study walks through the business before it listed, how the IPO was priced and why it popped on debut, what actually made the growth sustainable, and what a retail investor can realistically take away from the story without falling for hindsight bias.
- How DMart's supermarket business model actually made money
- How the DMart IPO was priced and why it was oversubscribed
- What a large listing-day pop does and doesn't tell you as an investor
Case Study: Dr Reddy's Labs, Navigating Regulatory Risk in Pharma
Indian pharma stocks can look cheap and steady for years, then lose a fifth of their value on a single regulatory announcement. Dr Reddy's Laboratories is the clearest case study of that risk on NSE. This course starts with how a Hyderabad generic drug maker built a business spanning APIs, US generics and branded emerging markets, and how the USFDA inspection system of Form 483s, warning letters and import alerts works. It then walks through the November 2015 warning letter covering three plants, the share price reaction and the multi-year remediation. From there it widens the lens to patent litigation and at-risk launches, anti-corruption compliance, and the revenue concentration created by a single blockbuster generic. The final chapters turn all of this into a practical investor toolkit: where regulatory signals hide in an annual report, how to value a pharma stock using scenarios instead of a single number, and a checklist you can run on screener.in before buying any Indian pharma company.
- How an Indian generic pharma company earns money across APIs, US generics and branded markets
- What Form 483s, warning letters, import alerts and EIRs mean, and how serious each one is
- How the 2015 warning letter hit Dr Reddy's plants, earnings and share price, and how the recovery played out
Case Study: Future Group's Debt Spiral and Governance Failures
An advanced case study that reconstructs the collapse of Kishore Biyani's Future Group from the investor's chair. You will trace how a retail empire built on Big Bazaar and Pantaloons was financed with escalating debt, promoter pledges and a web of listed group companies, why the Amazon and Reliance transactions of 2019 to 2022 turned into a courtroom war, and how the default, the failed one-time restructuring and the insolvency process wiped out equity holders. Every chapter converts the story into tools: leverage ratios that lease accounting hides, pledge disclosures on NSE and BSE, related party tests, and a governance checklist you can run on any promoter-led company on screener.in today.
- How Future Group grew from one Pantaloons store to over 1,500 outlets and why that growth was financed almost entirely with borrowed money
- How to compute true leverage for a retailer once Ind AS 116 lease liabilities, group guarantees and asset-holding companies are put back on the balance sheet
- How promoter share pledges work, where to find them in NSE and BSE disclosures, and why pledge invocations in 2019 and 2020 marked the point of no return
Case Study: HDFC Bank Bulk Deal Activity Around Key Events
An event-by-event study of how large money moved in and out of HDFC Bank, India's most widely held private bank and one of the heaviest weights in the Nifty 50. Start with SEBI's rules for bulk and block deals and discover why the 0.5% bulk deal threshold almost never triggers for a stock this large, so the real footprints sit in block deal windows, FII and DII flow data and quarterly shareholding patterns. Then walk through the HDFC merger, the January 2024 results sell-off, LIC's approval to go up to 9.99% and MSCI's foreign inclusion factor changes, reading the NSE and BSE disclosures around each one. Finish with a repeatable playbook and checklist for studying large-deal activity around events in any Indian large cap.
- Tell bulk deals, block deals and ordinary large trades apart using SEBI's definitions and disclosure rules
- Explain why mega caps like HDFC Bank rarely appear in bulk deal data and where their large trades show up instead
- Pull and read bulk deal, block deal, FII/DII and shareholding data from NSE, BSE and screener.in
Case Study: HDFC Bank, A Blue Chip Balance Sheet Breakdown
HDFC Bank is the stock every Indian investor is told to own, but few can explain what its balance sheet is actually telling them. This case study takes HDFC Bank as a working example and walks through what makes a stock a genuine blue chip, where to pull real financials from (annual report, screener.in, NSE filings), why a bank's balance sheet reads nothing like a manufacturing company's, and how to judge asset quality, profitability, and efficiency using the bank's own reported numbers. Built for anyone who has HDFC Bank in their portfolio, or is considering it, and wants to move past the brand name to the numbers underneath.
- Why HDFC Bank counts as a blue chip, and what that label actually requires
- Where to pull a bank's real financials from: annual report, screener.in, and NSE filings
- Why a bank's balance sheet reads nothing like a manufacturing company's
Case Study: HDFC Twins Merger, Understanding Deal Structuring
In April 2022, HDFC Ltd announced it would merge into HDFC Bank, the lender it had founded and still part-owned. Fifteen months and a long list of approvals later, the combined entity became one of the heaviest stocks on the Nifty 50. This case study takes the deal apart the way an investor should: why a profitable mortgage lender chose to give up its independence, how the two-step amalgamation and the 42 for 25 share swap were structured, what happened to the cross holding and to HDFC Life, HDFC AMC and HDFC Ergo, and which regulatory costs (CRR, SLR, priority sector lending) came attached. Then it looks at the market's verdict: index weight changes, passive flows, the post-merger credit-deposit ratio problem and the stock's performance. Built for investors who hold either stock in a portfolio or a mutual fund and want a framework to judge any Indian merger with real numbers.
- Why a large, profitable NBFC would choose to merge into a bank, and the regulatory forces behind that choice
- How a two-step amalgamation works and why the subsidiaries were merged first
- How to read and sanity check a share swap ratio like 42 HDFC Bank shares for every 25 HDFC Ltd shares
Case Study: IL&FS Crisis and Its Systemic Ripple Effects
A forensic walkthrough of the Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services collapse of 2018, the default that turned a single lender's balance sheet problem into a system-wide credit freeze. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNIs, the course dissects how a company owned by LIC, SBI, HDFC and ORIX grew into a web of more than 300 entities, funded long-gestation infrastructure projects with short-term borrowing, and kept a AAA rating until weeks before it defaulted. It then traces the contagion: the commercial paper market seizing up, debt mutual funds marking down holdings, the DHFL sell-off on NSE, and the second-order damage that ran through Reliance Capital and the Franklin Templeton wind-up. It closes with the regulatory response from RBI, SEBI and the government, and practical frameworks for stress-testing NBFC stocks and debt funds in your own portfolio.
- Explain how IL&FS's ownership, group structure and funding model created a hidden asset-liability mismatch
- Read the warning signs in IL&FS's own annual reports and rating rationales that were visible before the 2018 defaults
- Trace how one default spread through the commercial paper market, debt mutual funds and listed NBFC stocks
Case Study: Jet Airways, Reading Warning Signs of Bankruptcy
Jet Airways grounded its fleet in April 2019 and was ordered into liquidation by the Supreme Court in November 2024, leaving shareholders with nothing. This case study traces the airline from its rise under Naresh Goyal through the Air Sahara deal, the Etihad stake, years of negative net worth, deferred results, salary delays and rating downgrades, to the failed lender rescue and the IBC process. It then turns every warning sign into a practical toolkit, including the Altman Z-Score, a Screener.in distress screen and a red-flag checklist you can run on any turnaround story on NSE or BSE.
- Why airline economics make carriers structurally prone to distress
- How to read negative net worth, weak interest coverage and cash burn in an annual report
- What deferred results, salary delays and rating downgrades signal about solvency
Case Study: Nykaa IPO and New Age Company Valuations
Nykaa's 2021 IPO was one of the loudest listings in Indian market history, and one of the hardest for retail investors to value using the rules that work for a bank or an FMCG company. This case study walks through the IPO itself, why traditional valuation metrics broke down for a company built on GMV and take rate instead of steady profit, and what that means for how you read any new-age listing that comes next.
- What Nykaa's business model actually is, and why it listed the way it did
- Why P/E and other traditional ratios don't work for loss-making or thin-margin new-age companies
- How to read GMV, take rate, and unit economics like an investor instead of a headline reader
Case Study: PVR Inox Merger, Consolidation in a Struggling Sector
An India-first case study of the 2022 to 2023 merger of PVR and INOX Leisure into PVR INOX Ltd, the country's largest multiplex operator. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who want to judge a listed company going through a merger. Covers multiplex unit economics, the COVID shutdown that forced the deal, the all-stock swap ratio, the approval path through SEBI, the exchanges and NCLT, Ind AS 116 lease accounting, promised versus delivered synergies, content-driven revenue swings, screen rationalisation, and the OTT threat. Ends with a reusable checklist for mergers in struggling sectors and a hands-on analysis of the PVR INOX stock on screener.in.
- Break down how a multiplex earns money from tickets, food and beverages, and advertising, and read ATP, SPH and occupancy
- Explain why a near-zero revenue year pushed two rivals with different playbooks into a merger
- Work out what a 3:10 share swap means for a shareholder of each company
Case Study: Paytm's Listing Day Crash and Valuation Lessons
Paytm's November 2021 listing remains the sharpest lesson Indian retail investors have had in what happens when hype outruns valuation. This case study walks through the IPO, the crash, and the year that followed, then uses that real sequence of events to teach you how to evaluate any IPO on its numbers instead of its narrative.
- What actually happened to Paytm's stock on listing day and in the months after, in sequence
- How Paytm was valued going into the IPO, and why that valuation was hard to defend against Indian financial peers
- How to read the risk factors and financials in a red herring prospectus instead of skimming the summary
Case Study: Suzlon Energy, A Cautionary Tale for Retail Investors
Suzlon Energy went from India's most hyped wind energy IPO to a textbook case of shareholder wealth destruction. This course walks through exactly what happened, chapter by chapter: the debt-fuelled global expansion, the promoter pledging, the repeated equity dilution, and the governance signals that were visible all along. You will learn to read the same balance sheet ratios, pledging disclosures and auditor notes that flagged trouble years before the stock collapsed, so you can spot the same pattern in any stock before you invest in it.
- How to read debt-to-equity and interest coverage ratios like a skeptic, not a cheerleader
- What promoter share pledging signals about a company's real financial health
- How repeated FCCB conversions and rights issues dilute retail shareholders over time
Case Study: Tata Motors DVR vs Ordinary Shares
A real Indian case study in owning the same company through two different share classes. Tata Motors traded both ordinary shares and DVR (Differential Voting Rights) shares on the NSE and BSE for over a decade, at a persistent price gap, until a 2023 scheme of arrangement folded DVR shares into ordinary equity for good. This course walks through why DVR shares existed, what investors actually gave up and gained by holding them, why the discount never closed, and what the eventual merger teaches about pricing minority rights in a listed company.
- What Differential Voting Rights (DVR) shares are and why companies issue them
- Why Tata Motors issued DVR shares in 2008 and what holders received in exchange for reduced voting rights
- Why Tata Motors DVR shares traded at a persistent discount to ordinary shares, and why voting rights alone don't explain it
Case Study: The IRCTC IPO and Listing Day Pop
IRCTC's October 2019 IPO listed at more than double its issue price and became the textbook example every Indian retail investor references when they talk about IPO pops. This case study walks through how IPOs actually work, what made IRCTC's specific IPO so oversubscribed, what happened on listing day, and the decisions retail investors had to make in the hours and weeks after. It is built to leave you able to evaluate the next hyped IPO on your own terms instead of on hype.
- How an IPO is priced, subscribed, and allotted in India, from price band to listing
- Why IRCTC's IPO specifically attracted such heavy retail and QIB demand
- What actually happened on IRCTC's listing day, and why the stock moved the way it did
Case Study: Valuing a Real Indian Corporate Bond Using Yield to Maturity
A hands-on case study that takes one real, exchange-listed Indian corporate bond and values it end to end. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who know what YTM is and now want to apply it to an actual NCD: reading the term sheet, finding the bond on NSE and BSE, building the exact cash flow schedule with SEBI's day count rules, solving for YTM from the market price in Excel, and judging whether the yield is fair against G-Secs, FDs, and debt funds after tax. Every step is worked in INR with a reusable worksheet at the end.
- Read an NCD's shelf prospectus and term sheet and pull out every number that drives valuation
- Locate a listed bond on NSE and BSE by ISIN and judge whether its quote is tradeable
- Build the bond's exact cash flow schedule using record dates and SEBI's actual/actual day count
Case Study: Vodafone Idea, Investing in a Distressed Stock
Vodafone Idea went from a market-leading merger to India's most-watched distressed stock, an AGR bill in the tens of thousands of crores, a government-owned stake, and a share price that retail investors keep buying anyway. This case study walks through what actually happened to Vi and uses it to teach a repeatable framework for evaluating any distressed stock, so you can tell a genuine turnaround candidate from a story that just feels cheap.
- How the Idea Cellular-Vodafone India merger set up Vi's current crisis
- What the AGR dues judgment actually did to Vi's balance sheet
- How to read debt, equity dilution and government stakes as distress signals
Case Study: Yes Bank Crisis, What Retail Investors Should Have Seen
Yes Bank went from a Nifty favourite to a boardroom-ordered moratorium in under four years, wiping out retail shareholders and AT1 bondholders along the way. This case study walks through what the bank actually was, the governance and asset-quality warning signs that were visible years before the collapse, how the RBI-led rescue actually worked, and what any retail investor can apply from this story to their own portfolio decisions today.
- Why Yes Bank was a retail investor favourite before its collapse
- How to read an RBI divergence report and why it matters
- How promoter share pledging signals financial stress
Case Study: Zee Entertainment, Governance Failure and Investor Impact
An intermediate case study that follows Zee Entertainment Enterprises from India's first private Hindi entertainment network to one of the NSE's most closely watched governance failures. You will trace how Essel Group's infrastructure debt was financed against ZEEL shares, why the stock fell sharply in January 2019, how the promoter stake shrank from over 40 percent to low single digits, what the Yes Bank letter of comfort and related party flows revealed, how Invesco's revolt, SEBI's 2023 interim order and Sony's January 2024 exit played out, and what all of it cost shareholders and mutual fund investors. Every chapter ends in a tool you can apply to any promoter-led company using NSE and BSE filings and screener.in.
- How Zee's advertising and subscription model generated cash, and how that cash became exposed to the wider Essel Group
- How promoter share pledges work, where to find them in NSE and BSE disclosures, and why the January 2019 fall followed from them
- How a letter of comfort, related party transactions and independent director resignations signal money leaving a listed company
Case Study: Zomato IPO, Evaluating a Loss Making Business
A worked case study on Zomato's 2021 IPO: why a loss-making company could list at a premium, how to read its financials without a P/E ratio to lean on, how the market valued it, and what happened to the stock afterward. Built for a first-time investor deciding how to evaluate the next new-age IPO that comes along.
- Why Zomato's IPO was controversial and what made it different from a traditional listing
- How IPO mechanics work in India, from DRHP to listing day
- How to read a loss-making company's P&L and unit economics instead of just its bottom line
Circuit Breakers, Price Bands, and Market Safeguards
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to the safety mechanisms that stop the stock market, and individual stocks, from free-falling or spiking out of control. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have seen a red 'lower circuit' banner on their Zerodha screen and wondered what it actually means. Covers market-wide circuit breakers on the Nifty and Sensex, stock-specific price bands, real Indian episodes like the March 2020 halt, and SEBI's additional surveillance frameworks (ASM and GSM), with practical guidance on how to check circuit limits on Zerodha and Screener.in and avoid getting stuck on the wrong side of one.
- Understand why markets use circuit breakers and price bands
- Learn how market-wide breakers and stock-specific bands work
- Trade smart around circuit halts and price limits
Contract Notes, Settlement Cycles, and KYC Essentials
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to the paperwork and plumbing behind every trade you place. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened a Zerodha or Groww account, received a contract note by email, and never quite understood what it says or when their shares and money actually arrive. Covers SEBI's KYC rules and how to keep your record valid, how to read a contract note line by line and check every charge from brokerage to STT and stamp duty, how T+1 settlement moves shares between the exchange, the clearing corporation, and your CDSL or NSDL demat account, and what to do when a delivery is short, a ledger looks wrong, or a broker will not respond.
Equity Basics: Shares, Dividends, Splits, and Corporate Actions
A ground-up, India-specific guide to what actually happens when you buy a share and hold it. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened a Zerodha or similar trading account but never had anyone explain what a share really represents, where it physically lives, why a dividend lands in your bank account on some random Tuesday, or why your holding suddenly shows double the shares at half the price overnight. Covers ownership and share types, NSDL and CDSL depositories, reading your demat and contract note, how dividends are declared and taxed, and how stock splits and bonus issues actually work, using real NSE and BSE examples, screener.in data, and SEBI rules throughout.
- What actually happens, legally and financially, when you buy and hold a share
- How dividends, bonus issues, and stock splits affect what you actually hold
- How to read your own demat statement and shareholding pattern like an analyst
Getting Started with Zerodha Kite: Account Setup to First Trade
A practical, no-jargon walkthrough for anyone opening their first demat and trading account with Zerodha. Covers why you need an account, KYC and documents, setting up Kite, navigating the platform, and placing and exiting your first trade, with the common beginner mistakes to avoid along the way.
- Why you need a demat and trading account, and how Zerodha fits in
- How to complete KYC and open a Zerodha account without errors
- How to link your bank account and fund your trading account
Getting Started: Demat, Trading Accounts, and Broker Infrastructure
A practical, ground-up walkthrough of the account infrastructure that sits behind every trade you place: how your demat, trading, and bank accounts actually connect, how to choose and verify a broker, and how account types, KYC, and authorizations work in practice. Built for first-time demat holders, students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want more than a surface-level comparison before they open an account.
- How your demat, trading, and bank accounts link together to settle a trade
- What a Depository Participant does, and how CDSL and NSDL actually hold your shares
- The real difference between full-service and discount brokers, beyond the brokerage number
Groww App Walkthrough: Investing in Stocks and Mutual Funds
A practical, screen-by-screen guide to using Groww as your first stockbroker and mutual fund platform. Covers opening and verifying your account, finding your way around the app, placing your first stock trade, and starting your first SIP, so nothing on the platform feels unfamiliar.
- How to open and verify a Groww demat and trading account, including KYC
- How to navigate the Groww app and web dashboard without getting lost
- How to add funds and link your bank account correctly
Investor Psychology and Behavioral Finance Foundations
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to the mental traps that quietly cost retail investors money. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees, this course explains why smart, well-informed people still buy high, sell low, chase WhatsApp tips, and panic during a crash. Covers the core biases behind bad investing decisions, how they show up specifically in the Indian market (IPO frenzy, SIP discipline, Diwali bonus spending, the 2020 Covid crash), and practical, rules-based ways to protect yourself from your own brain.
- Discover why the brain struggles with investing decisions
- Recognize biases and behavioral traps in Indian markets
- Build discipline across life stages to debias decisions
Learning Dividend Investing Through ITC's History
Dividend investing is easiest to understand through a real company's real history, not abstract formulas. This course walks through ITC's decades-long dividend record, from what a dividend actually is, to why ITC's stock price stagnated for years even as its dividends kept growing, to how you can apply the same evaluation checklist to any dividend stock on the NSE or BSE.
- What a dividend is, and how it differs from a capital gain
- How to read a company's dividend history and compute yield and payout ratio
- Why a stock's price can stagnate even while its dividends keep rising
Market Cycles: Bull Markets, Bear Markets, and Corrections
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to how stock markets actually move over time: the recurring rhythm of bull runs, corrections, and bear markets. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have watched the Nifty and Sensex swing wildly and want to understand what a bull market, a correction, and a bear market actually mean, how to tell them apart, and what history (2008, 2020, and other real Indian episodes) teaches about staying invested through the cycle instead of panicking at the wrong moment. Uses real NSE and BSE index data, Indian case studies, and practical guidance for a Zerodha-era retail investor throughout.
- Define what a market cycle actually looks like
- Spot the anatomy and traps of bull markets
- Recognize bear markets and corrections as they unfold
Masterclass: Behavioral Edge, How Top Investors Manage Emotion
A masterclass for serious Indian investors who already know the list of biases and now want to beat them in practice. Instead of cataloguing errors, this course studies how top investors actually manage emotion: how they hold conviction through deep drawdowns, trim or ride winners, admit mistakes quickly, and stay still when every screen is flashing red. It draws on Buffett, Munger, Howard Marks, Soros, Druckenmiller, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Radhakishan Damani, and Parag Parikh, then converts their habits into a working behavioral operating system: decision journals, pre-mortems, written kill criteria, position sizing as emotional risk control, and a disciplined information diet. Indian crisis case studies from 2008, the 2018 small-cap collapse, March 2020, and the F&O and SME IPO mania stress-test the framework, and the final chapter covers managing family, client, and institutional emotion. Closes with a behavioral audit of your own tradebook.
- Measure the behavior gap between what your investments earned and what you actually earned
- Judge decisions by process quality rather than outcomes, and stop learning the wrong lessons from luck
- Hold, trim, add, or exit a position using pre-written rules instead of in-the-moment emotion
Masterclass: Building a Family Office Style Portfolio
A complete family office playbook for serious independent investors, HNI families and portfolio managers in training. You will learn how single, multi and virtual family offices in India think about capital, write an Investment Policy Statement, map the full family balance sheet, and set allocations using the three-bucket framework. The course covers building a public market core across direct equity, mutual funds, PMS, bonds and global funds under LRS, adding a satellite of AIFs, private credit, unlisted shares, REITs, InvITs and gold, and managing family-level risks such as promoter concentration and liquidity crunches. It closes with holding structures (HUF, private trusts, LLPs), asset location, succession planning, manager due diligence, performance reporting, family governance, and two end-to-end case studies at INR 50 crore and INR 5 crore.
Masterclass: Institutional Grade Risk Management for Individual Investors
A process-first masterclass that brings the risk discipline of fund houses and trading desks to the individual Indian investor. Built for serious independent investors, HNIs, and portfolio managers in training, it covers how institutions define and measure risk, how to write an Investment Policy Statement, set a risk budget, size positions and enforce concentration limits, manage liquidity, leverage, and counterparty risk, stress test a portfolio against real Indian crises like 2008, the 2013 taper tantrum, and the 2020 COVID crash, hedge with Nifty options, gold, and government bonds, and run a written risk governance process with a personal dashboard and breach protocol. Every concept is applied to NSE and BSE portfolios in INR, with real Indian case studies including Karvy and Franklin Templeton.
Masterclass: Reading Between the Lines of Annual Reports Like a Fund Manager
A deep, document-first masterclass on reading an Indian annual report the way a fund manager does. Learn how the report is built under the Companies Act 2013 and SEBI LODR, why professionals read it back to front, and how a 90-minute triage decides whether the other 300 pages deserve your time. Treat the chairman's letter and MD&A as data by scoring five years of promises and diffing the language year on year. Go deep into the notes to accounts: accounting policy changes, Ind AS 115 revenue recognition, recurring one-offs, capital work in progress, Ind AS 116 leases, provisions and contingent liabilities. Decode the auditor's pages, including key audit matters and CARO 2020, then map money flowing through related parties, subsidiaries in Form AOC-1, and loans and guarantees. Read the directors' report, the corporate governance report, remuneration disclosures and the BRSR for what they reveal by accident. Run capital allocation forensics across five years of reports, then finish with a 30-point annual report scorecard, two full case study reads and a template for turning an annual report into an investment memo.
- Triage any Indian annual report in 90 minutes and know exactly which pages, notes and schedules deserve a deep read
- Extract hidden risks from the notes to accounts, auditor's report, CARO remarks and related party disclosures before they show up in the share price
- Compare five years of annual reports to score management promises, capital allocation and governance, and turn the findings into an investment memo
Masterclass: Sector Specialization, Becoming an Expert in One Industry
A masterclass for serious independent investors, HNIs and portfolio managers in training who want to stop being generalists and build real expertise in one Indian industry. Learn how to choose a sector that fits your circle of competence and temperament, then map it properly: the value chain, the profit pools, the unit economics and the handful of KPIs that explain every company in it. Build a 90-day immersion plan using annual reports, DRHPs, concall transcripts and India's official sector data from SIAM, DGCA, TRAI, CEA and the RBI. Go beyond the desk with scuttlebutt through dealers, distributors and customers, while staying firmly on the right side of SEBI's insider trading rules. Then build driver-based sector models, use the valuation metrics specialists actually rely on, normalise for the cycle, and rank a peer set on screener.in. Finish with two full worked case studies in Indian cement and specialty chemicals, and a system for keeping your edge sharp quarter after quarter.
- Choose a sector deliberately and map its value chain, profit pools and core KPIs
- Run a structured immersion using Indian sector data, filings and concalls, plus compliant primary research
- Build driver-based models and sector-specific valuations that expose where consensus is wrong
Mastering Zerodha Console for Portfolio Tracking
A hands-on walkthrough of Zerodha Console, the reporting and portfolio-tracking dashboard that sits behind every Zerodha demat account. Written for first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, retirees, and students who already have a Zerodha account and want to actually understand what Console is showing them, rather than just glancing at a profit or loss number. Covers reading Holdings correctly, the difference between Positions and Holdings, tracking mutual funds through Coin, how corporate actions like bonuses and splits show up in your reports, and using the Tax P&L report at return-filing time. No prior trading or accounting background assumed.
- Navigate Console's dashboard and find the report you need without hunting around
- Read Holdings correctly: invested value, current value, day change, and overall returns
- Tell Positions and Holdings apart, and know which one to check for what
Order Types and Trade Execution for Beginners
A ground-up guide to placing orders that do what you intend. Covers how exchanges match trades, the difference between market and limit orders, stop-loss mechanics, bracket and cover orders, and the validity rules that decide whether your order survives the day.
- How the exchange order book matches buyers and sellers by price-time priority
- How to read the 5-level market depth window before placing an order
- When to use a market order versus a limit order, and what each risks
Portfolio Rebalancing: When and How to Do It
A practical, India-specific guide to portfolio rebalancing for investors who already hold a mix of equity, mutual funds, and other assets. Covers why portfolios drift from their target allocation, how to set calendar-based and threshold-based rebalancing rules, and how to actually execute a rebalance while accounting for STCG, LTCG, and exit loads on Indian mutual funds and stocks. Uses real Indian examples and walks through rebalancing on Zerodha Coin and Console.
- Understand portfolio drift and why rebalancing matters
- Build trigger rules for when to rebalance
- Learn rebalancing mechanics and costs in Indian markets
Practice Drills: Analyzing Cash Flow Quality Across Quarters
A practice-first companion to Reading Cash Flow Statements in Depth. You already know what operating, investing, and financing cash flows are; this course makes you use them. Working with NSE and BSE results filings, Screener.in data, and a tracker you build yourself, you will drill cash conversion ratios, working capital swings, and free cash flow period by period, learn to separate normal seasonality from genuine deterioration, and catch the one-off tricks that make a single period's cash flow look better than the business really is. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who want a repeatable way to judge earnings quality before they buy, or before they trust a fund that does.
- Pull half-yearly and annual cash flow data from NSE, BSE and Screener.in filings, and derive the periods companies do not report directly
- Calculate and track CFO to EBITDA, CFO to PAT, and free cash flow across consecutive periods
- Read receivable, inventory and payable day swings between half-years and explain what moved cash
Practice Drills: Analyzing Promoter Pledge Disclosures
A practice-first course built around the actual documents. You already know what promoter pledging is and why it can go wrong; here you work the filings themselves. You pull every pledge related disclosure for a stock from NSE, BSE and screener.in, then decode SAST Regulation 31 encumbrance disclosures, release and invocation filings, the encumbrance columns of the quarterly shareholding pattern, the reasons-for-encumbrance disclosure and non-disposal undertakings. Then you do the numbers: aggregate pledges across promoter group entities, build a quarterly pledge trend, estimate the share price at which lenders start calling margin, and test whether the market could absorb a forced sale. The final chapter trains judgment: reconciling numbers that disagree across filings, classifying sample disclosures as routine or distress, and a capstone review of one sample company end to end. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNI investors who hold mid and small caps where pledge risk actually bites.
- Locate every pledge, release, invocation and encumbrance filing for a listed Indian company on NSE, BSE and screener.in
- Read a SAST Regulation 31 encumbrance disclosure field by field and tell creation, release and invocation apart
- Extract pledged and encumbered holdings from the quarterly shareholding pattern and reconcile them with event disclosures
Practice Drills: Backtesting a Contrarian Sector Rotation Strategy
An advanced hands-on drill for building, stress-testing, and implementing a contrarian sector rotation strategy on Nifty sectoral indices. You will write a precise rulebook, assemble clean TRI data from niftyindices.com, code a monthly rotation backtest in Python without lookahead bias, net out Indian costs and capital gains tax, and then try hard to break your own result before a single rupee goes in.
- How mean reversion across Nifty sectoral indices can be turned into a testable contrarian rule
- How to source and clean sectoral TRI data while handling launch dates and survivorship
- How to rank sectors and generate monthly signals in Python without lookahead bias
Practice Drills: Building a Factor Based Stock Screen
A practice-first course for investors who already know what factors are and now want to build a working multi-factor screen. You will define a clean NSE universe, turn raw ratios into comparable factor scores, build value, quality, momentum and low-volatility scores one drill at a time, combine them into a composite rank, and pressure-test the result against NSE factor indices, turnover and Indian transaction costs and taxes.
- How to define a tradeable NSE universe free of liquidity and survivorship traps
- How to convert raw ratios into percentile ranks and z-scores so factors can be compared
- How to build value, quality, momentum and low-volatility scores step by step
Practice Drills: Building a Sample Diversified Portfolio
A practice-first course for anyone who has read about diversification but never actually built a portfolio. Working through a sample investor profile, you will run the same drills a first-time investor should run before putting real money to work: setting a risk and goal profile, splitting money across equity, debt, and gold, choosing funds and stocks without overlap, sizing positions so no single bet can hurt too much, and stress-testing the mix against a market correction. Every drill uses Indian tools and context: NSE, BSE, Nifty 50 weights, screener.in-style research, and Zerodha-style demat statements. Built for college students, first-time demat account holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want a repeatable checklist, not just theory.
- Define a sample investor profile by goal, time horizon, and risk appetite before allocating a single rupee
- Split a portfolio across equity, debt, and gold using a simple allocation framework
- Pick large cap, mid cap, and small cap mutual funds and check them for overlap before buying
Practice Drills: Building a Sector Comparison Scorecard
A drill course for investors who already know that a bank, an IT exporter and a cement maker cannot be judged on the same yardstick, and now want a repeatable way to compare companies inside one sector. You will pick a fair peer set, choose the metrics that actually drive each sector, pull and clean the data from screener.in and annual reports, convert raw numbers into scores, weight them honestly, and then build full scorecards for Indian IT services, private sector banks, FMCG and cement. The course closes by stress-testing your weights and turning the final scores into a research watchlist, not a buy list.
- Build a fair peer set for any NSE-listed sector and defend every inclusion and exclusion
- Choose the handful of metrics that genuinely drive returns in IT, banking, FMCG and cement
- Pull, clean and normalise peer data from screener.in and annual reports
Practice Drills: Calculating Capital Gains Tax on Sample Trades
A hands-on practice course for investors who already know the basic rules of capital gains tax and want to get fast and accurate at applying them. Each lesson works through sample trades drawn from real NSE and BSE scenarios, building from single delivery trades to netting gains and losses across a full financial year.
- How to classify a trade as short-term or long-term and apply the correct tax rate
- How to compute cost basis correctly, including STT and brokerage adjustments
- How the grandfathering clause changes the taxable gain on pre-2018 holdings
Practice Drills: Calculating P/E, P/B, and Dividend Yield
A practice-first companion to the stock market basics track. Instead of re-explaining what P/E, P/B, and dividend yield mean, this course puts you through real calculation drills using actual Indian company numbers, so you can compute and sanity-check these ratios yourself instead of just reading them off screener.in.
- Calculate trailing and forward P/E from a company's EPS
- Work out book value per share and the P/B ratio
- Calculate dividend yield and spot when a high yield is a trap
Practice Drills: Calculating Yield to Maturity and Duration on Sample Bonds
A drill-first course for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who already know the theory of bond pricing and now want to compute yield to maturity and duration quickly and correctly. Every drill uses sample bonds modelled on real Indian instruments: G-Secs and T-Bills from RBI Retail Direct, SDLs, and listed corporate bonds on NSE and BSE. You work each problem by hand first, then check it in Excel or Google Sheets, then apply it to a real decision such as choosing between two bonds before an RBI policy meeting or stress-testing a portfolio against a rate shock.
- Price a fixed-coupon bond from its cash flows and split the dirty price into clean price and accrued interest
- Solve for YTM by trial and error, by the approximation formula, and with the YIELD and RATE functions in a spreadsheet
- Compute yield to call and yield to worst on callable corporate bonds and pick the right one to quote
Practice Drills: Constructing a Concentrated High Conviction Portfolio
A hands-on drill course for experienced investors who already understand the case for concentration and now need to execute it without blowing up. You will measure how much diversification your current portfolio actually buys, size positions with a half-Kelly framework using realistic win and loss estimates, and run the temperament and capital tests honestly. Then build conviction the hard way: write a one-page thesis on an NSE stock, reverse-engineer what the current price already assumes, and set measurable kill criteria before you buy. Construct a 12-stock book by conviction tiers, hunt down correlation traps and hidden factor bets, and plan a staggered entry. Finish by running a quarterly thesis review, making trim, add and exit decisions on a drifted portfolio, pricing the LTCG, STCG and cost drag of churn, stress-testing the book against March 2020 and 2008, and building a Rs 25 lakh concentrated portfolio end to end. Every drill uses Indian companies, NSE and BSE data, and INR figures.
- Measure the effective number of stocks in a portfolio and see how much diversification you really hold
- Size positions with half-Kelly and conviction tiers instead of equal weights
- Write a one-page thesis, run a reverse DCF and set measurable kill criteria before buying
Practice Drills: Constructing a Dividend Income Portfolio
A hands-on drill course for investors who already understand dividend yield, payout ratio and dividend traps, and now need to build an income portfolio end to end. You will convert a monthly income goal into a required corpus and yield, run a dividend screen on Screener.in, stress-test each candidate's payout against free cash flow, debt and earnings, size positions under sector and single-stock caps, calculate post-tax income at your slab rate after TDS, and practise the annual review that decides what to trim, top up or exit. Every drill uses Indian companies, NSE and BSE data, and INR figures.
- Convert a monthly income target into the corpus and portfolio yield you actually need, after tax
- Build and refine a dividend screen on Screener.in and cut a raw list down to a shortlist
- Test whether a dividend is sustainable using payout ratio, free cash flow cover and debt
Practice Drills: Evaluating a Merger or Demerger Announcement
A practice-first companion to Understanding Mergers, Acquisitions, and Demergers. You already know what a scheme of arrangement, a swap ratio, and an open offer are; this course makes you work them. Starting from the actual exchange filings on BSE and NSE, you will drill swap ratio conversions, merger arbitrage spreads, EPS accretion and dilution, open offer acceptance ratios, demerger entitlements, and cost of acquisition splits, then learn to read valuation reports and spot deals that quietly shortchange minority shareholders. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who hold stocks that show up in deal headlines and want a repeatable way to evaluate the announcement before the market does it for them.
- Find the board outcome, scheme document, valuation report, and fairness opinion for any deal on BSE and NSE
- Convert your holding through a swap ratio, including fractional entitlements, and compare swap value with market price
- Calculate a merger arbitrage spread and the market's implied probability of the deal closing
Practice Drills: Interpreting Quarterly Results Announcements
A practice-first companion to How to Read Financial Statements. Instead of more theory, this course puts real quarterly results releases from NSE-listed companies in front of you and drills you through them: revenue, profit, margins, YoY vs QoQ comparisons, and the one-off items that trip up first-time readers, until spotting what actually matters becomes automatic.
- Find a company's quarterly results release on NSE, BSE and screener.in
- Read revenue, net profit and EPS line by line on a real results release
- Tell YoY and QoQ comparisons apart and know which one matters for a given number
Practice Drills: Peer Reviewing an Investment Memo Like a Fund Committee
A hands-on drill course for serious investors who want to judge an investment idea as hard as a fund's investment committee would, whether the memo came from a colleague, an advisor, a newsletter or your own notebook. You will learn what a committee is actually for, build a ten-question review scorecard and triage a memo in ten minutes by finding the one claim the whole thesis rests on. Then stress-test the thesis: separate facts from estimates and hopes, test whether the variant perception is real, and verify every number against annual reports, exchange filings and screener.in. Attack the valuation with a DCF audit, a reverse DCF and a peer-multiple check for cherry-picking. Hunt the risks the memo left out, from promoter pledges to related party transactions, write the bear case it should have written, and test whether the position size fits the conviction and the liquidity. Finish by writing structured review feedback, running a mock committee vote on two competing memos, and peer reviewing a full memo on an NSE midcap end to end. Every drill uses Indian companies, NSE and BSE data, SEBI disclosures and INR figures.
- Review an investment memo with a repeatable ten-question committee scorecard
- Find the load-bearing claim in a thesis and test it first
- Separate verified facts from estimates and hopes, and check every number against primary filings
Practice Drills: Placing Mock Orders, Market vs Limit
A hands-on, drill-based course for anyone who has opened a demat account but never actually placed an order. Walks through the real difference between market and limit orders, how order validity types like Day, IOC, and GTT work, and a step-by-step guided walkthrough of placing both order types on Zerodha Kite. Ends with the mistakes new investors make most often and practice drills to test your judgment on which order type fits a given situation. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want to place their first order with confidence, not guesswork.
- The real difference between a market order and a limit order, and when each one protects you
- How order validity types like Day, IOC, and GTT change what happens to your order
- How to place a market order and a limit order step by step on a broker platform like Zerodha Kite
Practice Drills: Reading Balance Sheets Line by Line
A practice-first companion to How to Read Financial Statements. Instead of more theory, this course puts real balance sheets from NSE-listed companies in front of you and drills you line by line: current assets, fixed assets, current liabilities, borrowings and equity, until spotting what belongs where becomes automatic.
- Sort any balance sheet line into assets, liabilities or equity without hesitating
- Read current assets and current liabilities line by line on a real filing
- Tell current items apart from non-current ones on sight
Practice Drills: Reading Contract Notes and Verifying Charges
A hands-on, India-specific drill set for actually reading the contract note your broker sends you and checking whether every charge on it is correct. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened a Zerodha or Groww contract note PDF, seen a wall of numbers, and had no idea what to check. Walks through every row and charge line, brokerage, STT, exchange transaction charges, stamp duty, GST, and SEBI turnover fees, then puts that knowledge to work verifying real equity delivery, intraday, and full-day contract notes against the broker's own tariff sheet.
Practice Drills: Reading IBC Resolution Filings for Investment Signals
A practice-first companion to the Bhushan Steel IBC case study. You already know how the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process works; this course makes you read the paperwork it produces and act on it. Working with NSE and BSE Regulation 30 disclosures, NCLT orders, IBBI records, resolution professionals' public announcements and CoC-approved plan filings, you will drill what each document reveals about recovery, timeline risk and, above all, what happens to the listed equity. You will learn to separate a stock that is cheap from a stock that is about to be written down to zero, read signals for the acquirer and the lending banks, and avoid the low-float traps that follow a resolution. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNIs who want a repeatable method for reading insolvency situations instead of gambling on them.
- Locate every IBC filing that matters for a listed company across NSE, BSE, NCLT and IBBI, and log it in a case tracker you build yourself
- Read Section 7, 9 and 10 admission orders and pull out the default amount, the petitioner and the signals hidden in the order's reasoning
- Use the public announcement and the list of creditors to size admitted claims against what the business could realistically be worth
Practice Drills: Reading and Summarizing Earnings Call Transcripts
A practice-first companion to Reading Management Commentary and Earnings Call Transcripts. Instead of more theory, this course puts concall transcripts of NSE-listed companies in front of you and drills you through them: pulling every number from the opening remarks, separating firm guidance from mood, tagging analyst questions, scoring management answers, and compressing the whole call into a one-page summary you can compare quarter after quarter.
- Pull a concall transcript from BSE, NSE or screener.in and skim it in ten minutes
- Extract every number and guidance statement from management's opening remarks
- Separate firm guidance from soft commentary and hedge language
Practice Drills: Rebalancing a Sample Portfolio Based on Targets
A hands-on drill course for investors who already hold a mix of equity, debt and gold and want to keep it on target. Every lesson hands you a sample portfolio in INR, a target allocation and a market move, and you work out the exact trades: how much to sell, how much to buy, and whether fresh SIP money can do the job without selling at all. Covers calendar vs threshold triggers, tolerance bands, multi-asset and market-cap sub-allocation, international funds, and the tax, exit load and lot-selection rules that decide whether a rebalance is worth doing. Uses Nifty-linked scenarios, Indian mutual funds, SGBs and Gold ETFs, and execution on Zerodha Coin and Kite.
- Measure how far a portfolio has drifted from its target and turn the gap into exact rupee trades
- Choose between calendar, threshold and hybrid rebalancing rules and apply tolerance bands
- Rebalance with fresh SIP money and redirected inflows before selling anything
Practice Drills: Screening Stocks Using Basic Fundamental Filters
A practice-first course for learners who already understand basic financial statements and ratios. Instead of teaching new theory, this course drills the habit of screening: choosing the right fundamental filters, building queries on screener.in, and running guided screens against real NSE-listed stocks to separate quality names from red flags.
- Which fundamental filters (P/E, ROE, debt-to-equity, sales growth, promoter holding) actually matter and why
- How to build and combine filter queries on screener.in
- How to save, export and iterate on a screen as your criteria change
Practice Drills: Simulating a Family Office Asset Allocation Decision
A simulation course for investors who already know how family offices think and now want to make the call themselves. You are handed the brief for a fictional Indian business family that has just sold part of its company and holds a large, lopsided balance sheet: a concentrated promoter stake, real estate, a pile of new liquidity and three generations with different needs. Working as the family's CIO, you rebuild the total balance sheet, convert family goals into liabilities and cash-flow buckets, and write the Investment Policy Statement. You then measure risk capacity, adjust for the promoter stake and human capital, set liquidity floors and map tax and holding-structure constraints. Next you build capital market assumptions for Indian asset classes on a post-tax, post-fee basis, construct and stress-test candidate portfolios against real Indian drawdowns, size alternatives and global exposure, choose vehicles, plan deployment and write rebalancing and governance rules. You finish by resolving a family disagreement, presenting to the family council and running a full allocation decision on a new brief. All family figures are illustrative; the frameworks are real.
- Rebuild a family's total balance sheet, including promoter stakes, real estate and human capital
- Translate family goals into liabilities, cash-flow buckets and a written Investment Policy Statement
- Separate risk capacity from risk tolerance and set liquidity floors and drawdown limits
Practice Drills: Spotting Red Flags in Annual Reports
A practice-drill course for retail investors who can already read a balance sheet, P&L, and cash flow statement and want to build the sharper skill of spotting trouble in them. You will work through real Indian annual report excerpts and case-style scenarios to catch rising debtors against flat sales, related-party loans, profit that never turns into cash, and auditor notes that quietly say more than they seem to. Built for first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want a repeatable checklist, not just theory.
- Spot revenue quality problems like rising debtors against flat or falling sales
- Recognize related-party transactions and promoter loans that should worry you
- Tell the difference between accounting profit and real cash profit
Practice Drills: Spotting Working Capital Red Flags
A practice-first companion to Understanding Working Capital and Its Impact on Business Health. You already know what debtor days, inventory days, payable days and the cash conversion cycle mean; this course makes you apply them to real Indian filings. Working with Screener.in data, NSE and BSE annual reports, and the notes to accounts most investors skip, you will drill receivable ageing, related-party balances, inventory build-ups, stretched payables, supply chain finance and customer advances, then pull it all together into a red flag scorecard you can run on any listed company. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who want to spot a working capital problem before it becomes a cash crunch.
- Pull receivables, inventory, payables and their ageing notes from Screener.in and annual reports, standalone and consolidated
- Test whether debtor days and inventory days are rising faster than sales can justify
- Read receivable ageing schedules, provisions, unbilled revenue and inventory mix for early warning signs
Practice Drills: Tracking and Interpreting Bulk and Block Deals
A practice-first companion to Understanding Insider Trading Regulations and Bulk Deal Data. Instead of more theory, you work the raw data: pull bulk and block deals from the NSE and BSE large deals pages, classify each trade against SEBI's rules, and log it in a Google Sheets tracker. Then you learn to read the counterparty, size the deal against equity, free float and average volume, price it against VWAP and the previous close, and connect it to shareholding pattern and SAST disclosures. You drill the recurring patterns (promoter sales, PE exits, fund accumulation, well-known investor buys and small-cap pump-and-dump setups), measure what happened next with an event window and abnormal returns against the Nifty, and finish by tracking and interpreting a full month of deals on your own.
- Pull, clean and classify bulk and block deals from NSE and BSE into a working Google Sheets tracker
- Identify who is really on each side of a deal and separate conviction buying from arbitrage and churn
- Size a deal against total equity, free float and average daily volume, and price it against VWAP and the previous close
Practice Drills: Writing an Institutional Grade Investment Thesis
A hands-on drill course for serious independent investors, HNIs and portfolio managers in training who want to write a thesis the way a buy-side fund does. Most retail theses are a list of reasons to like a stock. An institutional thesis states what you believe that the market does not, proves it from primary sources, prices it in scenarios, names the catalysts and dates, and defines in advance the facts that would make you sell. You pick one live NSE stock and build that document drill by drill: dissect a broker initiation report, frame a variant perception, build a primary-source evidence log from BSE and NSE filings and concall transcripts, reverse-engineer the expectations already in the price, and translate the thesis into measurable value drivers. Then build probability-weighted bear, base and bull cases, derive a target price with a cross-check, run a pre-mortem, write kill criteria, steelman the bear case, and finish with a full memo you defend against the ten hardest investment committee questions. Every drill uses Indian companies, NSE and BSE disclosures, screener.in data and INR figures.
- Tell the difference between a sell-side initiation report and a buy-side investment memo, and write the second
- State a variant perception in one falsifiable sentence and test whether it is genuinely non-consensus
- Build a primary-source evidence log from annual reports, concall transcripts and NSE and BSE disclosures
Reading Annual Reports Using the BSE and NSE Filing Systems
An annual report is one filing among hundreds a listed company sends to BSE and NSE every year. Read it alone and you miss the AGM resolutions, the quarterly shareholding and pledge data, the related party disclosures, the auditor resignation letter, and the credit rating downgrade that landed three months after the report went out. This course treats the exchange filing systems as your research tool: where the annual report sits in the SEBI LODR calendar, how to pull it and its archives from both exchanges, which companion filings complete it, which event filings change how you read it, and how to build a repeatable, filing-driven routine for every stock you own. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who already know their way around the exchange websites and want to turn them into a proper research workflow.
- Place the annual report in the SEBI LODR filing calendar and know which filing is due when
- Pull current and archived annual reports from both BSE and NSE, and handle missing or revised copies
- Read the AGM notice, Regulation 33 results, and XBRL data alongside the annual report
Reading Cash Flow Statements in Depth
A line-by-line guide to reading and interpreting cash flow statements for Indian listed companies, built for retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who are already comfortable with a profit and loss statement and want to go deeper. Learn to reconcile net profit to cash profit, break down operating, investing, and financing activities, calculate free cash flow, and spot the manipulation tricks that let profit grow while cash quietly disappears, using real filings and Screener.in data throughout.
- Break down cash flow from operating activities line by line
- Connect investing and financing activities to free cash flow
- Spot manipulation red flags across sectors and funds
Reading Company Fundamentals on Screener.in
Screener.in puts a decade of any listed Indian company's financials in front of you for free, but a blank screen full of numbers is only useful once you know what you're looking at. This course walks you through the platform itself, then through the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow pages, and finally through the ratios Screener calculates automatically, so you can open any company page on the NSE or BSE and form your own view in minutes.
- Navigate a Screener.in company page and know where every number comes from
- Read the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow statements without a finance degree
- Tell standalone numbers apart from consolidated ones and know which to trust for a given question
Reading Credit Rating Reports and Their Relevance to Equity Investors
A practical guide for experienced retail investors who track stocks but have never actually opened a CRISIL or ICRA rating rationale. Most equity investors treat credit ratings as something only bond buyers need to care about, then get blindsided when a debt downgrade drags down the stock they hold, as happened with IL&FS, DHFL, and Yes Bank. This course teaches you to read an Indian rating report the way an analyst does: what the rating scale actually measures, how to work through a rating rationale section by section, which leverage, coverage, and liquidity ratios agencies track, and how to connect a company's rating trajectory to its equity story before the market reacts. Built around real CRISIL, ICRA, CARE, and India Ratings reports, and grounded in NSE and BSE case studies throughout.
- See why credit ratings matter to an equity investor
- Break down the anatomy of a rating report
- Connect the numbers behind a rating to a stock call
Reading Management Commentary and Earnings Call Transcripts
A practical, transcript-first course on decoding what management actually says on Indian earnings calls, in investor presentations, and in the MD&A section of annual reports. Learn where to find real transcripts on BSE, NSE, and screener.in, how to read the structure of a concall, and how to spot hedge language, guidance shifts, and tone changes before they show up in the numbers.
- Build the skill of reading management commentary closely
- Learn the anatomy of a typical earnings call
- Decode the language management uses on calls
Reading Reliance Industries' Annual Report: A Beginner's Walkthrough
Most first-time investors never open the annual report of a company they own. This course fixes that using Reliance Industries, India's largest listed company, as the worked example. You will learn to read the Chairman's statement, understand RIL's four businesses, and walk through its actual balance sheet and profit and loss statement line by line, so you can do the same for any company you hold.
- Why the annual report matters more than the quarterly result or the share price
- How to find and navigate a company's annual report on its website and on NSE/BSE
- How to read a Chairman's statement and MD&A without getting lost in jargon
Risk, Return, and Portfolio Construction Basics
A ground-up, India-specific guide to the two ideas every investing decision actually rests on: risk and return. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who can quote a stock's return but have never been taught what risk really means, why a 15% FD-beating return can still be a bad outcome, or why one hot stock tip is not a portfolio. Covers the real difference between risk and volatility, the main types of investment risk, CAGR versus absolute returns, real versus nominal returns after inflation, post-tax returns under India's current STCG and LTCG rules, and the basics of asset allocation and diversification, using real NSE and BSE examples, screener.in data, Zerodha statements, and SEBI-relevant rules throughout.
- Learn what risk actually means when investing
- Understand return properly, beyond just the headline number
- Build your first diversified portfolio with confidence
Sectoral Analysis: Understanding How Different Industries Behave
A sector-by-sector guide to how Indian industries actually make money, what drives their earnings, and why the same ratio means completely different things in a bank, an IT services firm, and a cement maker. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who already know the basics of reading financial statements and want to analyse stocks and sector funds with an industry lens. Covers NSE sectoral indices, cyclical vs defensive behaviour, sector-specific KPIs and valuation multiples, and sector rotation, using real Nifty sector data, Screener.in, and listed Indian companies throughout.
Setting Up Price and News Alerts Across Platforms
Most investors either have no alerts at all or have forty of them firing every day, and both end the same way: the one move that mattered gets missed. This course treats alerts as a system, not a feature. You will design an alert register that ties every holding to a specific trigger and a specific action, then build it across the platforms Indian investors actually use: price alerts and Alert Triggers Order on Zerodha Kite, GTT orders, alerts on Groww and Upstox, chart and indicator alerts on TradingView, corporate filing alerts from NSE and BSE, result and announcement tracking on Screener.in, news alerts that filter out market chatter, and mutual fund alerts for NAV moves and portfolio disclosures. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who cannot watch a screen all day and need their portfolio to tap them on the shoulder only when it matters.
- Design an alert register that maps every holding to a trigger, a platform, and a pre-decided action
- Set price alerts and Alert Triggers Order on Zerodha Kite, and know when a GTT order is the better tool
- Build crossing, channel, percentage-move and indicator alerts on TradingView without hitting plan limits blindly
Setting Up and Using a Personal Portfolio Tracker in Excel
A practical, step by step course on building your own portfolio tracker in Excel or Google Sheets. You will learn to log every transaction correctly, pull live prices, calculate true annualized returns with XIRR, track dividends and corporate actions, and keep a tracker that survives tax season instead of falling apart by March.
- Set up a Holdings, Transactions, and Dashboard sheet structure that scales as your portfolio grows
- Log buy and sell transactions so average price and realized gains are always correct
- Pull live prices into your sheet with GOOGLEFINANCE or Excel Stock Data Types
Understanding Bond Pricing: Yield to Maturity, Duration, and Convexity
A rigorous, India-first course on how bonds are actually priced and how their risk is measured. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who already know what a bond is and now want to price one, compute its yield to maturity, and size its interest rate risk using Macaulay duration, modified duration, PV01, and convexity. Uses G-Secs, SDLs, and corporate bonds traded on NSE, BSE, and RBI Retail Direct, debt fund factsheets, and real RBI rate cycles throughout, with every formula worked in INR.
- Price any fixed-coupon bond by discounting its cash flows, and separate clean price from accrued interest
- Compute yield to maturity by hand and in Excel, and understand the reinvestment assumption behind it
- Evaluate callable bonds using yield to call and yield to worst
Understanding Bonus Shares Through the Case of Infosys
Bonus shares are one of the most misunderstood corporate actions on the Indian market. Using Infosys, one of NSE's most bonus-active large caps, as a running example, this course walks through what a bonus issue is, what it does and does not do to your wealth, and how to read one like an analyst instead of just cheering the headline.
- What a bonus share issue is and why companies choose to do it
- How bonus ratios, record dates, and ex-dates change what you hold and what it's worth
- Infosys's full bonus history and what each issue meant for a long-term holder
Understanding CDSL Easi and NSDL Speed-e for Demat Statements
Your broker's app is not your demat account. CDSL and NSDL, India's two depositories, hold the real record of what you own, and every investor should know how to log in directly, read a Consolidated Account Statement, and spot a discrepancy before it becomes a problem. This course walks you through registering on CDSL Easi and NSDL Speed-e, reading your holdings and CAS, and protecting your demat login from fraud.
- Why your demat account sits with a depository, not your broker, and what that means for you
- The practical differences between CDSL and NSDL and how to tell which one holds your holdings
- How to register for and navigate CDSL Easi and Easiest
Understanding Consolidated vs Standalone Financial Statements
Every listed Indian company with subsidiaries publishes two sets of numbers, and picking the wrong one can make a stock look cheap, safe, or profitable when it is none of those. This course shows you exactly how consolidation works under Ind AS, where the two versions live on BSE, NSE and screener.in, how to read the gap between them, and how groups like Tata Motors, Reliance, Bajaj Finserv and Adani use subsidiary structures. You finish with a practical checklist for deciding which statement to trust for every ratio you run.
- Why Indian companies report standalone and consolidated numbers, and which laws and SEBI rules require it
- How to pull both versions from annual reports, BSE and NSE result filings, and screener.in without mixing them up
- How consolidation works: control, line-by-line addition, intra-group eliminations, non-controlling interest and goodwill
Understanding Cyclical vs Defensive Stocks
A deep guide to the two behaviours that shape every Indian portfolio: stocks whose earnings rise and fall with the economy, and stocks whose earnings hold steady through it. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who want to know what they actually own and how it will behave in the next downturn. Covers how to classify and measure cyclicality on Screener.in, the economics of commodity, demand, and rate cyclicals, why defensives command a premium and when it stops paying, valuing stocks across the cycle with normalised earnings and price to book, tracking Indian leading indicators and RBI rate cycles, and building a balanced portfolio through direct stocks, sector funds, and ETFs, using real NSE companies and Nifty sector index history throughout.
Understanding Cyclicality in Commodity and Capital Goods Stocks
A practitioner's framework for investing in the most unforgiving corners of the Indian market: steel, aluminium, cement, oil and gas, and the capital goods names that build the country. Learn why these stocks swing far more than the Nifty, how to tell where a cycle is using order books, capacity utilisation, LME prices and margin data, why P/E is a trap for cyclicals and what to use instead, and how to size, time and exit positions. Built around real NSE and BSE case studies including Tata Steel, Hindalco, L&T and BHEL across full boom-to-bust cycles.
Understanding ESG Investing in the Indian Context
A practical course on ESG investing for Indian investors who want substance over slogans. Learn what environmental, social and governance risks mean for returns, how to read SEBI's BRSR disclosures, why ESG ratings disagree, how ESG mutual funds and indices are actually built, and how to fold material ESG factors into your own analysis of NSE and BSE listed stocks without falling for greenwashing.
- Why ESG factors are financial risks, and where the evidence on ESG and returns is strong or weak
- How ESG investing differs in India, from coal dependence to promoter-driven governance
- How to find and read a company's BRSR filing and the BRSR Core metrics that get assured
Understanding Insider Trading Regulations and Bulk Deal Data
An advanced, India-specific course for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who want to use the same disclosure data that institutions watch every evening. It covers the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations 2015 in practical terms: what counts as unpublished price sensitive information, who is an insider or connected person, trading window closures, and the disclosure filings that land on NSE and BSE every day. It then moves to bulk deal and block deal data, the 0.5% reporting rule, the block deal window, and how to tell genuine promoter or institutional accumulation from operator-driven distribution. The course closes with SEBI's enforcement machinery, landmark Indian cases, the SAST takeover thresholds that sit alongside insider rules, and the lines a retail investor must never cross when acting on tips, Telegram channels, or a friend inside a listed company.
- Define unpublished price sensitive information, insider, and connected person exactly as SEBI does, and apply the definitions to real situations
- Locate and read insider trading disclosures, pledge data, and trading window closure notices on the NSE and BSE websites
- Explain the 0.5% bulk deal rule, the block deal window, and the difference between the two data sets
Understanding Market Microstructure and Liquidity
An advanced, India-specific course on how orders actually become trades on NSE and BSE, and why liquidity, not just price, decides what you really pay. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNI portfolios who have moved beyond stock picking and now need to understand the order book, price-time priority, pre-open and closing auctions, impact cost, slippage, and the hidden footprint of algos, FIIs and block deals. Covers how to read market depth on Zerodha, measure liquidity with NSE impact cost and delivery data, execute large orders without moving the price, and build a liquidity-aware plan for smallcaps and volatile sessions.
Understanding Mergers, Acquisitions, and Demergers
An investor's guide to what really happens to your shares when an Indian listed company merges, gets acquired, or splits itself apart. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who hold stocks that show up in deal headlines and want to understand the mechanics instead of reacting to them. Learn why companies do deals, how schemes of arrangement move through NCLT and shareholder votes, how swap ratios convert your holding, how SEBI's Takeover Code and open offers protect minority shareholders, and how delistings work. Then look at deals through an investor's lens with EPS accretion and dilution, merger arbitrage spreads, and the warning signs of value-destroying acquisitions, before decoding demergers, cost of acquisition splits, and the tax treatment of every event. Uses real NSE and BSE cases like HDFC and HDFC Bank, Reliance and Jio Financial Services, and ITC Hotels, with screener.in and exchange filings throughout.
Understanding NSE and BSE Websites for Company Filings and Announcements
A practical, hands-on guide to the two places every piece of official company information actually lives: the NSE and BSE websites. Learn why companies are legally required to disclose results, corporate actions and material events on the exchanges before anywhere else, and how to find that information yourself instead of relying on news headlines or social media screenshots. Walk through the real layout of nseindia.com and bseindia.com, use their corporate announcements and company search tools, pull up a company's full filing history, and read dividend, bonus, split and buyback notices directly from the source. Built for first-time demat account holders, salaried professionals and retirees who want to check facts themselves before acting on a stock.
Understanding Promoter Pledging and Its Risks
Promoter pledging is one of the most under-read risk signals in Indian equities. This course explains what happens when a promoter borrows against their own shares, how lenders set loan-to-value limits and margin calls, and why a falling stock price can trigger a spiral of forced selling that ends with the promoter losing control. You will learn to read pledge and encumbrance disclosures on NSE, BSE and screener.in, distinguish healthy pledging from distress, and interpret ratios like pledged shares as a percentage of promoter holding versus total equity. Indian case studies including Zee Entertainment, Coffee Day Enterprises, the Anil Ambani group companies and Yes Bank show how pledge risk played out in real portfolios. The course closes with a practical scorecard, exit triggers and a monitoring routine you can apply to any stock you hold.
- Explain how promoter share pledging works, from loan-to-value ratios to top-ups and invocation
- Read pledge and encumbrance disclosures on NSE, BSE and screener.in and interpret the key ratios
- Separate legitimate pledging from distress signals using trend, lender type and group context
Understanding Sector Rotation and Business Cycles
A practical, India-specific guide to the business cycle and the sector rotation it drives. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who already understand sectors and basic macro, and now want to judge where the Indian economy sits in its cycle, which sectors tend to lead and lag in each phase, and whether the textbook rotation model actually holds on NSE. Covers leading indicators like PMI, GST collections, credit growth, and auto sales, the RBI rate cycle, Nifty sectoral index performance across real Indian cycles from 2003 to today, relative strength analysis, and how to implement tactical sector tilts through index funds, ETFs, and business cycle funds without wrecking returns through overtrading and tax drag.
- Identify the four phases of the business cycle and why the stock market typically turns before the economy does
- Read India's cycle dashboard: PMI, GST collections, IIP, bank credit growth, capacity utilisation, and the yield curve
- Map which Indian sectors historically lead in early, mid, and late cycle phases and which hold up in a slowdown
Understanding Stock Exchange Listing Norms and IPO Process
A ground-up guide to how companies list on the NSE and BSE and how the IPO process actually works in India. Covers SEBI's listing eligibility norms under the ICDR Regulations, the role of merchant bankers and registrars, how to read a DRHP and RHP, book building versus fixed price issues, investor categories (QIB, NII, retail), and the practical mechanics of applying via ASBA and UPI. Ends with how to read a prospectus for red flags before you invest. Built for first-time demat holders and retail investors who want to understand an IPO beyond the subscription number on financial news.
- Why and how a company lists on the NSE and BSE
- SEBI's eligibility norms for an IPO under the ICDR Regulations
- How to read a DRHP and RHP without being a lawyer
Understanding Stock Splits Through the Case of MRF vs Divis Labs
A short case-study course on stock splits, built around two contrasting real examples: MRF, which has never split its shares and trades above ₹1 lakh, and Divis Labs, which has. You'll learn what a split mechanically does and doesn't do to a company's value, why companies choose to split (or not), and how to read a split announcement without assuming it means anything about the business.
- What actually happens to your shares, price, and holding value in a stock split
- Why a stock split does not change a company's market capitalization or your investment's worth
- Why MRF has never split its stock despite trading above ₹1 lakh per share
Understanding Working Capital and Its Impact on Business Health
A practical, investor-side guide to working capital, built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who already know how to read a balance sheet and want to know what the receivables, inventory, and payables lines are actually telling them. Learn to locate working capital on a balance sheet, calculate and interpret DSO, DIO, DPO, and the cash conversion cycle, read liquidity ratios as trend signals rather than pass or fail tests, and see why FMCG, IT, and capital goods companies carry completely different working capital profiles. Covers negative working capital businesses, the red flags that show up before a cash crunch does, and how to carry this lens into stock screening on Screener.in and into evaluating a mutual fund's underlying holdings, using real NSE and BSE listed companies throughout.
Upstox Platform Guide for New Investors
A practical, screen-by-screen guide to using Upstox as your first stockbroker. Covers opening and verifying your account, finding your way around the app and web platform, placing your first trade, and reading your holdings, contract notes, and funds so nothing on the platform feels unfamiliar.
- How to open and verify a Upstox demat and trading account, including KYC
- How to navigate the Upstox app and web platform without getting lost
- How to add funds and read your trading balance correctly
Using Google Finance and Yahoo Finance for Market Data
A practical, tool-first course for anyone who wants Indian market data on their own screen, not just on a broker app. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want to track prices, build a simple watchlist, and pull a company's numbers without paying for a data terminal. Covers reading and pulling live NSE and BSE quotes on Google Finance, using the GOOGLEFINANCE function in Google Sheets to build a live watchlist and portfolio tracker, and navigating Yahoo Finance for historical price downloads and company financials, using real Indian tickers throughout.
- How to read a live stock quote correctly on Google Finance, including NSE versus BSE pricing differences
- How to use the GOOGLEFINANCE function to pull live and historical prices into Google Sheets
- How to build your own watchlist and portfolio tracker in a spreadsheet you control
Using Income Tax Portal for Capital Gains Reporting Basics
A practical, step-by-step walkthrough of reporting capital gains from stocks and mutual funds on India's income tax e-filing portal, from reading your broker's capital gains statement to filing Schedule CG correctly.
- How to read your broker's capital gains statement and separate short-term from long-term gains
- How to reconcile your capital gains data against your AIS and Form 26AS before filing
- How to choose between ITR-2 and ITR-3 based on your income sources
Using the SEBI SCORES Portal for Investor Grievances
A practical, step-by-step walkthrough of SCORES (SEBI Complaints Redress System), the official portal for filing grievances against brokers, listed companies, mutual funds, RTAs, and other SEBI-regulated intermediaries. Covers what counts as a valid grievance, how to register and file a complaint with the right evidence and category, how to track it through resolution, and what to do when a complaint goes unresolved, including escalation to the SEBI Ombudsman and the ODR portal. Written for first-time demat account holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who may never have filed a regulatory complaint before.
- What SCORES is, who it covers, and what kinds of complaints it can and cannot resolve
- How to register on SCORES and file a complaint with the correct category and evidence
- How to track your complaint status and understand SEBI's resolution timelines
How to Read Financial Statements
A practical guide to reading a company's profit and loss statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement through an investor's lens. Shows how these three statements fit together, so you can build a clear picture of any company's financial health before you invest.
- Read the P&L statement to see how a company earns
- Analyze the balance sheet and cash flow statement together
- Put all three financial statements together for a full picture
Stock Market from Zero
A ground-up guide to the Indian stock market for complete beginners, covering what the market actually is, how to open a demat and trading account, and how buying and selling really works. Explains how the Sensex and Nifty indices work and gives first-time investors a simple framework for making their first investment.
- Learn what the stock market is and why it exists
- Open a demat and trading account step by step
- See how buying, selling, Sensex and Nifty actually work
Value Investing
34 courses
Fundamental Analysis Masterclass: Analysing Any Indian Stock End to End
The complete analyst workflow for Indian equities, built for salaried professionals, self-taught investors and finance students who want to stop buying on tips and start buying on evidence. You will learn to understand a business before its numbers, read the three statements the way a buy-side analyst does, run ratio and earnings-quality checks on screener.in, judge management and capital allocation from annual reports and concalls, and value a company with relative multiples, DCF and reverse DCF. Every chapter ends in a concrete output, and the course closes with a one-page thesis template, a position sizing method, an exit rule and two full worked case studies on NSE-listed companies.
- Follow a repeatable eight-step workflow that takes any Indian stock from name to documented decision
- Assess industry structure and moats in the Indian context before touching the numbers
- Read the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statement together, including notes, segments and consolidated accounts
Advanced Credit Analysis for Equity Investors
A practical credit analysis framework built for equity investors, not bond investors. Teaches experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs to read debt structure, credit ratings, and leverage the way a credit analyst would, so that deteriorating credit quality is spotted well before it shows up in the stock price. Uses real Indian blowups, including IL&FS, DHFL, Yes Bank, and Reliance Capital, alongside CRISIL and ICRA rating rationales, Screener.in data, and annual report disclosures throughout.
- Analyze a company's debt structure the way credit analysts do
- Use core credit metrics and rating actions to gauge risk
- Build a practical screening framework from real credit case studies
Advanced Ratio Analysis for Stock Selection
A practical, ratio-by-ratio framework for selecting stocks, built for investors who already know how to read a P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement and want to go further. Goes beyond textbook definitions into comparability, sector-relative benchmarking, and the traps that make a ratio look good on paper while the underlying business deteriorates. Uses real NSE and BSE listed companies, Screener.in data, and full worked case studies throughout, and closes with a chapter on applying the same framework to evaluate mutual fund holdings.
- See how context shapes profitability, return and valuation ratios
- Assess leverage, liquidity and balance sheet health beyond P/E
- Build a ratio-based screening framework for stocks and funds
Advanced Valuation: Sum of the Parts and Special Situations
A hands-on course on valuing businesses that a single P/E or DCF cannot handle: conglomerates, holding companies, and companies going through demergers, buybacks, open offers, delistings, and mergers. Teaches experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs to build a sum-of-the-parts valuation segment by segment, apply and defend a holding company discount, and work out the arbitrage math in Indian special situations. Built entirely on real NSE and BSE cases including Reliance Industries, Grasim, Bajaj Holdings, ITC Hotels, Jio Financial Services, and the HDFC merger, using segment reporting under Ind AS 108, SEBI regulations, Screener.in, and exchange filings throughout.
Case Study: Asian Paints, Understanding a Two Decade Compounder
Asian Paints compounded shareholder wealth for the better part of two decades while trading at a valuation most investors called too expensive every single year. This case study takes the business apart: how a decorative paint company actually makes money, the dealer network, tinting and supply chain edge that kept competitors at bay, and the ROCE, working capital and cash flow numbers that powered the compounding. Then it asks the harder questions. How much of the return came from earnings growth versus a rising P/E, why the premium multiple persisted, and what the entry of Birla Opus and other deep-pocketed rivals means for a moat that looked unbreakable. Built for investors who already hold, or are considering, a quality compounder and want a framework to judge one using real numbers from annual reports and screener.in.
- How a decorative paint business makes money, and why distribution matters more than chemistry
- The specific pieces of Asian Paints' moat: dealer network, tinting, demand forecasting and pricing power
- How to read two decades of revenue, margin, ROCE and cash flow data on screener.in
Case Study: Avenue Supermarts vs Future Retail, Two Retail Strategies
A head-to-head case study of two Indian retailers that chased the same middle-class grocery shopper and ended up at opposite ends of the market. Avenue Supermarts (DMart) owned its stores, kept prices low every day, paid suppliers fast and funded growth from its own cash. Future Retail (Big Bazaar) leased aggressively, ran mega sales, stretched working capital and funded expansion with debt and promoter pledges. This course puts the two models side by side, metric by metric: store economics, pricing, inventory turns, working capital, capital allocation and return on capital employed, then shows how each handled demonetisation, GST and Covid. You finish with a reusable comparative scorecard you can run on screener.in against any listed Indian retailer. Written for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors and salaried professionals who want to judge business quality, not just stock price.
- How ownership versus leasing of stores shapes a retailer's costs, flexibility and risk
- Why everyday low pricing and mega-sale pricing produce very different cash flows
- How to compare sales per square foot, inventory turns and working capital cycles across two companies
Case Study: Britannia's Margin Expansion Story, A Forensic Read
Between FY2013 and FY2025 Britannia Industries roughly tripled its operating margin while the stock re-rated from a mid-twenties P/E to over fifty times earnings. This advanced case study rebuilds that margin expansion line by line from the annual reports, then runs the forensic checks an experienced investor should run on any margin story: cash conversion, working capital, related-party lending to the Wadia group, bonus debentures, capex and depreciation policy, fiscal incentives and advertising cuts. You will benchmark Britannia against Nestle India, Hindustan Unilever and ITC, stress-test the story through the FY2022 inflation dip and the FY2024 rebound, and leave with a reusable scorecard for separating durable margin gains from borrowed ones.
- How to build a margin bridge from published annual reports and attribute every percentage point of expansion to a named driver
- Which cost lines (raw material, advertising, employee, logistics, wastage) drove Britannia's expansion and how durable each one is
- How to test whether reported EBITDA is backed by operating cash flow, and what negative working capital does to that test
Case Study: Coal India, Dividend Yield Investing in a PSU
Coal India has spent most of its listed life as the stock income investors love to screen for: a dominant market share, a strong balance sheet and a dividend yield that routinely beat a bank fixed deposit. It has also spent long stretches going nowhere, as a government owner, wage revisions, offer-for-sale overhangs and the energy transition weighed on the price. This case study takes the business apart: how Coal India earns money from fuel supply agreements and e-auctions, how to test whether a dividend is sustainable using payout ratio, free cash flow and cash on the books, and how the majority shareholder's priorities shape everything from capex to payouts. Then it follows the actual returns across two very different periods and asks what a high yield on a business with a contested long-term future is really worth. Built for investors who hold, or are tempted by, high-yield PSU stocks and want a framework grounded in real numbers from annual reports and screener.in.
- How Coal India makes money, and why notified prices and e-auction premiums drive its earnings
- How to calculate dividend yield correctly and spot the common traps in a high trailing yield
- How to test dividend sustainability using payout ratio, free cash flow and cash reserves
Case Study: IRFC, Understanding PSU Valuation Re Rating
Indian Railway Finance Corporation listed in January 2021 as a low-risk, low-return government lender and spent two years trading below its book value. Then, in the 2023-24 PSU rally, the stock multiplied several times over and its price to book ratio expanded far beyond anything its business model had ever justified. This case study takes that rally apart. You will learn how IRFC's cost-plus leasing model with the Ministry of Railways actually earns money, why that model caps its return on equity, and how the price to book and ROE relationship should anchor the valuation of any lender. You will then break the rally into earnings growth versus multiple expansion, work backwards from the peak price to see what it implied, compare IRFC with PFC, REC and HUDCO, and study the drawdown that followed. The course closes with a screener.in workflow and a repeatable framework for judging whether the next PSU re-rating is grounded in fundamentals or in flows.
- Explain how IRFC's cost-plus leasing arrangement with the Ministry of Railways generates earnings and why it limits both risk and return
- Use the price to book and ROE relationship to judge what multiple a lender like IRFC can justify
- Break a stock's rally into earnings growth and multiple expansion, and tell which one drove IRFC's move
Case Study: IndiGo, Analyzing a Capital Intensive Business
Indian aviation is a graveyard: Kingfisher, Jet Airways and Go First all collapsed while passenger traffic kept growing. IndiGo went the other way and became the dominant domestic carrier. This case study takes InterGlobe Aviation apart to show how a capital intensive, cyclical, commodity-exposed business can still create shareholder value, and where it can go wrong. You will learn the airline vocabulary (ASK, load factor, yield, RASK, CASK), how sale and leaseback funds the fleet, what Ind AS 116 did to the balance sheet, why fuel prices and the rupee matter so much, and how shocks like COVID and engine groundings hit the numbers. Then you will value it the way analysts do and walk away with a checklist you can apply to any capital heavy business on NSE, using annual reports and screener.in.
- Why airlines as an industry tend to destroy capital, and what IndiGo did differently
- How to read airline unit economics: ASK, RPK, load factor, yield, RASK and CASK
- How sale and leaseback financing works and why it shaped IndiGo's growth
Case Study: L&T's Order Book, Understanding Infrastructure Valuation
Larsen & Toubro is the closest thing India has to a listed proxy for the country's capex cycle: roads, metros, power, water, defence, hydrocarbons and more, plus a stable of listed subsidiaries. That breadth also makes it one of the harder Nifty 50 stocks to value. This case study teaches you to analyse L&T the way infrastructure analysts do. Start with the order book: how order inflow, order backlog and revenue connect, what book-to-bill and order book cover tell you about visibility, and how to judge the quality of what sits in the backlog, including the recent surge in Middle East orders. Then follow orders into cash: percentage of completion revenue under Ind AS 115, contract assets, retention money, mobilisation advances and the execution risks hidden in fixed-price contracts. Finally, value the company with a sum of the parts that separates core engineering and construction from LTIMindtree, L&T Technology Services and L&T Finance, and finish with a checklist you can apply to any order-book-driven company on NSE, using annual reports, investor presentations and screener.in.
- How order inflow, order book and revenue connect, and why the order book is a leading indicator for EPC companies
- How to measure revenue visibility with book-to-bill and order book cover, and judge the quality of a backlog
- How percentage of completion revenue works under Ind AS 115 and what it does to reported profits
Case Study: Page Industries, Valuing a Premium Consumer Brand
Page Industries does not own the Jockey brand. It holds the licence to make and sell it in India and a handful of neighbouring markets, and on the back of that licence it built one of the most richly valued consumer stocks on the NSE. This case study takes the business apart: how the licensing model works, why premium innerwear in India turned out to be such a good market to dominate, and the manufacturing, distribution and return-on-capital numbers that made investors happy to pay 60 to 80 times earnings. Then it does the valuation work properly. What a premium P/E actually assumes, how to run a reverse DCF on a stock like this, how to compare it fairly with other consumer names, and how to price the risk of a business built on someone else's brand. Finally it looks at the slowdown that began in 2022, the inventory reset that followed, and what the de-rating teaches about paying up for quality. Built for investors who hold, or are tempted by, expensive consumer stocks and want a repeatable way to judge whether the premium is earned.
- How a brand licensing business makes money, and what it gives up by not owning the brand
- Why premiumisation in Indian innerwear created room for a dominant, high-margin player
- How manufacturing control and exclusive distribution translated into high ROCE and strong cash flow
Case Study: Pidilite Industries, Pricing Power in a Niche Market
Pidilite sells a product most people buy once a year and never think about. Yet Fevicol, Fevikwik, M-seal and Dr. Fixit have given it the kind of pricing power that consumer giants many times its size would envy. This case study takes the business apart: how Pidilite splits into Consumer and Bazaar and B2B, why the carpenter and contractor network is the real moat, and why adhesives are an almost ideal pricing power product, a tiny share of the job cost with a huge cost of failure. Then it tests the claim against the numbers: gross margins through VAM and crude oil cycles, the FY22 raw material shock, ROCE, working capital and cash flow read straight off screener.in. Finally it asks what a premium multiple already prices in, where the next leg of growth could come from, and what could break the moat. Built for investors who want a repeatable way to judge pricing power in any stock they own.
- How Pidilite makes money across Consumer and Bazaar and B2B, and why the mix matters
- Why the carpenter and contractor influencer network is harder to copy than a factory or a brand
- The economics that make adhesives and sealants an ideal pricing power product
Case Study: Titan Company, Diversification and Brand Value
Titan started as a watch joint venture between the Tata group and the Tamil Nadu government and became one of the great wealth creators on the NSE, mostly by selling gold jewellery through Tanishq. This case study takes the company apart business by business: how trust became a moat in a largely unorganised jewellery market, how Titan funds gold inventory without drowning in working capital, and which of its diversification bets (watches, eyewear, CaratLane, Taneira and others) actually earned their capital. Then it turns to the numbers and the valuation. What Titan's segment reporting reveals, why the market has paid a premium multiple for years, how much of the return came from earnings growth versus re-rating, and which risks (gold prices, customs duty, competition) could break the story. Built for investors who hold or are considering consumer brand stocks and want a repeatable way to judge brand value and diversification using annual reports and screener.in.
- How Titan makes money, and why jewellery dominates its revenue and profit
- How Tanishq turned trust into a competitive advantage in an unorganised market
- How gold on lease and customer schemes shape jewellery working capital and risk
Contrarian Investing: Identifying Value in Out of Favor Sectors
An advanced course on buying what the market has abandoned, without catching falling knives. Learn to separate cyclical troughs from structural decline, apply the capital cycle to Indian sectors, value businesses on normalised earnings and replacement cost, run balance sheet survival tests, identify the catalysts that end a bear phase, and size contrarian positions so that being early does not mean being wrong. Built around real NSE and BSE sector cycles: PSU banks, real estate, telecom, pharma, capital goods and IT.
- Why out-of-favor sectors have historically delivered the best forward returns on the NSE, and why most investors still cannot buy them
- How to diagnose whether a sector is in a cyclical trough, a regulatory overhang or a permanent structural decline
- How to apply the capital cycle framework to Indian sectors like cement, steel, telecom and real estate
Masterclass: Howard Marks on Cycles and Risk
A deep, practitioner-level study of Howard Marks's thinking on risk and market cycles, rebuilt for Indian markets and aimed at serious independent investors, portfolio managers in training and HNI investors. You will learn second-level thinking and the gap between price and value, redefine risk as the probability of permanent loss rather than volatility, and understand why risk is highest precisely when it feels lowest. The course then takes apart the economic, profit, credit, psychology, real estate and distressed debt cycles and shows how they feed one another, before turning theory into practice with an Indian market temperature checklist built on Nifty valuations, credit conditions, IPO activity, SIP flows and F&O data. Two full case studies, India 2007 to 2009 and the smallcap cycles of recent years, test the framework, and the closing chapters cover portfolio posture, disciplined contrarianism, patient opportunism and a personal cycle and risk playbook you can actually run.
- Apply second-level thinking to separate a good company from a good investment
- Define and measure risk as permanent loss, not just price volatility
- Recognise when markets are pricing risk too cheaply and why that feels safest at the worst moment
Masterclass: Investing Through the Masters, Buffett's Framework Applied to Indian Markets
A deep study of the Buffett framework for serious independent investors, portfolio managers in training and HNI investors who already know how to read a company and now want a coherent investing philosophy. You will trace the framework from Graham through Fisher and Munger, apply the circle of competence and Buffett's four filters to Indian sectors, compute owner earnings and returns on tangible capital, judge management through candour and capital allocation, and set intrinsic value and margin of safety at Indian valuations. The course then covers temperament through real Indian market crashes, concentrated portfolio construction under Indian tax rules, Buffett's landmark deals translated into Indian parallels, his admitted mistakes, and where the framework has to be adapted for India. It closes with a full Buffett checklist run on a listed Indian company.
- Trace how Buffett's framework evolved from Graham's cigar butts to Munger's wonderful businesses at fair prices
- Draw an honest circle of competence and apply Buffett's four filters to Indian sectors and companies
- Compute owner earnings, return on tangible capital and incremental returns for an Indian company
Masterclass: Long Term Compounding, Case Studies of 20 Year Holders
A case-study masterclass on the rarest skill in Indian investing: buying a great business and holding it for 20 years. Start with the maths of decades, how CAGR, re-rating, dividends, taxes and inflation really add up over a holding period that spans multiple market crashes. Then dissect real NSE and BSE compounders across consumer, financial and industrial sectors, reconstructing what the business looked like at the start, what an early holder had to believe, and the drawdowns they had to sit through. Study the holders as much as the stocks, from Chandrakant Sampat's patience to Rakesh Jhunjhunwala's Titan, and confront the other side of survivorship bias: former darlings that went to zero or went nowhere for a decade. Finish by building your own compounder checklist, sizing and review rhythm, and a tax-efficient 20-year holding plan under current Indian capital gains rules.
- Decompose any 20-year stock return into earnings growth, re-rating and dividends
- Recognise the traits shared by Indian compounders and the warning signs in the ones that failed
- Hold through deep drawdowns with a written thesis, review rhythm and clear sell rules
Masterclass: Munger's Mental Models for Stock Selection
Charlie Munger's edge was not a formula but a way of thinking: a latticework of models from economics, psychology, mathematics and biology, applied with patience and a ruthless willingness to say no. This masterclass turns that method into a practical stock selection process for serious Indian investors. You will learn to draw your circle of competence on the NSE, invert every thesis to find how it fails, use opportunity cost as your real hurdle rate, read promoter and management incentives in Indian filings, spot Munger's psychological tendencies in your own portfolio, and build a written checklist and decision journal. The course closes with full case studies that run Indian companies through every model, and a personal operating system you can use for every future buy and sell decision.
- Build a latticework of core mental models and apply more than one to every stock decision
- Define your circle of competence and use a too-hard pile to eliminate most listed companies quickly
- Invert investment theses and run pre-mortems to find how a stock can destroy capital
Masterclass: Peter Lynch's Approach to Finding Multibaggers in India
A deep, practical masterclass on Peter Lynch's stock-picking method, adapted line by line for Indian markets. Start with what actually drove Lynch's record at Magellan, the maths of how a stock becomes a multibagger through earnings growth plus re-rating, and the amateur's edge an observant Indian investor has over institutions. Learn to sort every company into Lynch's six categories (slow growers, stalwarts, fast growers, cyclicals, turnarounds and asset plays) because each one is bought, valued and sold differently. Go hunting for ideas using Lynch's traits of the perfect stock, the stocks he warned against, scuttlebutt and screener.in screens. Then run the numbers that matter: the PEG ratio and its Indian pitfalls, earnings quality, balance sheet strength, inventories and receivables, and promoter buying and buybacks. Write and test the two-minute drill story, build a portfolio sized for fast growers, and apply category-specific sell rules. Finish with Indian multibagger case studies and a complete Lynch checklist you can run on any NSE-listed company.
- Classify any Indian listed company into Lynch's six categories and apply the right valuation and sell rules for each
- Screen for Lynch-style candidates on screener.in and stress-test them with the PEG ratio, balance sheet and earnings quality checks
- Write a two-minute drill story for a stock, track it quarterly, and know when the story has broken
Masterclass: Philip Fisher's Scuttlebutt Method for Indian Small Caps
A deep, practical masterclass on Philip Fisher's scuttlebutt method, adapted for Indian small caps where coverage is thin, disclosure is patchy and the best information sits with dealers, customers, competitors and former employees. Start with what Fisher actually did and why under-researched Indian small caps suit his approach, then rebuild all fifteen of his points for Indian businesses and turn them into a weighted scorecard. Do the desk work first: annual reports, concall transcripts, BSE and NSE filings, shareholding and pledge data, related party disclosures and alternative data a retail investor can actually access. Then go into the field, within the legal line drawn by SEBI's insider trading regulations, to run conversations with channel partners, customers, competitors, suppliers and industry veterans, and to get real value from plant visits, AGMs and trade fairs. Judge promoters on track record, candour and governance, triangulate conflicting evidence into a written scuttlebutt memo, value growth without overpaying, size positions for small-cap liquidity, and apply Fisher's three reasons to sell. Finish with a full worked case study and a reusable scuttlebutt playbook.
- What Philip Fisher's scuttlebutt method really is, and why thinly covered Indian small caps are where it gives the biggest edge
- How to apply all fifteen of Fisher's points to Indian businesses and score them with a weighted scorecard
- How to do the desk work first using annual reports, concall transcripts, BSE and NSE filings, shareholding, pledge and related party data
Masterclass: Rakesh Jhunjhunwala's Investing Philosophy
A deep masterclass on the investing philosophy of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, the chartered accountant who started with ₹5,000 in 1985 and became India's best known investor. Start with the story and the two engines behind it, trading and long-term investing, and his unshakeable bet on the India growth story, along with an honest look at what his record can and cannot teach a retail investor. Work through his core tenets: buy right and sit tight, backing the right promoters, hunting for scalable businesses with long runways, buying when India is out of favour, and respecting the market enough to accept losses. Learn how he read businesses through consumption and demographic themes, how he paid for growth without overpaying, and how cycles and PSU bets fit his playbook, then build Jhunjhunwala-style screens on screener.in. Study the winners, including Titan, CRISIL, Lupin, Tata Tea and his late-career IPO bets, and the losses and controversies, including the Aptech SEBI settlement and the 2008 drawdown. Finish with how he sized, held and sold positions, why copying superstar shareholding disclosures fails, and a complete Jhunjhunwala checklist you can run on any NSE-listed company.
- Apply Jhunjhunwala's tests for management quality, scalability and long runways to any Indian listed company
- Study his biggest winners and mistakes to understand how conviction, valuation and cycles interact over decades
- Build your own buy right, sit tight process with sizing, holding and selling rules suited to a retail investor
Practice Drills: Applying Munger's Mental Models to a Live Stock Pick
A hands-on drill course for serious investors who know Munger's mental models and now need to use them on a real decision. You pick one live NSE stock and run it through the latticework, drill by drill: test whether it sits inside your circle of competence, filter a screener.in shortlist through the too-hard pile, and map which models actually apply. Then invert the thesis, measure the stock against your opportunity cost, quantify the compounding machine through ROCE and reinvestment runway, and score the moat on evidence. Read promoter and management incentives straight from the annual report, audit related-party deals and pledges, and run Munger's psychological tendencies against your own thesis. Finish by setting a buy price with a margin of safety, sizing the bet with Kelly-style limits, and writing a complete checklist and decision journal entry you can act on. Every drill uses Indian companies, NSE and BSE filings, and INR figures.
- Score honestly whether a stock sits inside your circle of competence before spending hours on it
- Filter a screener.in shortlist to one pick using the too-hard pile and a model map
- Invert a thesis into a ranked list of failure paths with measurable triggers
Practice Drills: Building a DCF Model From Scratch
A practice-first companion to Valuation Methods: DCF, Relative Valuation, and When to Use Each. Instead of more theory, you build a working DCF in Google Sheets from a blank tab: pull ten years of history from screener.in, forecast revenue, margins, capex and working capital, compute free cash flow to the firm, build WACC from the 10-year G-Sec yield, beta and an Indian equity risk premium, add terminal value, and bridge enterprise value to a per-share number you can compare with the NSE price. Then stress-test it with sensitivity tables, bull/base/bear scenarios and a reverse DCF, and finish by building a full model for a company of your choice.
- Lay out a clean, auditable DCF sheet from a blank Google Sheets tab
- Turn ten years of screener.in history into defensible forecast assumptions
- Calculate free cash flow to the firm year by year and reconcile it with reported cash flow
Practice Drills: Building a Sum of the Parts Valuation Model
A practice-first companion to Advanced Valuation: Sum of the Parts and Special Situations. Instead of more theory, you build a sum of the parts model in Google Sheets from a blank tab: pull segment data from annual reports and Ind AS 108 notes, value each operating segment with the right metric (EV/EBITDA, P/E, P/B or embedded value), mark listed stakes to NSE prices, apply holding company discounts and tax on stake sales, and bridge the total to a per-share value you can set against the market price. You then run full builds on Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra and Bajaj Finserv, stress-test every segment multiple, back out the stub value the market is paying for the core business, and finish with an SOTP of a company of your choice.
- Lay out a clean, auditable SOTP sheet from a blank Google Sheets tab
- Extract and normalise segment revenue, EBIT and capital employed from annual report segment notes
- Match each segment to the right valuation metric and a defensible peer multiple from screener.in
Practice Drills: Comparing Relative Valuation Across Peer Companies
A practice-first course for investors who know what a P/E ratio is but want to use peer comparison properly. Every lesson is a drill built on a real Indian sector peer set: paints, FMCG, cement, private banks and NBFCs, quick service restaurants and IT services. You start by choosing peers that are genuinely comparable and pulling clean numbers from screener.in and annual reports. Then you drill each core multiple the way an analyst does: P/E after stripping one-offs, EV/EBITDA built from the balance sheet, P/B against ROE for lenders, and EV/Sales or price to cash flow where earnings mislead. You adjust for growth, returns and accounting differences, check a stock against its own history, and finish by turning peer medians and quartiles into an implied value range and a buy, hold or avoid view. Worksheet figures are illustrative; each drill shows you how to rerun it on live data.
- Build a peer set that is genuinely comparable on business model, size, growth and accounting
- Pull clean, consistent multiples from screener.in and annual reports without mixing TTM, FY, standalone and consolidated figures
- Compute P/E, EV/EBITDA, P/B, EV/Sales and price to cash flow correctly, including the enterprise value bridge
Practice Drills: Evaluating a Distressed Debt Situation
A practice-first course for investors who already understand how distress and the IBC work and now want to evaluate a real situation themselves. Every lesson is a drill built on the kind of numbers you find in Indian annual reports, exchange filings, rating rationales and NCLT orders. You start by spotting stress early and rebuilding a company's debt schedule from the borrowings note. Then you drill liquidity runway, the maturity wall, coverage ratios and how much debt a business can actually carry. You map claims through the Section 53 waterfall, estimate going-concern and liquidation recovery, price a stressed NCD against its expected recovery and work through security receipt economics. You finish by building a probability-weighted scenario tree, computing creditor haircuts from a resolution plan and running a full evaluation of a stressed issuer from filings to a reasoned decision. Worksheet figures are illustrative; each drill shows you how to rerun it on live data.
- Spot early distress signals in rating actions, default disclosures, promoter pledges and auditor remarks before the headlines
- Rebuild a complete debt schedule from the borrowings note, separating secured, unsecured, short-term and long-term obligations
- Measure liquidity runway and the maturity wall, and judge whether a company can refinance or will default
Practice Drills: Scuttlebutt Research on a Real Indian Small Cap
A hands-on drill course for serious investors who know Philip Fisher's scuttlebutt method and now need to run it on a real company. You pick one live Indian small cap and work it end to end. Build the desk file from annual reports, concall transcripts and BSE and NSE filings, map the value chain into a source list, and turn Fisher's fifteen points into questions you can actually test. Draw the UPSI line under SEBI's insider trading regulations before a single call, then script and run dealer checks, customer and competitor interviews, and conversations with ex-employees and suppliers, logging every note in a disciplined format. Back at the desk, run the candour test on five years of management guidance, weight conflicting evidence, and score the company on a weighted fifteen-point scorecard. Finish by valuing the growth, sizing for small-cap liquidity, setting sell triggers and writing a complete scuttlebutt memo you can act on. Every drill uses Indian companies, exchange filings and INR figures.
- Choose a small cap where primary research gives a real edge, and reject ones where it cannot
- Build a complete desk file from annual reports, concalls, shareholding, pledge and related-party filings
- Map the value chain into a prioritised list of dealers, customers, competitors, suppliers and ex-employees
Practice Drills: Stress Testing a High Conviction Bet Using Howard Marks' Cycle Framework
A hands-on drill course for serious independent investors, portfolio managers in training and HNI investors who already know Howard Marks's ideas and now want to use them on a real position. You start by writing down the high conviction bet you want to test, separating first-level from second-level reasons for owning it, and mapping its exposure to each Marks cycle. You then read the cycle before sizing: score an Indian market temperature checklist, place the stock's sector on the profit and credit cycles, and measure where the sentiment pendulum sits on the name. The core drills stress test the thesis itself with bull, base and bear alternative histories, a shut credit window hitting the balance sheet, and valuation multiple compression when the pendulum swings back. Finally you convert the stress test into a position size, adjust that size for cycle temperature, set cycle-aware add, trim and exit triggers, replay a 2007 Indian infrastructure bet through the framework, and finish with a capstone stress test of your own bet end to end. Every drill uses NSE and BSE listed companies, screener.in data and INR figures.
- Write a high conviction thesis in a form that can actually be stress tested
- Separate first-level from second-level reasons for owning a stock
- Map one position's exposure to the economic, profit, credit and psychology cycles
Understanding Cross Holdings and Group Company Valuation
A hands-on course on how Indian business groups are wired together and what that means for the price you pay for a share. Teaches experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs to trace ownership through subsidiaries, associates, and promoter vehicles, read standalone versus consolidated numbers under Ind AS 110 and Ind AS 28, separate core business value from the value of stakes held, and spot where cross holdings inflate market caps, leak value through related party deals, or hide an unlocking opportunity. Built on real NSE and BSE cases including the Tata group and Tata Sons, Bajaj Holdings and Maharashtra Scooters, Grasim and Aditya Birla Capital, Mahindra and Mahindra, and Reliance Industries, using BSE shareholding filings, annual reports, SEBI regulations, and Screener.in throughout.
- Map any Indian business group from BSE shareholding pattern filings and annual report subsidiary lists
- Read standalone and consolidated statements correctly and know where associate and JV profits appear
- Split a company's value into core business value and the value of stakes it holds, without double counting
Understanding Distressed Debt and Turnaround Investing
A practical guide to investing in companies under financial stress, built for experienced Indian retail investors, active traders, and HNIs. Covers the full distress cycle: how the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code works, why equity usually gets wiped out under the Section 53 waterfall, how to map a capital structure and estimate recovery value, which distressed instruments Indian investors can actually access, and how to separate a genuine turnaround from a value trap. Uses real cases throughout, including Bhushan Steel, Essar Steel, Jet Airways, Ruchi Soya, Suzlon, Vodafone Idea, and Yes Bank, with data from Screener.in, NCLT orders, and exchange filings.
- Read the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code process from default to resolution and know where equity sits in the waterfall
- Map a stressed company's capital structure and estimate liquidation and recovery values
- Understand security receipts, stressed NCDs, and distressed credit AIFs and which ones a retail investor can access
Understanding Economic Moats and Competitive Advantage
A practical guide to identifying, measuring, and valuing durable competitive advantages in Indian listed companies. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who already read financial statements and want to separate genuinely great businesses from temporarily good ones. Covers the five moat sources (intangibles, switching costs, network effects, cost advantages, efficient scale), how moats show up in ROCE, margins, and cash flows on Screener.in, how moats erode through disruption and regulation, and how to avoid overpaying for quality, using real NSE and BSE listed examples throughout.
Understanding Special Situations Investing: Spin Offs, Demergers, Buybacks
A strategy course on making money from corporate events rather than from earnings forecasts. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who want a repeatable process for demergers, spin-offs, buybacks, open offers, delistings, rights issues, and merger arbitrage on NSE and BSE. Covers why these events create mispricing, where to find them before the crowd, how to read the scheme documents and SEBI filings that decide the payoff, how to size positions when capital is locked up, and how the post-October 2024 tax rules change the buyback trade. Anchored in real Indian cases including Jio Financial Services, ITC Hotels, Siemens Energy India, Tata Motors, TCS and Infosys buybacks, the Reliance and Bharti Airtel rights issues, the Vedanta five-way split, and the HDFC merger, using BSE corporate announcements, NCLT filings, SEBI regulations, and Screener.in throughout.
Valuation Methods: DCF, Relative Valuation, and When to Use Each
A practical, India-focused course for investors who can already read financial statements and now want to answer the harder question: what is this stock actually worth? Build a DCF from the ground up for an Indian listed company, from free cash flow and cost of equity using Indian government bond yields, through WACC, terminal value and the bridge to value per share. Then learn relative valuation properly: P/E, PEG, EV/EBITDA, P/B and historical valuation bands on screener.in, and how to pick a peer set that is genuinely comparable. Most importantly, learn which method fits which business, from FMCG and IT services to cyclicals, banks and NBFCs, loss-making new-age listings and holding companies. Finish with reverse DCF, common valuation traps, reconciling methods that disagree, and a full case study on a Nifty 50 company that ends in a buy, hold or avoid decision.
Technical Trading
6 courses
Advanced TradingView: Multi Timeframe and Strategy Backtesting
You already know your way around TradingView: charts, indicators, alerts. This course takes you to the part most traders skip. First, multi-timeframe analysis done with discipline: how to pick a timeframe stack that fits NSE's 375-minute session, read trend, setup and trigger from different timeframes, and resolve conflicts between them. Then the Strategy Tester, decoded: which metrics actually matter, how to load realistic Zerodha brokerage, STT, exchange charges, GST, stamp duty and slippage in INR, and why intrabar fill assumptions flatter almost every backtest. Finally, you build and test a multi-timeframe strategy on Nifty 50 stocks, with lookahead bias shut out and the results read honestly. Built for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNI investors who want evidence before conviction.
- Choose a timeframe stack that fits the NSE session and your holding period
- Read trend, setup and trigger top-down, and handle timeframes that disagree
- Build a synced multi-chart TradingView layout with higher-timeframe indicators that do not repaint
Introduction to Technical Analysis (Extended)
A ground-up, India-specific guide to reading stock charts, built for people who are not trying to become day traders. Written for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers and retirees who keep seeing candlestick charts on Zerodha Kite and Groww, hear phrases like '52-week high' and 'broke its 200 DMA' on business news, and want to actually understand what they mean. Unlike a trader's course, this one teaches charts from an investor's lens: what they tell you about a stock or the market, how long-term investors and momentum investors use them differently, and where charts fit alongside fundamentals rather than replacing them. Loaded with real Indian case studies across Infosys, HDFC Bank, IRCTC, Waaree Energies, Suzlon, Zomato, Yes Bank, Titan and Eicher Motors, plus Nifty 50, Nifty Bank and Nifty IT index history, so every concept is anchored to a real Indian market story instead of a textbook example.
- How to read a price chart on Zerodha Kite, Groww or TradingView without needing a trading background
- What financial news actually means by '52-week high', 'all-time high' and 'broke its 200 DMA'
- How long-term investors use charts differently from intraday and swing traders
Practice Drills: Identifying Support and Resistance on Live Charts
A hands-on companion to Technical Analysis: Charts, Patterns and Indicators. Instead of more theory, this course puts you in front of real Indian market charts and has you practice spotting support and resistance the way a trader actually does, one drill at a time.
- Spot horizontal support and resistance on live Nifty and Bank Nifty charts
- Tell a strong level from a weak one using touches, volume, and recency
- Draw and trade off dynamic trendline support and resistance
Practice Drills: Reading and Interpreting Candlestick Patterns
A hands-on drill course for practicing candlestick pattern recognition on real Indian market charts. Skip the theory recap and go straight to spotting, naming, and interpreting single-candle and multi-candle patterns the way you will actually see them on a Zerodha or screener.in chart.
- Identify single-candle patterns like Doji, Hammer, and Shooting Star on real NSE and BSE charts
- Distinguish high-conviction candles from indecision using Marubozu and Spinning Top drills
- Read multi-candle reversal signals: Engulfing patterns, Morning Star, and Evening Star
TradingView for Beginners: Charts, Indicators, and Alerts
A hands-on guide to TradingView built around NSE and BSE charts. Covers setting up your watchlist for Indian symbols, reading candlestick and other chart types across timeframes, using core indicators like moving averages, RSI, and volume, and setting up alerts so you can follow the market without staring at a screen all day.
- Why TradingView is widely used by Indian retail investors and how to set it up for NSE/BSE symbols
- How to build and organize a watchlist using correct exchange suffixes
- How to navigate the TradingView chart interface
Technical Analysis — Charts, Patterns & Indicators
A foundational course in technical analysis, covering support, resistance, trend lines, moving averages and key indicators used to read price charts. Shows how to recognize common chart patterns and put them together into a structured trading system.
- Learn the foundation of technical analysis and trend reading
- Study support, resistance, moving averages and key indicators
- Recognize chart patterns and build a trading system
Options & Derivatives
7 courses
Advanced Options Strategies for Portfolio Protection
A defined-risk framework for protecting an existing portfolio with options, built for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who already know how calls and puts work. Moves past speculation into protective puts, collars, spreads, index-level and tail-risk hedging, and the real cost, margin, and tax mechanics of running a hedge in the Indian market. Uses real Indian drawdowns, including the March 2020 crash and the 2022 correction, alongside Nifty, Bank Nifty, and India VIX data, SPAN margin mechanics, and ITR treatment of options P&L throughout.
- Hedge a portfolio using protective puts, collars and covered calls
- Apply spreads and index-level hedges across diversified portfolios
- Build a systematic framework covering costs, taxes and margin
Practice Drills: Structuring an Options Hedge for a Live Portfolio
A practice-first companion to Advanced Options Strategies for Portfolio Protection. Instead of more theory, you carry a single model portfolio of NSE-listed stocks through every step of building a working hedge: measure its beta against the Nifty 50, turn that into a hedge ratio and a lot count, pick put strikes and expiries, price the hedge as a percentage of portfolio value, and stress-test it against 10%, 20% and 30% falls. Then you finance it with put spreads and collars, deal with single-stock and bank-heavy concentration, check SPAN and exposure margin, account for STT and charges, and manage the hedge live through rolls, rallies and a crash. The course ends with you writing a six-month hedge plan for your own holdings.
- Measure a portfolio's beta to the Nifty 50 and convert it into an exact hedge ratio and lot count
- Choose put strikes and expiries against a stated drawdown you are willing to accept
- Express hedge cost as an annualised percentage of portfolio value and compare structures on that basis
Practice Drills: Using Options for Basic Portfolio Hedging
A practice-first companion to Understanding Options as a Hedging Tool for Investors. You already know what a protective put, a collar, and portfolio beta are; this course makes you work them with real numbers. Starting from a live NSE option chain, you will drill the floor and cost of a protective put, compare strikes and expiries, estimate your portfolio's beta from mutual fund factsheets, size a Nifty hedge in lots, build a zero-cost collar, add up the true all-in cost of protection, and decide when to roll, hold, or let a hedge expire. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who want a repeatable, calculator-backed routine for protecting a portfolio around budgets, elections, and results season, without turning into full-time F&O traders.
- Read an NSE option chain the way a hedger does, focusing on premium, liquidity, and implied volatility
- Calculate the floor, breakeven, and cost as a percentage of portfolio for any protective put
- Compare protection across strikes, expiries, and India VIX regimes before you pay for it
Understanding Futures Contracts and Margin Trading
An advanced, mechanics-first course on futures contracts and leveraged trading for experienced retail investors, active traders, and HNIs who already know what a futures contract is. Covers contract specifications, cost of carry and basis, open interest and rollover, the full NSE Clearing margin stack (SPAN, exposure, mark-to-market, peak margin, shortfall penalties), broker square-off rules, Margin Trading Facility (MTF) and pledging, directional and hedging strategies with Nifty and stock futures, calendar spreads, cash-futures arbitrage, physical settlement, MWPL ban periods, and the taxation of F&O income in India. Built around live NSE contract data, SEBI circulars, and Zerodha-style broker mechanics.
- Read any NSE futures contract specification and compute fair value from the cost of carry
- Explain exactly how SPAN, exposure, and peak margins are computed and why margin calls happen
- Use Margin Trading Facility and pledging correctly, and compute the true cost of leverage
Understanding Options as a Hedging Tool for Investors
A concept-first course on options as insurance for people who already own stocks and mutual funds. Built for experienced retail investors, mutual fund investors, and salaried professionals who want to understand when and how to protect a portfolio without turning into F&O traders. Covers the hedger's mindset, protective puts, hedging a mutual fund portfolio with Nifty options, covered calls and collars, the real costs, margins, and taxes of hedging in India, and a clear framework for when hedging is worth it. Uses NSE contracts, India VIX, real Indian market events, Zerodha costs, and SEBI's F&O rules throughout.
- Tell the difference between using options to hedge and using them to speculate, and why the mindset changes every decision
- Treat a put option as an insurance policy, mapping strike, premium, and expiry to deductible, cost, and term
- Hedge a diversified stock or mutual fund portfolio with Nifty options by adjusting for beta and sizing the number of lots
Futures & Derivatives Explained
An introduction to derivatives and futures contracts, covering how futures are priced and the mechanics behind a futures trade. Explores common futures strategies alongside real market rules and famous blowups that show why risk management matters.
- Learn what derivatives are and how futures contracts work
- Understand futures pricing and common trading strategies
- Study market rules and famous blowups to manage risk
Options Trading from Zero
A beginner's guide to options trading, covering what options are, how to read an options chain and the basics of buying your first option. Introduces core options strategies, option pricing, the Greeks, and the trading rules every new options trader needs to know.
- Understand what options are and how they get priced
- Read an options chain and buy your first option
- Learn basic strategies, the Greeks and key trading rules
Mutual Funds & ETFs
6 courses
Mutual Funds and Passive Investing Basics (Extended)
Description coming soon.
Navigating AMFI and Mutual Fund Utility Portals
Mutual fund paperwork does not end after your first SIP. This course walks you through the infrastructure behind every mutual fund investment in India, AMFI, the RTAs (CAMS and KFintech), and the MF Utility platform, so you can register once, read your Consolidated Account Statement without confusion, and handle SIPs, switches, and redemptions yourself.
- What AMFI, CAMS, and KFintech actually do, and why every mutual fund investor deals with them whether they realise it or not
- How to complete KYC through a KRA and why it only needs to be done once
- How to register on MF Utility, get a CAN, and link your folios
Practice Drills: Comparing Two Mutual Fund Factsheets
A hands-on, India-specific drill set for actually reading a mutual fund factsheet and comparing two funds side by side instead of just going by star ratings. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened an AMC factsheet PDF or a screener.in mutual fund page and not known which numbers actually matter. Walks through expense ratio, exit load, fund manager tenure, portfolio turnover, trailing versus rolling returns, and the risk metrics worth trusting, then puts that knowledge to work on real head-to-head comparisons: two large cap funds, a direct versus regular plan of the same fund, and an active fund against its index fund benchmark.
Practice Drills: Reconstructing a Fund Manager's Public Portfolio Logic
Every Indian mutual fund publishes its full portfolio every month. Most investors glance at the top ten holdings and move on. This drill course teaches you to read those disclosures the way an analyst at a rival AMC would: as evidence of a decision process. You will download and clean a real monthly portfolio file, classify holdings into SEBI market-cap buckets, measure concentration and active share against the benchmark, compute weighted portfolio valuations, and place the fund on a value, growth and quality map. Then you move from snapshots to behaviour, building a month-over-month change log that separates genuine buying from price drift, spots tranche entries and exits, and estimates turnover and cash calls. You will extend the method to PMS managers and named large investors through quarterly shareholding patterns and bulk and block deals, learn exactly what public data cannot tell you, and finish by writing a ten-line rulebook for a fund of your choice and testing it against the next month's disclosure.
- Source and clean AMC monthly portfolio disclosures into a reusable reconstruction workbook
- Classify holdings by SEBI market-cap bucket and measure concentration, active share and sector tilts against the benchmark
- Compute weighted portfolio P/E, P/B and ROE and place a fund on a value, growth and quality map
Using Value Research Online for Mutual Fund Analysis
Value Research Online is the tool most serious Indian mutual fund investors check before they buy. This course teaches you to actually use it: read its star ratings correctly, pull the metrics that matter, compare funds side by side, and build a shortlist you can defend, instead of picking funds off a screener's top-10 list.
- Navigate Value Research Online and set up a free account
- Read and correctly interpret VRO's 1-5 star fund rating system
- Understand NAV, AUM, and expense ratio as shown on VRO
Mutual Funds & ETFs — The Complete Guide
A complete guide to how mutual funds and ETFs actually work, covering how to evaluate a fund, compare index funds and ETFs, and use SIPs and SWPs effectively. Walks through the tax rules on mutual funds and shows how to build a mutual fund portfolio suited to your goals.
- Learn how mutual funds actually work and get evaluated
- Compare index funds and ETFs as portfolio building blocks
- Use SIPs, SWPs and tax rules to build your portfolio
Macro & Markets
51 courses
A Brief History of the Indian Stock Market
A concise, story-driven history of the Indian stock market for anyone curious about how it actually came to be, no prior market knowledge needed. Start under the literal banyan tree where the Bombay Stock Exchange began, walk through the broker rings and badla system that ran Indian markets before there was a real regulator, and see how the 1991 crisis and the Harshad Mehta scam forced India to build SEBI and the NSE almost from scratch. Then trace how the market modernised: paper shares gave way to demat accounts and the NSDL, the Ketan Parekh scam exposed the next generation of gaps, and settlement moved from a leisurely weekly cycle down to T+1. Written for general market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track who want the origin story behind the market they trade in today.
Advanced Analysis of Sovereign Debt Sustainability
A rigorous framework for assessing whether a sovereign's debt load is sustainable, built for macro-focused investors, fund managers, and senior finance professionals who need to move past headline debt-to-GDP numbers. Covers the debt dynamics equation, the IMF-World Bank Debt Sustainability Framework, market-based risk signals like bond spreads and CDS, and the mechanics of default and restructuring. Anchored throughout in India's own fiscal position (FRBM, Finance Commission, G-Sec yields, RBI) alongside real emerging-market case studies including Sri Lanka, Zambia, and Ghana.
Advanced Frameworks for Predicting Recession and Recovery Phases
A framework-driven course on identifying where the economy sits in the business cycle and what that means for markets, built for macro-focused investors, fund managers running top-down allocation calls, and senior finance professionals. Goes from the mechanics of leading, lagging, and coincident indicators through yield curve and credit signals, real-economy recession data, recovery-phase identification, and cycle-based portfolio positioning, grounded throughout in Indian data (RBI policy, IIP, PMI, NSE sector performance) and major historical cycles.
Advanced Geopolitical Risk Modeling for Investment Decisions
A rigorous, quantitative approach to treating geopolitical risk as an investable factor rather than headline noise. Built for macro-focused investors, fund managers, and senior finance professionals, this course covers the transmission channels through which geopolitical shocks hit trade, currencies, commodities, and capital flows, how to build and use a geopolitical risk index, scenario analysis and stress-testing for portfolios, and sector- and asset-class-level sensitivities. Anchored throughout in Indian market context: India VIX, Nifty drawdowns, RBI intervention, FPI flows, and real events including Balakot, Covid-19, and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Global Investing: Accessing US and International Markets from India
A practical, India-first guide to putting money into US and international markets legally and efficiently. Covers why global diversification matters for a rupee-denominated portfolio, every real route available to an Indian resident (LRS-funded direct US broking, Indian mutual fund and fund-of-fund routes, NSE-listed international ETFs), and the tax and compliance layer that trips up most first-time global investors: TCS on remittances, US withholding tax and the India-US DTAA, capital gains treatment, and Schedule FA reporting. Built for experienced retail investors and mutual fund investors who already understand Indian markets and are ready to look beyond them.
- Why and how much of a rupee portfolio should sit outside India
- How the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) actually works, including its limits and TCS
- How to open and fund a US brokerage account from India, and what it costs
Global Macro Investing: Currency, Rates, and Cross Border Flows
An advanced course for experienced Indian investors, active traders and HNIs who want to understand the global forces that move the Nifty, the rupee and G-Sec yields. Covers how interest rates, central bank policy, currency mechanics and cross border capital flows connect, with the RBI, USD/INR, FPI flows, bond index inclusion and the US dollar cycle at the centre. Ends with a practical framework for forming a macro view and expressing it through NSE-listed products.
Introduction to Behavioral Economics Beyond Investing
Behavioral finance explains why you buy high and sell low. This course goes further: it's about how the same predictable irrationality shapes EMIs, insurance, pricing, workplace incentives, government policy, and entire markets. Built for investors and finance professionals who already understand loss aversion and herd mentality in a portfolio context and want to see the same forces at work in everyday spending, business strategy, corporate India, public policy design, and macroeconomic cycles. Covers real Indian context throughout: EPF/NPS defaults, no-cost EMIs, Swiggy and Zomato pricing, UPI adoption, PMJDY, Swachh Bharat, and the behavioral roots of bubbles and bank runs.
- How behavioral economics differs from behavioral finance and where the two overlap
- Why defaults, framing, and choice architecture quietly steer everyday financial decisions
- How Indian businesses use anchoring, decoys, and loss framing in pricing and negotiation
Introduction to Famous Stock Market Crashes: 1929, 2008, and Beyond
A beginner-friendly, India-first tour of the stock market crashes that shaped modern investing, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track who want to understand why markets collapse and what those collapses teach. Learn how bubbles form, why leverage and panic turn a fall into a crash, and walk through the Great Crash of 1929, Black Monday 1987, the dot-com bust and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Then turn to India's own crashes, from the Harshad Mehta scam of 1992 and the Ketan Parekh crash of 2001 to the March 2020 COVID fall on the Nifty and Sensex, and see how SEBI, RBI and the exchanges responded. Finish with the common threads behind every crash and a practical framework for building a portfolio that survives the next one.
Introduction to Geopolitics and Its Impact on Markets
A practical guide to reading geopolitical events the way markets do, built for Indian investors and finance professionals who want to understand why the Nifty gaps down on a Middle East headline or why the rupee wobbles when the US and China clash, not just react to the news. Covers the building blocks of geopolitical risk, the US-China rivalry and its supply chain fallout, energy and commodity chokepoints, and how FII flows and the RBI respond when tensions rise. Uses real events including the Russia-Ukraine war, semiconductor export controls, the 2022-23 energy shock, and India's own border tensions, with NSE, BSE, Nifty, and rupee data throughout.
Introduction to Global Stock Markets: US, Europe, and Asia Compared
A beginner-friendly, India-first tour of the world's major stock markets, built for market enthusiasts, macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Learn how the biggest exchanges compare by size and listings, how MSCI and FTSE classify developed, emerging, and frontier markets, and where NSE and BSE rank. Explore the US market through NYSE, Nasdaq, the S&P 500, and SEC rules compared with SEBI's; Europe through London, Euronext, Frankfurt, and indices like the FTSE 100, DAX, and STOXX 600; and Asia through Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore. Finish by comparing valuations, earnings growth, and sector mix across regions, understanding how currencies, time zones, and FPI flows move the Nifty, and building a simple global dashboard to check before NSE opens.
Introduction to Market Cycles Through History
A beginner-friendly, history-first tour of how markets have moved in cycles for over three centuries, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Learn the classic cycle theories and the credit and interest rate engine behind them, walk through the global eras that shaped modern markets, from early speculative manias to the post-war boom, 1970s stagflation and Japan's lost decades, then trace India's own market history era by era, from the early Bombay brokers to liberalisation, the 2003 to 2008 supercycle, the long grind that followed and the SIP-driven era of today. Extend the lens to commodity, interest rate and sector cycles, and finish with a practical, cycle-aware way to use history without being fooled by it.
Introduction to Sovereign Debt and Country Risk
A practical on-ramp to sovereign debt and country risk for Indian investors and finance professionals who want to understand why governments borrow, how the market prices a country's creditworthiness, and what that means for portfolios. Covers the mechanics of sovereign borrowing, how credit rating agencies and bond spreads size up country risk, what happens when that risk turns into crisis, and how FIIs and Indian investors actually use country risk in decision-making. Anchored in India's own borrowing programme and sovereign rating, alongside real cases like Sri Lanka's 2022 default.
Introduction to Trade Wars and Their Market Consequences
A practical framework for understanding trade wars not as headline noise but as a macro force that moves currencies, commodities, and portfolios. Built for investors and finance professionals who want to go beyond news-cycle reactions to tariff announcements. Covers what trade wars actually are (tariffs, sanctions, currency manipulation), the history and mechanics of the 2018-19 US-China trade war, how trade tensions transmit into Indian markets through the INR, FII flows, and commodity prices, which sectors (IT, pharma, auto, metals) win and lose, and how to build a practical watchlist of indicators to track ongoing trade tensions.
Introduction to the History of Money and Banking
A story-driven history of money and banking for anyone who has ever wondered why a printed piece of paper can buy a week of groceries. Start with the problem barter never solved, move through cowrie shells, punch-marked coins and Sher Shah Suri's rupiya, and see how goldsmith receipts and Indian hundis turned into paper money and modern banking. Learn how banks actually create money, why bank runs happen, and why the world built central banks and then abandoned the gold standard. Then follow the Indian story closely: the founding of the RBI, bank nationalisation in 1969, the 1991 reforms that brought back private banks, demonetisation in 2016, and the UPI and e-rupee era. Written for general market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track who want to understand the system their money lives inside.
Macroeconomics for Retail Investors
A practical, India-specific guide to the macro forces that actually move your portfolio: GDP growth, inflation, RBI interest rate policy, the rupee, and global linkages like the US Fed and crude oil. Built for retail investors, first-time demat holders, and salaried professionals who want to read a Union Budget speech, an RBI monetary policy statement, or a GDP print and understand what it means for the Nifty, their EMI, and their FD returns, not just repeat headlines. Uses real Indian data releases, RBI and MoSPI sources, and NSE/BSE market reactions throughout.
- See why macro trends matter to your own portfolio
- Understand GDP and India's growth story in context
- Track inflation, CPI, WPI and RBI interest rate moves
Masterclass: Building an Independent Macro Research Practice
A practitioner's blueprint for turning macro insight into an independent research business. Covers positioning and edge, building an Indian and global macro data stack from RBI, MOSPI, NSE, FRED and IMF sources, a repeatable regime-based research process, designing research products that fund managers actually pay for, SEBI Research Analyst compliance, pricing, distribution, track-record discipline, and scaling from a solo newsletter to a research house. Built for senior macro investors, fund managers and top-down strategists who want to publish under their own name.
- Define a coverage universe and analytical identity that gives an independent macro shop a real edge over sell-side research
- Assemble a working Indian and global macro database from RBI DBIE, MOSPI, CMIE, NSE, FRED, IMF and BIS sources
- Run a repeatable regime-based research process that turns a macro view into expressible calls in Nifty, G-Secs, INR and sectors
Masterclass: How Top Global Macro Funds Build Their Worldview
A process-level masterclass on how global macro funds such as Bridgewater, Brevan Howard and the Soros-era Quantum Fund turn economic data into a structured worldview and then into positions. Built for senior macro investors, fund managers making top-down calls and strategists who want a repeatable method rather than opinions. Covers the growth, inflation and liquidity engine, central bank reaction functions, dollar and capital-flow dynamics, scenario trees and probability weighting, market-implied views, and the discipline of expressing, sizing and invalidating a macro call, grounded throughout in Indian markets (RBI, Nifty, G-Sec, INR, FPI flows) and major historical episodes.
Masterclass: Lessons From a Career Spent Forecasting Cycles
A masterclass for senior macro investors, fund managers, and top-down strategists who already know the indicators and now want the judgment that comes from using them through several full cycles. Instead of another indicator catalogue, this course is organised around lessons: why a forecaster's real job is positioning rather than prediction, how growth, liquidity, and sentiment cycles interact and why liquidity usually leads, how to read a turn before it is visible in reported data, and which mistakes cost the most (being early, falling in love with a thesis, confusing a liquidity cycle with an earnings cycle). Indian cycles from 2003 to 2008, 2010 to 2013, the 2018 NBFC crisis, March 2020, and the 2021 to 2024 rate cycle are used as the working material, alongside the RBI, Fed, and global liquidity backdrop that Indian markets actually trade on. The final chapters convert judgment into a repeatable practice: sizing macro views for uncertainty, rotating sectors and factors across the Indian cycle, hedging with Nifty options and duration, and grading your own forecasts. Closes with a capstone where you write your own cycle playbook.
- Separate the growth, liquidity, and sentiment cycles and identify which one is driving Indian markets at any point
- Read a cycle turn from credit spreads, RBI and Fed liquidity operations, earnings revisions, and market breadth before headline data confirms it
- Recognise the recurring forecasting errors that cost professional macro investors the most and build guardrails against them
Masterclass: Ray Dalio's Principles for Navigating the Changing World Order
A masterclass for senior macro investors, fund managers and top-down strategists who want to use Ray Dalio's Big Cycle framework as a working tool rather than a reading-list item. The course dissects the three cycles Dalio built his model on: the long-term debt and money cycle, the internal order and disorder cycle, and the external order cycle of rising and declining powers. It walks through the eight measures of national power and the archetypal stages of rise, top and decline using the Dutch, British and American reserve-currency eras, then tests the framework against China and, in depth, against India. The second half converts the framework into portfolio decisions: an All Weather style allocation built from Nifty, G-Secs, gold and international funds, the devaluation and hard-asset playbook with India's own 1991 and 2013 episodes as evidence, FII flow and rupee risk, and position sizing under geopolitical uncertainty. The final chapter takes the critiques seriously and closes with a capstone in which you score India, the US and China on Dalio's eight measures using public data sources.
- Explain the three cycles behind Dalio's Big Cycle model and how they interact to produce a changing world order
- Score any country on the eight measures of power and place it on the archetypal rise, top and decline curve
- Trace how the Dutch guilder, British pound and US dollar gained and lost reserve status, and what the debt cycle looked like at each turn
Masterclass: Ruchir Sharma's Framework for Spotting Breakout Nations
A masterclass on the top-down framework Ruchir Sharma built over two decades of running emerging market money at Morgan Stanley and later Rockefeller International, and set out in Breakout Nations (2012) and The Rise and Fall of Nations (2016). The course starts with his central warning, that growth rarely persists and most emerging market stories end in mean reversion, then works through each of his ten rules: working-age population growth, the political cycle, good and bad billionaires, the perils of the state, geographic sweet spots, factories first, the price of onions, cheap currencies, the kiss of debt, and hype watch. Each rule is turned into a measurable indicator with named data sources (IMF WEO, World Bank, BIS, RBI, Forbes), scored on real countries including China, Brazil, Turkey, Vietnam, Poland and India, and connected to what an Indian investor can actually buy through international mutual funds, ETFs, the LRS route and domestic proxies. Closes with a capstone where you build and defend your own breakout nations scorecard.
- Why almost no country sustains fast growth for more than a decade, and what that implies for every long-run emerging market thesis
- Each of Ruchir Sharma's ten rules as a concrete indicator with a threshold, a data source and a known failure mode
- How to read a country's credit growth, current account, inflation and currency together to spot a crisis two to three years early
Practice Drills: Building a Breakout Nations Style Country Scorecard
A drill course for macro investors who already know the Breakout Nations rules and now want to run them as a repeatable process. You will fix a country universe and a scoring date, translate each rule into an indicator with a threshold and a named source (IMF WEO, World Bank WDI, BIS, RBI, national statistics offices), pull and clean the data, convert indicators into scores and weight them honestly. Then you score the growth-engine rules (demographics, investment, manufacturing, politics, billionaires, the state) and the stress rules (inflation, currency, credit, current account, hype) across a panel of emerging markets, rank them on one sheet, back-test the scorecard on past breakouts and busts, and stress-test the ranking against alternative weights. The course closes with India: scoring it rule by rule, writing a watch list of the indicators most likely to move its score, translating country scores into an allocation through LRS, international feeder funds and Nifty proxies, and presenting and defending the finished scorecard.
- Fix a country universe, a scoring date and a data vintage so the scorecard can be rerun and audited
- Convert each of the ten rules into an indicator with a threshold, a named source and a known failure mode
- Pull, clean and align country data from the IMF, World Bank, BIS and national sources, including missing and revised figures
Practice Drills: Building a Business Cycle Positioning Framework
A drill-heavy course for investors and finance professionals who understand the business cycle in theory but have never turned it into a decision process. You build one framework from scratch for a sample ₹25 lakh Indian multi-asset portfolio: choose and source the indicators, score them, combine them into a phase call, test that call against sixteen years of Indian history including the years it would have got wrong, translate phases into sized allocation tilts with costs and taxes counted, and finish with a working Google Sheet and a quarterly positioning memo. Educational practice only, not investment advice.
- Pick a compact dashboard of Indian growth, inflation, rates, credit and market indicators that actually lead the cycle
- Source every indicator from free public data: MOSPI, RBI DBIE, GST releases, PMI and NSE
- Convert raw indicators into z-scores and direction signals that can be compared and combined
Practice Drills: Building a Commodity Cycle Tracking Sheet
A hands-on drill course for investors and finance professionals who want macro context they can actually check. You will build a commodity cycle tracking sheet in Google Sheets from scratch: pulling free public data for crude oil, gold, copper, and steel, converting it to rupees, measuring trend and range position, adding inventory, futures curve, and demand signals, and combining them into a phase scorecard that says recovery, expansion, slowdown, or contraction. Then you test the scorecard against the 2020 to 2022 cycle, map each phase to Indian sectors and listed companies, and run a complete monthly update. Educational content only, not investment advice.
- How to choose commodities, free data sources, and an update rhythm for a cycle tracker you will actually maintain
- How to convert dollar commodity prices into rupee prices and see how much of a move is the commodity and how much is the rupee
- How to measure trend and range position with moving averages, year-on-year change, and percentile ranks
Practice Drills: Building a Timeline of Major Market Crashes
A hands-on drill course for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Instead of only reading about crashes, you build your own timeline of them. You start by fixing the rules: what counts as a crash, how to date a peak and a trough, and how to measure the fall and the recovery. Then you log India's major crashes one by one, from the 1992 Harshad Mehta scam and the 2000 to 2001 dot-com and Ketan Parekh fall to the 2004 election day crash, 2008, the 2013 taper tantrum and the March 2020 COVID crash, each in the same format. You add the big global crashes alongside, compare every entry by depth, speed and recovery, pull out the triggers that keep coming back, and finish with a complete timeline and a one-page summary you can update for the next crash.
- Tell a correction, a bear market and a crash apart using clear drawdown thresholds
- Find the peak and trough of any fall and measure its depth, speed and recovery time
- Pick the right data for the job: Sensex or Nifty, price index or total return index
Practice Drills: Building a Top Down Macro Investment Thesis
An advanced hands-on drill course for macro-focused investors, senior finance professionals and fund managers who allocate top down. You build one complete macro investment thesis on India from scratch: frame the macro question and your variant view against consensus, build a macro dashboard from RBI, MOSPI and CGA data, read the policy path from rates, liquidity and the yield curve, overlay US rates, the dollar, crude and FPI flows, trace the transmission chain from macro driver to corporate earnings, check what Nifty valuations already price in, rank sectors by macro sensitivity, pick the stocks and instruments that carry the exposure most cleanly, size and hedge the positions, build probability-weighted scenarios with signposts and kill criteria, test the process on India's 2022 rate hike cycle, and write the full thesis memo.
- How to frame a macro question and state a variant view that differs from the consensus already in prices
- How to build and read an India macro dashboard from RBI, MOSPI, CGA and NSE data, including rates, liquidity and the yield curve
- How to overlay global drivers such as US rates, the dollar, crude oil and FPI flows on a domestic view
Practice Drills: Comparing Sovereign Debt Risk Across Two Countries
A hands-on drill course for investors and finance professionals who need macro context they can defend. India carries roughly twice Indonesia's debt-to-GDP ratio, yet the rating agencies place the two within a notch of each other. Working out why is the whole skill. You take one fixed pair, India and Indonesia, and compare them drill by drill: build a clean side-by-side data sheet from IMF, RBI and Finance Ministry sources, normalise fiscal years and government definitions, then compare debt ratios, deficits, interest burdens and the debt dynamics equation. You examine who holds each country's debt, its currency and maturity mix, current accounts and forex reserves, then read 10-year yields, real yields, ratings and CDS spreads. Finally you stress both countries under growth, rate and currency shocks, calibrate your framework against Sri Lanka's 2022 default, build a weighted scorecard and write the two-country risk note. Every drill uses real Indian data sources and INR figures.
- Pick a fair comparison pair and build a side-by-side sovereign data sheet from primary sources
- Normalise fiscal years, general vs central government figures and currencies before comparing anything
- Compare debt ratios, deficits, primary balances and interest-to-revenue burdens and say which matters more
Practice Drills: Comparing Two Historical Financial Crises Side by Side
A drill course for curious investors and macro readers who know the stories of famous crashes but have never compared two of them properly. You learn one fixed comparison template and one consistent way to measure a crash, then work through four Indian pairs: the 2008 Global Financial Crisis against the 2020 COVID crash, the Harshad Mehta scam against the Ketan Parekh scam, the 1991 balance of payments crisis against the 2013 taper tantrum, and IL&FS against Yes Bank. Each pair is scored on the same rows, so the differences that matter stand out. You finish by building your own comparison and turning the common threads into a checklist you can use the next time markets fall.
- Compare any two crises with one fixed eight-row template: trigger, transmission, depth, speed, duration, policy response, recovery and lasting change
- Measure a crash consistently using peak, trough, drawdown and time to recover on the Nifty and Sensex
- Find and read the primary data yourself on NSE, RBI DBIE and SEBI
Practice Drills: Constructing a Global Macro Worldview Memo
A hands-on drill course for senior macro investors, fund managers making top-down calls, and strategists who need to put a worldview on paper and defend it. You work through one simulated assignment end to end: an India-focused multi-asset fund needs its quarterly global macro worldview memo, and you are writing it. You will assemble a macro dashboard across growth, inflation, liquidity, and external indicators, read what curves, breakevens, and FX forwards already price, place the world and India in a regime, and model how the Fed and the RBI are likely to react. You will then build a probability-weighted scenario tree, map each branch to outcomes for the Nifty, G-Secs, the rupee, gold, and crude, choose the cleanest expression for each view, size the book against a risk budget, and set invalidation triggers. The course closes with a red-team pre-mortem and a complete worldview memo written for an investment committee.
- How to structure a global macro worldview memo so every page earns its place
- How to build and score a macro dashboard of growth, inflation, liquidity, and external indicators
- How to read market-implied views from yield curves, OIS, breakevens, and FX forwards before forming your own
Practice Drills: Mapping a Fed Tightening Cycle to Emerging Market Fund Flows
An advanced hands-on drill course for macro-focused investors, senior finance professionals and fund managers who allocate top down. You map one complete Fed tightening cycle to emerging market fund flows from start to finish: lay out the transmission chain from the fed funds rate to an FPI sell order, date a tightening cycle from FOMC decisions, the dot plot and real yields, track the dollar index, the US 10-year yield and the US-India rate differential, read NSDL FPI data by equity, debt, primary and secondary flows, separate active money from passive and index flows, benchmark India against Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and Indonesia, rebuild the 2022 to 2023 cycle move by move against FPI flows, the rupee and the Nifty, see why DII and SIP money absorbed the selling, compare 2013's taper tantrum with 2022, estimate flow sensitivity with a simple regression, map which sectors and stocks FPIs sell first, build an early warning dashboard and write the full flow map memo.
- How a Fed tightening cycle travels through US real yields, the dollar and the rate differential to emerging market portfolio flows
- How to date a tightening cycle and read the FOMC dot plot, real yields and the dollar index as flow signals
- How to read NSDL FPI data and separate equity, debt, primary, secondary, active and passive flows
Practice Drills: Mapping a Geopolitical Event to Its Market Impact
A drill-heavy course for investors and finance professionals who read geopolitical headlines every day but have no repeatable way to turn them into a market view. You build one Event Mapping Worksheet and use it again and again: classify the event, trace it through crude, the rupee, bond yields, FPI flows, supply chains and risk sentiment, chain first-order effects into second-order ones, rank Nifty sectors and screen exposed stocks, then test the method against real Indian episodes and learn from the base rate of how often geopolitical selloffs fade. You finish by writing hedge, hold or ignore rules and a timed capstone impact note on a fresh event. Educational practice only, not investment advice.
- Classify any geopolitical event by type, proximity to India, likely duration and how much was already priced in
- Trace an event through the channels that actually move Indian markets: crude oil, the rupee, G-Sec yields, FPI flows, supply chains and risk sentiment
- Build first-order and second-order effect chains instead of stopping at the headline reaction
Practice Drills: Mock Portfolio Positioning Around a Simulated Central Bank Pivot
A masterclass drill course for senior macro investors, fund managers and top down strategists. You take one mock multi-asset India portfolio through a simulated central bank pivot from start to finish: break down what a pivot actually is (stance, rates, liquidity and guidance), build a pivot signal dashboard from CPI, growth, liquidity and MPC communication, read what OIS, T-bill and G-Sec curves already price in, overlay the Fed, the dollar and FPI flows, then position the fixed income book for duration, curve and credit, rank Nifty sectors by rate sensitivity, set the rupee and gold sleeves, size every trade against a risk budget, hedge the wrong-pivot scenario, run policy day with a scenario tree and execution plan, rebalance as transmission plays out, test the playbook on India's 2019 and 2025 easing cycles, and write the full positioning memo and post-mortem.
- How to break a central bank pivot into stance, rate, liquidity and guidance shifts, and which one markets trade first
- How to build a pivot signal dashboard and read what OIS, T-bill and G-Sec curves already price in before the MPC meets
- How to position duration, curve and credit in the bond book for the start of an easing cycle
Practice Drills: Modeling a Debt Sustainability Scenario for a Sovereign
A hands-on drill course for macro investors, fund managers and senior finance professionals who want to stop quoting other people's debt sustainability conclusions and start producing their own. You build one model, for India's general government, and use it in every drill. First you lay out the workbook, pull baseline inputs from the Union Budget, RBI and IMF sources, and decide what counts as debt. Then you code the debt dynamics equation year by year, back out the effective interest rate, solve for the debt-stabilising primary balance and reconcile your model to reported debt with stock-flow adjustments. You project a five-year baseline, compute gross financing needs, then shock it: growth, interest rate, primary balance, currency, contingent liability and combined scenarios, finishing with a Monte Carlo fan chart in Python. Finally you read the results as a heat map, test the model on Sri Lanka before its 2022 default, and write the scenario note an investment committee would actually read. All figures in INR with Indian sources.
- Lay out a sovereign DSA workbook with clean separation of inputs, engine and outputs
- Assemble baseline inputs from the Union Budget, RBI and IMF sources and choose the right debt perimeter
- Code the debt dynamics equation and back out the effective interest rate from interest paid and the debt stock
Practice Drills: Scoring Geopolitical Risk for a Cross Border Investment
A hands-on drill course for macro-focused investors, fund managers, and senior finance professionals who have to put a number on geopolitical risk before capital crosses a border. You work through one simulated case end to end: a sample NSE-listed Indian manufacturer choosing between three candidate countries for its first overseas plant. You will design a scoring framework with anchored scales and deal-specific weights, gather evidence and score each country on political stability, regulatory and expropriation risk, sanctions and alignment, conflict exposure, currency convertibility, and the bilateral relationship with India. You will then convert the scores into a country risk premium and a scenario-weighted NPV, test which assumptions flip the ranking, and structure the deal using political risk insurance, treaty routing, staged capital, hedging, and the FEMA Overseas Investment rules. The course closes with a trigger-based monitoring dashboard and a complete investment committee memo.
- How to design a geopolitical risk scorecard with clear dimensions, anchored 1 to 5 scales, and weights matched to the deal
- How to gather and grade evidence from public sources before assigning any score
- How to score political, regulatory, sanctions, conflict, currency, and India-specific bilateral risk consistently across countries
Practice Drills: Summarizing a Historical Scam Case Into Key Lessons
A hands-on drill course for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Every big Indian scam leaves behind thousands of pages of SEBI orders, court judgments and news coverage, and almost none of it is useful until someone boils it down. This course teaches you to do that boiling down yourself. You start by building a fixed one-page template and learning how to tell proven facts from allegations. Then you apply it, case by case: the 1992 Harshad Mehta securities scam, the 2001 Ketan Parekh scam, the 2019 Karvy pledging case, the Satyam accounting fraud, the IL&FS collapse, the Saradha chit fund, the NSEL payment default and the Sahara refund case. You finish by laying your summaries side by side, pulling out the patterns that repeat, turning them into a red-flag checklist, and writing a one-page summary of a case you have never studied before.
- Use a fixed one-page template to summarise any scam case: facts, timeline, mechanism, victims, red flags, response and lessons
- Separate established facts from allegations by reading SEBI orders, court rulings and news reports for what they actually say
- Explain how a scam worked in three plain sentences that a first-time investor could follow
Practice Drills: Tracking a Macro Indicator Over a Ten Year Period
A hands-on drill course for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Instead of reading headlines about one month's inflation print, you build and own a ten-year record of a single macro indicator, using India's CPI inflation as the worked example. You choose the indicator and learn where the official data lives, pull ten years of monthly numbers into a spreadsheet, deal with base year changes and revisions, and get the arithmetic of index levels and year-on-year change right. You then chart the decade, mark its highs, lows and turning points, split it into regimes, and line it up against the RBI repo rate, the 10-year G-Sec yield and the Nifty 50, learning to read those overlays without fooling yourself. You finish with a one-page decade summary, a monthly update routine, and a second indicator tracked the same way.
- Choose a macro indicator worth tracking and know exactly what it measures and how often it is released
- Find and download official Indian data from MoSPI, RBI DBIE and the NSO release calendar
- Build a clean ten-year monthly dataset and handle base year changes, revisions and gaps
Understanding Business Cycles and Their Impact on Asset Classes
An asset-allocation-focused course on how equities, bonds, gold, real estate, cash, and currencies each behave across the four phases of the business cycle, built for investors and finance professionals who want a working macro lens rather than a forecasting model. Covers sector rotation on the Nifty, how RBI rate cycles move bond prices and credit spreads, why gold and real estate follow different clocks than the business cycle, and how to build and rebalance a multi-asset Indian portfolio through a full cycle without overtrading it.
Understanding Commodity Cycles: Oil, Gold, and Industrial Metals
Commodities do not move like stocks. Oil, gold, and industrial metals each run on their own cycle, driven by supply shocks, central bank policy, and global growth, and each one leaves a distinct fingerprint on Indian inflation, the rupee, and specific sectors on the NSE and BSE. This course builds a working framework for reading commodity cycles and connects each one to the Indian instruments and stocks investors actually use to act on them.
- Why commodities move in cycles and what drives the boom-bust pattern
- How crude oil prices are set and how oil shocks transmit to Indian inflation and the rupee
- Why gold behaves differently from other commodities and how to use it as a portfolio hedge
Understanding Currency Markets and Exchange Rate Dynamics
A macro-first look at how currency markets work and why exchange rates move, built for investors and finance professionals who want the theory and the mechanics, not a trading manual. Starts with how the rupee is actually quoted and priced day to day (spot, forward, RBI reference rate, NSE currency futures), then builds the three classical frameworks economists use to explain exchange rates: purchasing power parity, interest rate parity, and the balance of payments approach. From there it moves into the real-world forces that move the rupee: FPI and FDI flows, the crude oil bill and the current account, and the US dollar index and global risk sentiment. Every concept is anchored to Indian data and events, from RBI intervention and forex reserves to the rupee's slide past 83 to the dollar.
- Read direct and indirect currency quotes and explain how the rupee's spot, forward and futures rates are actually set
- Distinguish fixed, floating and managed float regimes, and place India's own currency regime in that framework
- Apply purchasing power parity and interest rate parity to explain why currencies drift and how carry trades work
Understanding Currency Wars and Competitive Devaluation
An advanced, macro-focused look at how competitive devaluation actually works, built for macro investors, senior finance professionals, and fund managers who need to read currency conflict as a market signal rather than headline noise. Starts with what a currency war is and traces the lineage from the 1930s beggar-thy-neighbor devaluations through the 2010 'currency war' era of Fed QE spillovers. Goes deep into the mechanics: how central banks devalue through rate cuts, direct intervention, and jawboning, how the RBI defends the rupee using its forex reserves, whether devaluation actually fixes trade balances via the J-curve, and how the impossible trinity constrains every emerging market including India. Closes with real case studies, China's yuan management, Japan's yen and the carry trade, and how Indian markets, from IT exporters to oil importers to the Nifty itself, react when a currency war breaks out, ending in a practical framework for positioning a portfolio against currency war risk.
- Define a currency war and distinguish genuine competitive devaluation from normal exchange rate movement
- Trace the historical lineage from the 1930s devaluations to the 2010 currency war era and its QE spillovers
- Explain how central banks devalue in practice, through rate cuts, direct FX intervention, and forward guidance
Understanding Demographic Trends and Their Economic Implications
An intermediate-level macro framework for investors and finance professionals on how demographic change drives economic outcomes. Covers the demographic transition model, population pyramids and dependency ratios, the demographic dividend that powered East Asia's and India's growth, the aging crises unfolding in Japan, China and Europe, India's own working-age window and its risks of being squandered, and the concrete economic and market implications: growth accounting, sector winners and losers, the aging-deflation debate in monetary policy, and a practical framework for screening stocks and tracking demographic data. Anchored throughout in Indian context: Census and NFHS data, RBI and NSE/BSE sector performance, PLI-adjacent labour trends, and real comparisons with Japan and China.
- Explain the demographic transition model and read a population pyramid to identify dependency ratios and growth signals
- Understand how the demographic dividend powered growth in East Asia and India, and how it can be squandered
- Analyze the aging crises in Japan, China and Europe and their links to deflation, growth slowdown and pension strain
Understanding Global Financial Crises: A Beginner's Timeline
A beginner-friendly, India-first timeline of the financial crises that reshaped the global economy, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Learn the difference between banking, currency and sovereign debt crises, and how credit, confidence and contagion turn a local problem into a global one. Walk through the Great Depression, the end of Bretton Woods and the oil shocks, the Latin American debt crisis, India's own 1991 balance of payments crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis, Russia and LTCM, the 2008 global banking crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, the 2013 Taper Tantrum, the IL&FS and NBFC crisis, and the 2020 to 2023 cycle of stimulus, inflation and bank failures. Finish with a practical playbook of warning signs every Indian investor can track using RBI, SEBI and market data.
Understanding Global Liquidity Cycles and Central Bank Coordination
An advanced framework for reading the global liquidity cycle, built for macro-focused investors, fund managers, and senior finance professionals who need to move past headline Fed rate calls. Covers what global liquidity actually is beyond money supply, the mechanics of the Fed balance sheet (QE, QT, reserves, RRP, TGA), how policy from the 'core four' central banks (Fed, ECB, BOJ, PBOC) transmits into FPI flows, the rupee, and Indian markets, where central banks coordinate and where they diverge, and how gold, equities, and crypto each behave as liquidity assets. Anchored throughout in Indian context: RBI's MPC, forex reserves, FPI/FII data, NSE and BSE price action, and real episodes including the 2013 taper tantrum and the 2022 global tightening cycle.
- Define the global liquidity cycle beyond simple money supply, including credit and cross-border flow proxies
- Explain Fed balance sheet mechanics, including QE, QT, reserves, the reverse repo facility, and the TGA
- Trace how Fed and other major central bank policy transmits into FPI flows, the rupee, and Indian equities
Understanding How Central Banks Shape Markets: A Beginner's Guide
A beginner-friendly guide to the institutions that quietly set the price of money, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Start with what a central bank is and how the RBI, its Monetary Policy Committee and India's 4% inflation target work. Open up the full toolkit, from policy rates, the SDF and MSF to CRR, SLR, open market operations, liquidity management and forward guidance. Follow policy as it flows into G-Sec yields, Nifty valuations and rate-sensitive sectors, the rupee and forex reserves, gold, real estate and your FD. Widen the lens to the US Fed, quantitative easing and tightening, and the ECB, BoJ and PBoC, then relive the crises where central banks took centre stage: 2008, the 2013 taper tantrum, demonetisation, the IL&FS liquidity crunch, COVID 2020 and the 2022 global tightening cycle. Finish with a practical framework for reading central bank signals without overreacting.
- Explain what a central bank does and how the RBI and its Monetary Policy Committee make decisions
- Distinguish the repo rate, SDF, MSF, CRR, SLR and open market operations, and what each one controls
- Trace how a policy decision moves G-Sec yields, the Nifty, rate-sensitive sectors, the rupee and gold
Understanding India's Journey From License Raj to Liberalized Markets
A 75-year tour of how India went from a planned, permit-driven economy to the open, market-led one you invest in today, no prior economics needed. Start in 1947 with the choice of a mixed economy and the Mahalanobis plan, see how industrial licensing, bank nationalisation, MRTP and FERA tightened the state's grip, and what that cost in growth, shortages and stunted markets. Follow the quiet reforms of the 1980s into the 1991 crisis, then trace each wave that followed: opening to foreign capital, disinvestment and the telecom revolution, the 2000s boom and its bad-loan hangover, and the newer toolkit of GST, IBC, UPI and production-linked incentives. Finish by reading the Nifty and Sensex of today as a map of that history, and by spotting the reforms still unfinished. Written for general market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track.
Understanding Inflation Regimes Through Different Historical Eras
A history-driven framework for reading inflation as a regime, not just a monthly print. Built for investors and finance professionals who already know what CPI is but want to understand why inflation behaves so differently across eras, and what that means for portfolios. Covers the mechanics of demand-pull, cost-push, and monetary inflation, the global classics (Weimar hyperinflation, the 1970s US stagflation, and Volcker's disinflation), India's own inflation history (the License Raj years, the 1991 BoP crisis, the 2000s moderation under inflation targeting, the 2013 taper tantrum, and the 2021-23 post-COVID inflation fight), and closes with a practical playbook for which assets tend to win in which regime and how to spot a regime shift early using Indian market signals.
- Distinguish an inflation regime from a headline CPI print, and identify demand-pull, cost-push, and monetary drivers behind it
- Explain how Weimar Germany's hyperinflation and the 1970s US stagflation unfolded, and how Volcker's Fed broke the inflation cycle
- Trace India's own inflation history from the License Raj era through the 1991 BoP crisis to RBI's formal inflation-targeting regime
Understanding Long Term Debt Cycles, A Ray Dalio Style Framework
An advanced macro framework built for fund managers, senior finance professionals, and macro-focused investors who need to place current market conditions within the arc of a long-term debt cycle rather than just the next business cycle. Built around Ray Dalio's model from 'How the Economic Machine Works' and 'Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises', this course covers the three forces that drive economies (productivity growth, the short-term debt cycle, and the long-term debt cycle), how debt bubbles build over decades, the mechanics of deleveraging and Dalio's four levers (austerity, default and restructuring, wealth transfer, and money printing), and what separates a 'beautiful deleveraging' from an ugly one. It works through real case studies including the US Great Depression, Weimar Germany's hyperinflation, the post-2008 US deleveraging, and Japan's lost decades, then applies the framework directly to India: the 2014-2020 bank NPA crisis, the IL&FS shadow banking shock, and where India's credit cycle stands today. The final chapter turns the framework into a practical toolkit for reading indicators and positioning a portfolio across debt cycle stages.
- Explain the three forces Ray Dalio identifies as driving all economies: productivity growth, the short-term debt cycle, and the long-term debt cycle
- Trace how debt-to-income ratios build into a long-term debt cycle bubble over decades, and identify warning signs near the top
- Describe the deleveraging process and Dalio's four levers: austerity, debt default and restructuring, wealth transfer, and money printing
Understanding Structural Shifts in Global Trade and Supply Chains
An advanced framework for macro-focused investors, fund managers, and senior finance professionals on the structural realignment of global trade and supply chains. Covers the end of hyperglobalization and its fracture points (2008, the US-China trade war, COVID, Russia-Ukraine), the new toolkit of economic statecraft (tariffs, sanctions, export controls, industrial policy), the leading indicators that signal supply chain stress before it hits earnings, the great manufacturing realignment across ASEAN, Mexico, and semiconductors, India's specific position as a China+1 beneficiary with its own import vulnerabilities, and a forward-looking scenario framework for translating these shifts into sector and portfolio decisions. Anchored throughout in Indian context: PLI schemes, NSE and BSE sector performance, RBI and commerce ministry data, and real episodes from the last two decades of trade realignment.
- Explain why the hyperglobalization era broke down, from the 2008 crisis through COVID and the Russia-Ukraine shock
- Understand tariffs, sanctions, export controls and industrial policy as tools of economic statecraft, and how markets price them
- Read supply chain stress before it hits earnings, using shipping rates, PMI new orders and inventory-to-sales data
Understanding the 1991 Indian Economic Liberalization and Its Market Impact
The 1991 reforms are the reason the Indian market you invest in today looks the way it does. This course explains, without jargon, what the Licence Raj economy actually was, how India ran out of foreign exchange and had to pledge its gold in 1991, and what the rupee devaluation, the July 1991 Budget and the New Industrial Policy changed. Then it follows the money into the market: the end of government-controlled IPO pricing, the arrival of foreign institutional investors, the 1992 boom and bust, and the new sectors and companies that liberalization created while older protected businesses faded. It closes with what 1991 left unfinished and how to read big policy shifts as an investor today. Written for general market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track.
Understanding the History and Evolution of Global Reserve Currencies
A macro history course tracing how the world's reserve currency has changed hands, from the gold standard and the British pound through Bretton Woods and the US dollar's rise, and what challengers like the euro and yuan (and India's own rupee internationalization push) mean for investors today.
- What actually makes a currency a global reserve currency, and why it matters for trade, debt, and geopolitics
- How the gold standard and the British pound gave way to the US dollar across two world wars and Bretton Woods
- Why the Nixon Shock, petrodollars, and SWIFT cemented dollar dominance after 1971
Understanding the History of SEBI and Indian Market Regulation
Every rule you meet as an Indian investor, from the margin your broker blocks to the insider trading window a company announces, has a history. This course tells the story of who policed Indian markets before SEBI existed, why the old mix of exchange self-regulation and the Controller of Capital Issues broke down, and how SEBI grew from a 1988 advisory body into a statutory regulator with real teeth. It then explains the core rulebook in plain English (insider trading, takeovers, IPO and listing rules, intermediaries), walks through the landmark enforcement cases that shaped SEBI's powers, from Sahara to Satyam to NSE co-location, and closes with the modern SEBI: the commodity market merger, the F&O and finfluencer curbs, and the complaint routes every investor can use today. Written for general market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track who want to know why the market's rules look the way they do.
Understanding the Interplay Between Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Fiscal policy and monetary policy are usually taught as separate subjects, but markets never react to them separately. This course builds a single framework for reading the Union Budget and the RBI's MPC decisions together, understanding how they transmit through bond yields, inflation, credit and the real economy, and using that combined signal to form a top-down macro view as an investor.
- How fiscal policy (the Union Budget, fiscal deficit, government borrowing) and monetary policy (the RBI's repo rate, OMOs, liquidity stance) actually move markets
- The transmission mechanisms linking fiscal deficits to bond yields and inflation, and repo rate changes to the real economy
- Crowding out vs crowding in, and how to tell which regime India is in at a given time
Alternative Investing
96 courses
Masterclass: Building a Multi Asset Alternative Investment Portfolio
A masterclass for serious Indian allocators who already understand individual alternative assets and now need to combine them. Instead of describing AIFs, REITs or pre-IPO shares one more time, this course treats alternatives as one portfolio problem: how much of a balance sheet they can absorb, how private equity, private credit, real assets and Category III strategies behave together, how commitment pacing and liquidity budgets stop an illiquid book from forcing a sale in a crisis, and how fees, tax and stale valuations quietly distort reported returns. Every framework is built on Indian vehicles, SEBI rules and rupee numbers, stress-tested against 2008, the 2018 NBFC crisis and March 2020, and closed with a full capstone that allocates an INR 100 crore portfolio across alternatives end to end.
- Size the alternatives budget for a given balance sheet using liquidity needs, income stability and drawdown tolerance rather than a generic percentage
- Map every alternative sleeve to its underlying equity, credit, real asset and inflation exposures so diversification is real, not cosmetic
- Build a private equity and venture programme across vintages that manages the J-curve instead of being surprised by it
Advanced Angel Investing: Leading Rounds and Structuring Syndicates
A practitioner course for angels ready to stop following and start leading. Covers what a lead investor actually owes the founder and the co-investors, how to build deal flow and run diligence that others can rely on, and how to price and negotiate a round from the lead's chair: valuation, option pools, instrument choice between CCPS, CCDs and iSAFE notes, and the handful of terms a lead must win. Devotes a full chapter to structuring the syndicate itself, comparing direct cap table entries, SPVs and SEBI-registered angel funds, with the carry and fee economics of each. Works through the tax, FEMA and Companies Act private placement rules that trip up Indian syndicates, then closes with life after the cheque: board and information rights, syndicate communication, bridge and down rounds, distributions, and building a repeatable syndicate with a real track record. Built for HNIs, family office investors and experienced angels who already understand term sheets and cap tables.
- Decide when you have earned the right to lead a round, and what leading costs you
- Build proprietary deal flow and run diligence that co-investors can rely on
- Write an investment memo that raises a syndicate instead of just describing a startup
Advanced Commodity Trading: Spread Trading and Roll Yield
Most commodity traders bet on direction. Professionals trade relationships: one contract month against another, gold against silver, crude against its refined products. This course treats the futures curve as a trading surface. You will decompose futures returns into spot return, roll yield and collateral yield, see why a buy-and-roll position in crude can lose money even when spot prices rise, and learn to price, size and execute calendar, inter-commodity, crack, crush and inter-exchange spreads on MCX and NCDEX. It closes with the risks that blow spreads up, the Indian tax treatment of commodity futures, and how HNIs and family offices can use commodity carry as a portfolio sleeve. Built for experienced traders and investors who already understand futures pricing and cost of carry.
- How to read the MCX futures curve and what contango and backwardation signal about supply, storage and demand
- How to decompose a commodity futures return into spot return, roll yield and collateral yield, and why roll yield dominates over long holding periods
- How to price a calendar spread against cost-of-carry fair value and spot when it is mispriced
Advanced Due Diligence Frameworks for Private Market Investments
A rigorous, India-specific playbook for diligencing private market deals and the funds that make them. Build a repeatable process from first screen to investment memo, then go deep on the four pillars that decide outcomes: the business, the numbers, the legal and regulatory position, and the people. Learn to rebuild revenue quality from GST returns and bank statements, run MCA and litigation searches, read a shareholders' agreement for the clauses that actually move money, test a startup's unit economics and a founder's background, and diligence an AIF manager on track record, fees and governance. Finish with a scoring framework, red-flag library and two full Indian case studies. Built for HNIs and family offices writing private cheques, angel syndicate leads running deals for co-investors, and experienced traders moving into unlisted assets.
Advanced Forex Strategies: Carry Trade and Interest Rate Differentials
A practitioner course on the carry trade as a strategy rather than a textbook anomaly. Built for HNIs, family office investors, active currency traders and experienced angels who already understand interest rate parity and want to know how carry is actually measured, built, sized, hedged and unwound. Covers how to read rate differentials from forward points and OIS curves, real versus nominal carry, single-pair and cross-sectional basket construction, volatility scaling, combining carry with momentum and value, and the anatomy of carry crashes from 2008 to the August 2024 yen unwind. Closes with what Indian residents can legally do under RBI's exchange-traded currency derivative rules on NSE and BSE, sizing and rollover costs, taxation, and treating unhedged offshore allocations as the implicit carry trade they are.
- Explain why carry earns a return even though uncovered interest parity says it should not
- Measure carry precisely from forward points, implied yields and carry-to-volatility ratios
- Read where rate differentials are heading from policy guidance and OIS curves
Advanced Real Estate Structuring: REITs, InvITs, and Fractional Ownership Compared
The same office park can reach you as a listed REIT unit, an InvIT-style yield vehicle, an SM REIT scheme or a legacy fractional SPV share, and each wrapper hands you a different cash flow, tax bill, governance position and exit. This course takes the structures apart layer by layer: trust, HoldCo, SPV, sponsor and manager. Learn SEBI's asset, leverage and distribution rules for REITs and InvITs, how concession-based InvIT NAVs run down, how the 2024 SM REIT framework reset fractional ownership, and how each distribution component is taxed in a unitholder's hands. Finish by comparing yield, NAV discount, rate sensitivity and exit cost across structures, and building a real asset income sleeve for an HNI or family office portfolio. Built for HNIs and family offices, angel syndicate leads, and experienced traders adding real assets.
- Trace a rupee of rent or toll from the tenant or road user, through the SPV, HoldCo and trust, to your bank account
- Apply SEBI's asset composition, leverage and sponsor rules to judge how safe a REIT or InvIT structure really is
- Explain why a concession-based InvIT's NAV runs down and value it without being fooled by a high yield
Building an Angel Investment Portfolio: Diversification and Follow On Strategy
A practitioner-level framework for building and managing an angel investment portfolio, for readers who already know what angel investing is and are ready to invest like a portfolio manager rather than a hobbyist. Goes beyond the basic power law story into quantifying it: how many startups you actually need, expected value math, check sizing and ownership targets, and return simulations. Covers real diversification strategy across sector, stage, geography and vintage, and treats correlation and concentration risk seriously. Devotes a full chapter to reserves and follow-on decisions, including how to actually exercise pro-rata rights and when to double down versus walk away. Closes with the operational side: tracking a portfolio, running periodic reviews, and managing exits across secondaries, M&A and IPOs. Built for experienced retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs, and angel investors actively building out a portfolio, with Indian examples throughout including SEBI-registered angel funds, AIFs, and Indian syndicates.
- Quantify the power law and work out how many startups your portfolio actually needs
- Build expected value math for check sizing, ownership targets, and capital allocation
- Diversify deliberately across sector, stage, geography, and investment vintage
Case Study: A Failed Angel Bet, Lessons From a Startup Shutdown
An intermediate case study that starts where most startup stories end. A Pune-based angel investor puts ten lakh rupees into a B2B ordering app for kirana stores at its seed round, follows on in a bridge round, and then lives through the shutdown. Each chapter works through one stage with real numbers: the original CCPS terms and liquidation preference, the unit economics that never closed, the failed fundraise and the acqui-hire offer, how Indian companies actually close (strike-off, voluntary liquidation and the payout waterfall), what the angel recovered down to the rupee, how the capital loss is treated for tax, and what the loss means for an angel portfolio built on power-law returns. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angels building a portfolio who want to understand the downside before they write the next cheque.
- Read a seed-round CCPS deal for the terms that decide what you get back in a shutdown, not in a success
- Diagnose broken unit economics from contribution margin, burn multiple and runway before the founders admit it
- Decide whether to follow on in a bridge round, and recognise when pro rata rights become a trap
Case Study: A Family Office's Alternative Asset Allocation During a Market Downturn
An advanced case study that puts you inside the investment committee of a composite Indian family office as the COVID crash of 2020 unfolds. The family holds listed equity, debt, gold, REITs, real estate, private equity and venture funds, private credit AIFs and a Category III long-short fund. You start with the pre-crisis allocation and its hidden fault lines, then live through February to April 2020 as the Nifty falls by more than a third in weeks, Franklin Templeton winds up six debt schemes, the RBI announces a loan moratorium and fund managers keep sending capital calls. You examine how each alternative asset class actually behaved under stress, why illiquid holdings looked deceptively calm, and how the denominator effect pushed the portfolio outside its own limits. You then work through the committee's real decisions: funding commitments without selling at the bottom, whether to rebalance, and when to go on offence. The case closes by scoring the outcome through the 2021 recovery and distilling a downturn-ready playbook. The family and its numbers are an illustrative composite; the market events, regulations and asset-class behaviour are real.
- Read a family office's total allocation and spot liquidity, concentration and unfunded-commitment risk before a crisis
- Trace how the 2020 Indian market crash unfolded and how fast it moved through listed and unlisted holdings
- Explain why mark-to-model alternatives look calm in a crash and how the denominator effect breaks allocation limits
Case Study: Crude Oil Price Volatility During the Russia Ukraine War
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and Brent crude crossed $100 a barrel the same day for the first time since 2014. Within two weeks it touched nearly $140 intraday, then gave back most of the move just as fast. For India, which imports the large majority of the crude it refines, this was not a distant headline. It showed up in petrol pump prices, in excise duty cuts and a new windfall tax, in a rupee that slid past 80 to the dollar, in the RBI's first rate hike cycle in years, and in sharply diverging moves between upstream producers, refiners and oil marketing companies on NSE. This case study rebuilds the episode step by step: how crude is priced and why India is so exposed, the day by day shock of early 2022, how sanctions and discounted Russian barrels rewired India's import basket, and how each transmission channel hit Indian investors. It closes with a practical playbook for experienced investors and HNIs: measuring commodity volatility, what MCX margin changes mean for leveraged positions, which portfolio hedges actually worked, and how to think before reacting to the next geopolitical oil shock.
- How Brent, WTI and the Indian crude basket are priced, and why India's import dependence makes oil a macro risk for every Indian portfolio
- Why the oil market was already tight going into 2022, and how that set up an outsized reaction to the invasion
- The timeline of the February to June 2022 shock: the move past $100, the March spike, the reversal, and why volatility stayed elevated
Case Study: Crude Oil's Negative Price Event of 2020
On 20 April 2020, the expiring WTI crude oil futures contract on the CME did something that had never happened before: it settled at minus $37.63 a barrel. Sellers were paying buyers to take oil off their hands. Hours earlier, on India's own MCX, the May crude contract had already settled at minus Rs 2,884 a barrel, a shock that wiped out accounts and triggered a wave of broker disputes. This case study builds up from first principles, what a futures contract actually promises, why storage costs create contango, why COVID-era demand collapse filled every storage tank on earth, and then walks through exactly how and why the price went negative on both exchanges. It closes with the practical lessons for Indian retail traders: what changed in margin and circuit rules after the event, and a simple framework for deciding whether commodity futures belong in your portfolio at all.
- What a futures contract actually obligates you to do, and why expiry and physical settlement matter
- Contango versus backwardation, and how storage costs shape the futures curve
- Why COVID-era demand collapse in early 2020 filled global storage capacity to its limits
Case Study: DLF's Real Estate Debt Restructuring, A Development Financing Case Study
DLF listed in 2007 with the largest IPO India had seen, a vast land bank and a balance sheet built for a boom that ended a year later. This case study follows how development finance actually works in India (land funding, construction loans, customer advances, lease rental discounting), how DLF's debt built up and why the 2008 crisis hit a leveraged developer from every side at once, and how the group spent the next decade deleveraging through non-core asset sales, refinancing, the 2017 GIC deal on its rental arm and fresh promoter and QIP equity. Along the way it covers the governance overhangs that complicated the turnaround and how RERA changed developer financing. Built for HNI and family office investors, angel and syndicate leads who back real asset businesses, and active traders who want to read a developer's balance sheet before the market does.
- How Indian real estate development is financed, from land acquisition through construction loans, customer advances and lease rental discounting
- Why DLF's post-IPO expansion left it exposed when the 2008 crisis froze sales, prices and refinancing at the same time
- Which balance sheet and cash flow metrics flagged the stress early, and how to compute them for any developer
Case Study: Embassy Office Parks REIT, India's First Listed REIT
In April 2019, Embassy Office Parks REIT became the first Real Estate Investment Trust to list in India, giving retail investors a way to own a slice of Grade-A office space without buying an entire building. This case study walks through what a REIT actually is, how the Embassy IPO was priced and received, what the trust owns and how it earns rent, how distributions and taxation work for unit holders, and how the units have actually performed since listing. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers curious about real estate and REITs.
- What a REIT is and how it differs from buying property directly or owning a real estate stock
- Why Embassy Office Parks was chosen to be India's first listed REIT, and how its IPO was priced
- What the trust actually owns: the Grade-A office portfolio behind the units
Case Study: Gold Prices During the 2020 Pandemic, A Commodity Case Study
When the COVID crash hit in March 2020, gold did something most Indian investors had never seen it do at that scale: it kept climbing while equities fell apart, and by August it had touched an all-time high in rupee terms. This case study walks through why gold behaves this way in a crisis, the real forces (real yields, a weakening rupee, and a global scramble for safety) that drove the 2020 rally, and what the sharp pullback that followed teaches about buying into a hot trade after the fact. Along the way, you will learn the practical side too: the different ways Indians actually hold gold, from physical jewellery to Sovereign Gold Bonds and Gold ETFs, and how to weigh them against each other.
- Why Indians hold gold and where it realistically fits in a portfolio
- The practical differences between physical gold, SGBs, Gold ETFs, and digital gold
- A clear timeline of gold's move from the March 2020 crash to its August 2020 peak
Case Study: Gurugram vs Noida, Comparing Real Estate Investment Returns
Real estate is the alternative asset every Indian investor already has an opinion on, usually an untested one. This case study builds a real comparison of Gurugram and Noida as investment destinations: the metrics that actually measure return, the data behind them, and the risks a brochure will not tell you about. By the end, you will have a framework you can reuse for any two cities, not just these two.
- Where real estate fits next to equities and mutual funds in a portfolio, and what its illiquidity actually costs you
- How to compute rental yield, capital appreciation and total return for a property, not just guess at them
- A worked, numbers-first comparison of Gurugram and Noida as investment markets
Case Study: How Early Investors in Zomato's Seed Round Made Returns
A worked case study on Info Edge's early bet on Zomato, from its 2010 seed round through to the 2021 IPO. Built for retail and HNI investors curious about startup investing: how seed rounds actually work, how ownership and returns evolve across funding rounds, what the numbers looked like by the time Zomato listed, and what routes exist for Indian investors who want exposure to deals like this one.
- How Zomato's early story unfolded and why Info Edge chose to back it at the seed stage
- What a seed round actually is, and where it sits on the startup funding ladder
- How ownership, valuation and dilution work across multiple funding rounds
Case Study: How Info Edge's Early Bet on Zomato Paid Off
Info Edge, the listed company behind Naukri, wrote one of the most profitable cheques in Indian startup history when it backed Zomato as a tiny restaurant-listing site. This case study looks at the bet from the investor's side of the table. Why a profitable recruitment business went looking for startup bets at all, how it kept writing follow-on cheques through dilution and near-death years, how the stake showed up in Info Edge's own financial statements and share price, what the 2021 IPO and lock-in actually allowed it to sell, and how it recycled gains into new bets. It finishes with the power law maths behind venture returns and a practical playbook for angel and HNI investors building a startup portfolio of their own.
- Why a cash-generating listed company like Info Edge chose to invest in early-stage startups
- How follow-on investing and dilution shaped Info Edge's ownership of Zomato from seed round to IPO
- How a strategic stake is accounted for, and how it moves from associate to fair-value investment
Case Study: How a Category II AIF Structured a Real Estate Fund
Most Indian real estate AIFs do not buy buildings. They lend to developers through structured debt, under a SEBI Category II registration that shapes almost every decision the manager makes. This case study follows an illustrative, composite fund, Sahyadri Realty Credit Fund I, a close-ended Category II AIF lending to residential developers in Mumbai and Pune. You see why the manager chose Category II, how the trust, sponsor, manager and trustee fit together, what SEBI's rules on minimum investment, sponsor commitment, leverage and concentration forced into the design, what the private placement memorandum actually said, how capital calls, fees, hurdle and carry worked in rupees, how individual project deals were secured and monitored, how pass-through taxation landed on investors, and how the fund's IRR and multiple were finally measured. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors considering a real estate AIF commitment.
- Why real estate funds in India are usually set up as Category II AIFs, and why most of them lend rather than own property
- How a trust-based AIF is assembled: sponsor, investment manager, trustee and the investors, and what each is responsible for
- Which SEBI AIF Regulations rules shaped the fund's design: minimum investment, sponsor commitment, leverage and concentration limits
Case Study: How an Angel Investor Evaluated a Failed Startup Bet
A foundation-level case study built around Meera Iyer, a Bengaluru product manager turned angel investor, who writes an eight lakh rupee cheque into Aaranya, a D2C sustainable fashion brand, at its seed round. Each chapter follows one stage of the bet: what angel investing actually involves and how Indian deals get structured through SAFE notes and CCPS, the market, team and valuation diligence Meera ran before signing, the early warning signs that got explained away as the startup burned cash faster than it grew, and the down round and shutdown that followed. Built for retail and HNI investors curious about startup investing as an alternative asset class, with the evaluation mistakes left in rather than smoothed over.
- Understand what angel investing actually involves in India, and how it differs from public market investing
- Read a startup's early business model and market size the way an angel does during a first evaluation
- Understand how Indian angel deals get structured: SAFE notes, CCPS, valuation caps and cap tables
Case Study: Mindspace Business Parks REIT, Analyzing Commercial Real Estate Returns
Mindspace Business Parks REIT, sponsored by K Raheja Corp and listed on the NSE and BSE in August 2020, owns Grade-A office parks across Hyderabad, the Mumbai Region, Pune and Chennai. This case study uses it as a working model for analysing any commercial real estate investment: who the tenants are and how long they are locked in, how rent becomes NOI and then NDCF, how each part of the distribution is taxed, how to value units against NAV and cap rates, what the sponsor's exit meant for unit holders, and what total return investors have actually earned since listing. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors who want to judge a REIT on numbers rather than on its yield headline.
- How to read a REIT's portfolio and tenant book: city mix, occupancy, WALE and tenant concentration
- How Mindspace's IPO was priced during the 2020 pandemic, and what Blackstone's later exit meant for unit holders
- How rental income flows through NOI and NDCF to the distribution per unit you actually receive
Case Study: Rupee Depreciation Post 2022, A Currency Case Study
A close reading of the rupee's slide against the US dollar from 2022 onwards, and what it means for an Indian investor's money. Start with how the rupee is actually priced under RBI's managed float and how to read USD/INR, the dollar index and the REER. Walk through 2022, when Fed rate hikes, the Ukraine war and costly crude pushed the rupee to record lows, and see how RBI spent its forex reserves and changed the rules to defend it. Follow the quiet year of 2023, bond index inclusion, the policy shift that followed and the fresh lows after it. Finish with the practical side: which NSE sectors win and lose when the rupee falls, how to hold dollar assets through LRS, international funds and GIFT City, what retail hedging can and cannot do, and a currency checklist for your own portfolio.
Case Study: Sequoia India's Early Bet on Byju's, A Syndicate Structuring Lens
Sequoia Capital India, now Peak XV Partners, backed Byju's when it was a profitable test-prep business in Bengaluru. Over the next seven years the company raised money from Sofina, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, General Atlantic, Prosus and many others, reached a reported valuation of about $22 billion, and then unravelled through delayed audits, board resignations, a deeply discounted rights issue, lender litigation and insolvency proceedings. This case study reads the whole story from the investor side of the table. It looks at how each round was led and syndicated, what rights early investors held, why a fragmented syndicate struggled to enforce those rights when governance broke down, and how the down round and markdowns played out. It closes with a practical playbook for angel syndicate leads and family offices: how to structure a syndicate vehicle in India, which term sheet clauses matter most, and a capstone exercise structuring a round for a fast-growing company.
- How Sequoia India's thesis on Byju's was built and what a lead investor contributes beyond the cheque
- How a cap table fills up across many rounds and what pro rata, board seats and information rights actually give an investor
- How liquidation preferences stack across rounds and how dilution moves an early investor's ownership
Case Study: The 2013 Rupee Crash, A Forex Market Case Study
In the summer of 2013, the rupee fell from around 55 to the dollar to nearly 69 in a matter of weeks, India's steepest currency slide since the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis. This case study walks through why a single comment from the US Federal Reserve chairman could hit the Indian currency so hard, what a current account deficit actually has to do with the rupee's value, and how the RBI's emergency toolkit, including a little-known swap window for NRI deposits, pulled the currency back from the edge. Along the way, you will learn how a forex crisis ripples into equities, bonds, gold, and the wallets of ordinary importers, exporters, and NRI families.
- How the rupee is valued and traded, and what actually moves USD/INR day to day
- Why the 2013 US Federal Reserve taper tantrum hit India harder than most emerging markets
- How a widening current account deficit made India vulnerable heading into the crash
Case Study: The 2021 Lumber and Commodity Supercycle
In the spring of 2020 US lumber futures traded at multi-year lows. A year later they had gone up nearly sevenfold, and within months of that peak they had given most of it back. Lumber was the loudest signal of a much wider boom: copper hit a record, iron ore crossed $200 a tonne, steel prices in India jumped, and by 2021 Wall Street banks were openly calling a new commodity supercycle. This case study rebuilds the episode from the ground up. It explains what a supercycle actually is, why lumber became its poster child, how a thin futures contract amplified a real supply squeeze, and how the boom spread across industrial metals, energy and agriculture. It then follows the money into India: the Nifty Metal rally and the earnings peak of steel and aluminium producers, the margin squeeze on paint, FMCG, auto and plywood companies, and the export duties on steel and iron ore that the government imposed in May 2022 and rolled back that November. It closes with a working framework for experienced investors, HNIs and family offices: how to separate a structural supercycle from a temporary supply shock, how to value cyclicals near peak earnings, what roll yield does to commodity returns, and which access routes Indian investors actually have.
- What a commodity supercycle is in the economic literature, and why most commodity booms do not qualify
- How pandemic stimulus, a housing and renovation boom and cut sawmill capacity combined to send lumber futures to record highs in 2021
- How to read a futures curve in backwardation, and how limit moves and thin open interest amplified lumber's spike and its collapse
Case Study: The 2022 Gold Rally During Global Inflation
2022 should have been gold's perfect year: inflation at multi-decade highs, a war in Europe, and central banks buying gold at a record pace. Instead, gold ended the year roughly flat in US dollars, crushed by the fastest Fed hiking cycle in decades and a surging dollar. Indian investors saw a very different picture, because a sliding rupee turned a flat global year into a strong rupee return. This case study pulls apart the forces that pushed and pulled gold through 2022 (real yields, the dollar, central bank buying, safe-haven demand and India's import duty hike) and turns them into practical rules for how much gold belongs in an Indian portfolio and why.
- Why gold's 2022 return depends entirely on which currency you measure it in
- How rising real yields and a strong dollar pulled gold down even as inflation surged
- The role of central bank buying and the Russia-Ukraine war in keeping gold afloat
Case Study: The Collapse of a High Profile Startup Syndicate Deal
This case study follows an illustrative composite deal, built from patterns seen in real Indian startup failures, from the WhatsApp message that announced an oversubscribed syndicate round to the write-off letter members received eighteen months later. You will see how allocation scarcity compressed diligence, how inflated revenue and undisclosed related party dealings hid in a data room nobody read closely, how a term sheet with waived conditions left the syndicate without a voice, and how the money actually flowed back (or did not) in the wind-down waterfall. It closes with the duties a syndicate lead owes members, the regulatory and tax aftermath for investors under SEBI's angel fund framework, and a practical diligence checklist and lead-scoring framework for your next deal.
- How a syndicate round is pooled and structured in India, through SEBI angel funds, platform SPVs and direct cap table entry
- How allocation scarcity and social proof shorten diligence, and the red flags a data room shows if you actually read it
- How to test revenue quality and spot round-tripped or inflated sales before you invest
Case Study: The Swiss Franc Shock of 2015, A Forex Black Swan Event
On 15 January 2015, the Swiss National Bank scrapped the 1.20 floor it had held under EUR/CHF for more than three years, without warning and three days after a senior official had called it a cornerstone of policy. The franc jumped by double digits within minutes, liquidity disappeared, stop-losses filled hundreds of pips away, retail brokers were left with client negative balances they could not recover, and at least one hedge fund was nearly wiped out. This case study rebuilds why Switzerland capped its own currency, how the market came to treat the floor as a free option, what actually happened in the minutes after the announcement, and who was hurt and why. It then turns the event into a risk framework for HNI, family office and active currency traders: measuring tail risk that VaR misses, sizing positions to survive a gap, judging broker and counterparty risk, and reading the RBI's management of the rupee, NSE and BSE currency derivatives and offshore LRS holdings through the lens of a peg that broke.
- Why the Swiss National Bank imposed a 1.20 floor on EUR/CHF in 2011 and how it defended it with unlimited intervention
- How a credible-looking peg turned into a crowded, short-volatility consensus trade
- What happened in the minutes after the 15 January 2015 announcement, and why stop-losses failed to protect traders
Case Study: Valuing a Commercial Property Using Income Capitalization
A single, end-to-end valuation of a leased Grade-A office floor in Pune's eastern IT corridor, worked the way a disciplined buyer or a REIT's valuer would. You start with the seller's pitch and the lease deeds, build a stabilised net operating income line by line, derive a market cap rate from comparable sales, listed REIT valuation reports and the 10-year G-Sec yield, and capitalise the income into a value. You then stress that value with cap rate sensitivity and a discounted cash flow cross-check around the lease expiry, add stamp duty, registration and due diligence costs, and finish with an offer price, a walk-away price and a clear verdict. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors weighing a direct commercial property purchase. The property and its numbers are illustrative; the market context is real.
- How to read a commercial lease and rent roll for the clauses that actually move value: lock-in, escalation, CAM and renewal terms
- How to build a stabilised NOI from gross rent, vacancy, non-recoverable expenses and capital reserves
- How to derive a defensible cap rate from comparable sales, REIT valuation reports and the risk-free G-Sec yield
Fixed Income and Alternate Asset Classes for Beginners
A practical, India-specific introduction to everything beyond stocks and equity mutual funds: fixed deposits, government and corporate bonds, debt mutual funds, PPF, EPF and NPS, REITs, InvITs, gold, and other alternate assets. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers and retirees who want a safer, more diversified portfolio without getting lost in jargon. Uses real Indian instruments and platforms throughout: RBI Retail Direct, NSE/BSE-listed bonds and REITs, Sovereign Gold Bonds, Zerodha, Groww and CDSL/NSDL.
- Go beyond bank FDs into bonds and government savings schemes
- Understand bond yields, interest rate risk, REITs and InvITs
- Build a diversified portfolio with gold and alternate assets
Introduction to Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) in India
A clear, India-specific introduction to Alternative Investment Funds: what they are, how SEBI regulates them, and how Category I, II and III AIFs actually make money through venture capital, private equity, private credit, real estate and hedge fund strategies. Learn the ₹1 crore minimum and accredited investor rules, decode the fee stack of management fees, hurdle rates and carry, read IRR, TVPI and DPI like an allocator, understand how each category is taxed, and evaluate a real AIF offering before you commit capital. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about startup and real estate funds.
- Understand what an AIF is and how it works
- Learn SEBI rules across Category I, II and III AIFs
- Evaluate fees, returns and taxation before investing in an AIF
Introduction to Angel Investing: What It Means to Invest in Startups
A clear, India-specific introduction to angel investing: what it actually means to put your own money into an early-stage startup, how funding rounds from pre-seed to Series A work, and why the power law decides almost every outcome. Learn pre-money and post-money valuation, dilution, CCPS and convertible notes, the legal routes to invest in India including angel networks, syndicates and SEBI-registered angel funds, the tax and regulatory basics, and the term sheet clauses that protect or hurt you. Finish by evaluating founders and markets, sizing your allocation, and building a first angel portfolio without making the classic first-timer mistakes. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about startups.
- Learn what angel investing actually means for investors
- Understand startup funding rounds and the power law
- Evaluate startups and build a diversified angel portfolio
Introduction to Commodity Trading: Gold, Silver, Crude, and Agri Commodities
A clear, India-specific introduction to commodity trading: what commodities are, why investors hold them, and how they trade on MCX, NCDEX, NSE and BSE. Learn how commodity futures and options actually work, including lot sizes, tick values, margins, mark-to-market, settlement, contango and backwardation. Then go market by market: what drives gold and silver, every way to own precious metals in India, how crude oil and natural gas trade, and how agri commodities and base metals behave. Finish with leverage and risk management, the tax treatment of commodity trades, and a practical first step on a broker like Zerodha without repeating the classic beginner mistakes. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond equities, and curious first-timers.
- Learn why commodities trade and how derivatives work
- Trade gold, silver, crude oil and agri commodities
- Understand the risk, tax and rules to get started
Introduction to Forex Trading: How Currency Markets Work
A clear, India-specific introduction to the foreign exchange market: how currencies are quoted and priced, who actually trades the rupee and why, and what really moves USD/INR, from interest rate differentials and crude oil to FPI flows and RBI intervention. Learn to read bid, ask, spreads and forward premiums, understand exactly what is legal for Indian residents under FEMA and the RBI Alert List, and see how exchange-traded currency futures and options work on NSE and BSE, including lot sizes, margins, leverage, position sizing and taxation. Finish by applying it to hedging, to your own portfolio's currency exposure, and to spotting the offshore forex scams that trap first-timers. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers curious about currency markets.
- Understand how the forex market actually works
- Read currency quotes and see what moves exchange rates
- Trade forex legally in India, managing risk and tax
Introduction to REITs: Investing in Real Estate Without Buying Property
A practical, India-specific introduction to Real Estate Investment Trusts. Learn how a REIT turns office parks and malls into units you can buy on NSE and BSE for the price of a few thousand rupees, how the sponsor, manager and trustee structure works under SEBI's REIT Regulations, and where the rent actually comes from. Understand the 90% distribution rule, why a REIT payout is split into interest, dividend and debt repayment, and how each piece is taxed. Compare India's listed office and retail REITs, see how InvITs and SM REITs differ, and learn to judge a REIT on occupancy, WALE, leverage, price-to-NAV and distribution yield before you buy. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers who want real estate exposure without a home loan.
Introduction to Real Estate as an Asset Class in India
A clear, India-specific introduction to real estate as an investment, not just a place to live. Understand how property really compares with equity, debt and gold, the difference between residential, commercial and land, and the two engines of return: rental yield and capital appreciation. Learn the true cost of buying, from stamp duty and GST to home loan interest, see how RERA and title checks protect you, explore ways to own real estate without buying a flat through REITs, SM REITs, listed developers and AIFs, and work out how property income and gains are taxed. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers deciding whether property belongs in their portfolio.
- Explore real estate as an investor, beyond just a home
- Learn how property makes and loses money over time
- Own real estate through REITs, beyond buying property directly
Masterclass Case Study: How a Global Macro Fund Managed Forex Risk During a Currency Crisis
A masterclass case study for family office investors, fund managers and institutional allocators who need to understand how professional macro money actually handles currency risk when a crisis arrives. You join the risk committee of a composite global macro fund running an emerging market currency book with a large Indian rupee position, just before Ben Bernanke's May 2013 testimony triggers the taper tantrum. You start with the fund's mandate, limits and pre-crisis carry positions, and the warning signs it partly ignored: India's record current account deficit, the Fragile Five and crowded carry trades. You then live through May to August 2013 as the rupee falls to its record low, the RBI squeezes liquidity and tightens capital controls, and the offshore NDF market breaks away from onshore prices. You work through the real-time decisions: reading VaR and stress losses when correlations break, cutting carry without paying the widest spreads, choosing between forwards, NDFs, options and proxy hedges, and managing margin and counterparty risk. The case closes with the September turn, the recovery trade, a full P&L attribution and a currency crisis playbook. The fund and its numbers are an illustrative composite; the market events, policy actions and instrument mechanics are real.
- Read a global macro fund's currency book, mandate and risk limits, and spot where carry and crowding risk are hiding
- Trace how the 2013 taper tantrum moved from a Fed testimony to a full emerging market currency crisis and the rupee's record low
- Explain how RBI liquidity tightening, capital controls and the onshore-offshore NDF gap changed the fund's risk overnight
Masterclass Case Study: How a Leading Family Office Built Its Real Estate Portfolio Over Two Decades
A masterclass case study for senior HNI and family office investors, syndicate leads and institutional allocators. We follow a composite Indian family office, built from patterns common to promoter families who turned operating-business wealth into a real estate programme, across twenty years of Indian property cycles: the 2005 to 2008 boom, the 2008 crash, the stalled-project years, demonetisation, RERA and GST, the IL&FS and NBFC credit freeze, the arrival of listed REITs and InvITs, COVID, and the Grade A office, warehousing and data centre wave that followed. At each turn you see the decision the office faced, the numbers it worked with, what it chose, and how that choice looked five and ten years later. The case is illustrative: the family, its deals and its figures are a teaching composite, while the market events, regulations and listed benchmarks are real. Closes with the office's 2025 portfolio review and the rules it would hand to the next generation.
- Trace how a family office's real estate book evolved across twenty years of Indian property cycles, and why each pivot happened when it did
- Underwrite the kinds of deals the office did, from a leased office floor to a warehousing joint venture, using cap rate, IRR and downside cases in rupees
- See how leverage, concentration and illiquidity hurt the office in 2008 and 2018, and the guardrails it built afterwards
Masterclass Case Study: Rajan Anandan's Transition From Executive to Prolific Angel Investor
A case study of one of the most-cited paths in Indian startup investing: Rajan Anandan's move from running large businesses at McKinsey, Dell, Microsoft India and Google India to backing a very large number of early-stage startups as an angel, and then to institutional venture capital at Sequoia Capital India, now Peak XV Partners, where he leads the Surge seed programme. The course reconstructs the decisions behind that transition from the public record: how an executive's platform view becomes an investment thesis, why a prolific small-cheque strategy can make sense, how ecosystem work and personal reputation compound into deal flow, what changes when the money becomes a fund's, and how you would measure an angel record you can only partly see. It closes with a 24-month transition plan for senior executives, HNIs and family office principals who want to build their own angel practice. Built from public information only; where portfolio figures are not public, the course uses clearly labelled illustrative models. Educational content, not a recommendation to invest in any company or fund, and not affiliated with or endorsed by Rajan Anandan or Peak XV Partners.
- Trace how operating roles at Microsoft India and Google India shaped a specific view of where Indian internet value would be created
- Handle the real constraints of angel investing while employed: conflicts of interest, disclosure, insider information and time
- Work out the arithmetic behind a prolific small-cheque strategy and when volume beats selectivity
Masterclass: How Top Family Offices Approach Real Estate and Private Markets
A masterclass for senior HNI investors, family office principals, syndicate leads and institutional allocators who already understand the alternatives menu and now want to see how the best family offices actually run real estate and private markets programmes. The course reverse-engineers the playbooks of top single and multi family offices, Indian and global, and turns them into working rules: how they size illiquid exposure against the family balance sheet, why they prefer direct deals, co-investments or funds in specific situations, how they underwrite Indian commercial real estate, residential development and land, how they access private equity, venture, private credit and secondaries through SEBI-regulated AIFs, GIFT City vehicles and offshore structures, and how they handle liquidity, pacing, tax and governance across a decade. Every module uses Indian examples: Grade A office in Bengaluru and Mumbai, warehousing along Bhiwandi and NH-48, listed REITs and InvITs as pricing benchmarks, Category II and III AIFs, LRS limits, and the tax treatment that decides after-tax outcomes. Closes with a full private markets investment policy for a hypothetical Rs 500 crore Indian family office.
- Size real estate and private market exposure against a family balance sheet using the liquidity, income and legacy buckets top family offices use
- Choose between direct deals, co-investments, club deals and funds for a specific opportunity, and understand what each choice costs in fees, control and effort
- Underwrite Indian commercial real estate, warehousing, residential development and land the way institutional family offices do, with cap rates, IRR and downside cases
Masterclass: Institutional Approaches to Forex and Commodity Risk Management
How Indian corporate treasuries, funds and family offices actually manage currency and commodity risk, taught the way a treasury head would teach a new hire. Starts with the risk mandate: what a hedging policy exists to protect, how RBI, FEMA and SEBI carve up the market into bank OTC forwards, NSE currency derivatives and MCX commodity contracts, and why the NDF market matters even to those who never touch it. Builds a full exposure map across transaction, translation and economic exposure, then quantifies it with VaR, cash-flow-at-risk and stress tests. Works through every hedging instrument in detail: forwards and the interest rate parity behind the forward premium, USDINR futures and options, cross-currency swaps, MCX and NCDEX futures, options on commodity futures, basis and roll risk. Closes with programme design: hedge ratios, layered hedging, Ind AS 109 hedge accounting, treasury governance, and case studies of Indian hedges that worked and hedges that blew up. Built for HNIs, family offices, fund managers and allocators who need to judge, run or oversee a hedging programme.
- Write a hedging policy that states what is protected, how much, for how long, and who decides
- Map transaction, translation and economic exposure for an Indian importer, exporter or commodity user
- Quantify exposure with VaR, cash-flow-at-risk and stress tests, and know where each one lies
Masterclass: Lessons From India's Most Successful Angel Investors
A masterclass built from the public track records of India's best-known angel investors: Sanjeev Bikhchandani and Info Edge's Zomato and PolicyBazaar bets, Ratan Tata's RNT Associates portfolio, Kunal Shah, Anupam Mittal, Rajan Anandan, Sanjay Mehta, Titan Capital's Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, and Nithin Kamath's Rainmatter. Each lesson extracts one transferable principle from a documented outcome: how the power law shaped their portfolios, how they sourced deals with an edge instead of at scale, how they underwrote founders and fund-returning outcomes, how they sized cheques and followed on, and how they actually got paid through IPOs, secondaries and strategic sales. Closes with the Indian tax treatment of angel exits and a playbook for HNIs, family offices and syndicate leads who want to apply these lessons to their own capital. Educational analysis of public information only, not a recommendation to back any company or fund.
- Read India's best angel portfolios through the power law and stop judging deals by hit rate
- Break down the Info Edge and Zomato outcome into decisions you can copy and luck you cannot
- Source deals with an edge, comparing the Shark Tank, operator and thesis-led models
Masterclass: Raising and Managing an Angel Syndicate or Micro VC Fund
The general partner's course. Built for experienced angels, syndicate leads and family office investors who want to move from investing their own money to managing a pooled vehicle: a platform syndicate, a SEBI-registered angel fund, or a Category I micro VC fund of ₹50 crore to ₹300 crore. Starts with the decision itself, what changes when you become a fiduciary, which vehicle fits which ambition, and the fund size math that decides whether the management fee can even pay a team. Walks through the SEBI AIF framework from the manager's chair: registration, sponsor and manager obligations, angel fund rules, and the GIFT City option. Then the economics and documents of the fund: fees, carry, hurdle, waterfalls, clawback, GP commitment, the PPM, contribution agreement and indenture of trust. A full chapter on raising from Indian LPs, from HNIs and family offices to SIDBI's Fund of Funds, including how to build an attributable track record before you have a fund. Closes with running the fund: portfolio pacing, investment committee, valuation and NAV, the compliance calendar, LP reporting, exits and distributions, Section 115UB pass-through taxation, winding down, and the DPI and TVPI numbers that decide whether Fund II gets raised.
- Decide whether a platform syndicate, a SEBI angel fund or a Category I VCF fits your ambition and LP base
- Model fund size, fee income and team cost so the fund is a viable business, not just a portfolio
- Navigate SEBI AIF registration: sponsor, manager, trustee, PPM filing and continuing obligations
Practice Drills: Building a Carry Trade Position Using Interest Rate Differentials
A hands-on drill course for HNI and family office investors, active currency and commodity traders, and experienced angels who already understand carry in theory. You will work one sample carry book end to end: turn policy and money market rates into a carry estimate, back the implied differential out of USD/INR forward points and NSE currency futures, adjust for inflation, write a single-pair carry ticket, compute breakeven spot moves and carry-to-volatility ratios, rank exchange-listed pairs by carry, size the book by volatility and margin, roll and mark it, stress it against the 2013 taper tantrum and the August 2024 yen unwind, price an option tail hedge, and write exit rules and a tax record sheet. Every number is worked, every step is repeatable with live quotes from NSE and RBI.
- Convert RBI, MIBOR, T-bill and SOFR rates into an annualised carry estimate for a currency pair
- Back out the implied rate differential from USD/INR forward points and NSE futures prices
- Adjust nominal carry for inflation and decide whether a differential is worth harvesting
Practice Drills: Building a Convertible Note Term Sheet for a Startup Deal
A practice-first companion to Understanding Convertible Notes and SAFEs in Startup Investing. You already know what a valuation cap, a discount and a maturity date are; this course makes you draft them. Working from a sample Indian seed deal, you will check eligibility under the Companies (Acceptance of Deposits) Rules and FEMA, pick between a convertible note, a CCD and an iSAFE, then build the term sheet clause by clause: principal and tranches, cap, discount, interest, maturity, the qualified financing trigger, change of control, MFN, pro-rata, information rights and events of default. Every economic term is tested against conversion scenarios in rupees before it goes into the draft. The course closes with two full end-to-end drills and a before-you-sign scorecard. Built for angel syndicate leads, family office investors and HNIs who write the term sheet, not just sign it. Educational content only, not legal or investment advice.
- Check a deal's eligibility for a convertible note under the deposit rules, DPIIT recognition and FEMA before drafting a word
- Choose between a convertible note, a CCD and an iSAFE for a specific deal and defend the choice
- Set a valuation cap and discount from comparable rounds and prove in rupees which one binds in each scenario
Practice Drills: Building a Family Office Style Alternative Asset Allocation Model
A hands-on drill course for HNI and family office investors, angel syndicate leads and active commodity and currency traders who want to run alternatives like an institution. Working from one sample INR 150 crore family balance sheet, you will build a spreadsheet allocation model tab by tab: honest return and risk assumptions for private equity, private credit, real assets and Category III AIFs, unsmoothed volatility, an illiquidity budget tied to the family's cash needs, a factor map of what the book really owns, a commitment pacing engine for capital calls and distributions, liquidity stress tests, and a gross-to-net layer for fees, carry and Indian tax. The course ends with an investment committee memo built from your own model.
- How to lay out an allocation model with clean input, assumption, engine and output tabs
- How to set defensible return, volatility and correlation assumptions for Indian alternatives and why reported AIF returns must be unsmoothed first
- How to size an alternatives sleeve from the family's liquidity needs rather than from a target return
Practice Drills: Building a Forex Trade Plan Using Technical Levels
A hands-on drill course for experienced investors, HNIs and angels who already read currency charts and now want a repeatable, written process before risking capital. You will work one USD/INR futures trade on NSE from a blank chart: map and grade support and resistance across timeframes, mark round numbers and RBI defence zones, choose an entry trigger, place an ATR and structure-based stop, set a target from the next level, size the position in lots from a fixed rupee risk, cost the round trip on Zerodha, filter for RBI and US event risk, write if-then branches for failure cases, repeat the whole plan on EUR/USD futures, and score it in a trade journal. Every number is worked and every template is reusable.
- Fill a complete forex trade plan template before placing a single order
- Map support and resistance on USD/INR weekly, daily and hourly charts and grade each level objectively
- Treat round numbers, prior extremes and RBI defence zones as tradeable levels
Practice Drills: Calculating Cap Rate and Cash on Cash Return
A hands-on drill course for experienced retail investors, HNIs, and angel investors adding income property to their portfolio. Using a set of sample Indian properties (a leased office unit, a residential flat, and a high-street retail shop), you will rebuild NOI from a broker's pitch, calculate cap rate forwards and backwards, count the full cash that actually leaves your bank account including stamp duty and registration, work cash-on-cash return at different loan-to-value levels and home loan rates, and finish by ranking and stress-testing deals the way a disciplined buyer would.
- How to turn a broker's rent and price pitch into a clean, honest NOI sheet
- How to calculate cap rate on Indian residential, office, and retail property, and back-solve a fair price from a target cap rate
- How to count the full cash invested, including down payment, stamp duty, registration, brokerage, and fit-out
Practice Drills: Calculating Fair Value of a Commodity Futures Contract
A hands-on drill course for experienced retail investors and HNIs who want to check a commodity futures quote instead of trusting it. You will build the landed spot price for gold from international prices, the rupee, and import duty, compute fair value for MCX gold and silver with financing, storage, and insurance costs, back out the implied convenience yield from a backwardated MCX crude oil curve, price an NCDEX agri contract with warehousing charges, and finally wrap every fair value in a no-arbitrage band that accounts for brokerage, CTT, margins, and tax before deciding whether a mispricing is real.
- How to collect and clean every input a fair value calculation needs: spot, interest rate, days to expiry, and contract specifications
- How to derive the landed Indian spot price of gold from international prices, USD/INR, and import duty
- How to compute fair value for MCX gold and silver futures with simple and continuous compounding, including storage and insurance
Practice Drills: Calculating Rental Yield on a Sample Property
A practice-first drill for anyone treating real estate as an investment, not just a home. Using one sample Indian property, you will work through gross yield, net yield, and how to tell whether the result is actually worth the capital tied up, instead of relying on broker pitches or gut feel.
- Tell apart the two ways real estate returns money: rental yield and price appreciation
- Set up a full property income and cost sheet for a sample flat
- Calculate gross rental yield step by step
Practice Drills: Comparing Two AIF Category Structures
A hands-on drill course for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors weighing their first or next AIF commitment. You take one sample one crore rupee commitment and run it through two illustrative funds: a close-ended Category II private credit fund and an open-ended Category III long-short fund. You read both term sheets side by side, compute management fees, a hurdle and catch-up waterfall and a high-water mark performance fee, map capital calls against NAV-based returns, stress-test leverage and redemption terms, work out pass-through versus fund-level taxation, and finish with a scored comparison and a one-page decision memo.
- How to read two AIF private placement memorandums side by side and extract the terms that actually drive your outcome
- How to compute management fees on committed versus invested capital and see what each basis costs you in rupees
- How to run a distribution waterfall with a preferred return, GP catch-up and carried interest, step by step
Practice Drills: Comparing Two REITs Using Basic Metrics
A hands-on drill set for comparing two listed Indian REITs using the metrics that actually matter, instead of just looking at distribution yield in isolation. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNI investors diversifying beyond equity and debt, and first-timers curious about real estate without buying property. Walks through what a REIT actually owns and pays out, the five comparison metrics worth trusting (distribution yield, NAV premium or discount, occupancy rate, WALE, and gearing ratio), where to actually pull these numbers from in India, and then puts that knowledge to work on a real side-by-side drill comparing two listed office REITs.
Practice Drills: Constructing a Multi Asset Alternative Portfolio Allocation
A hands-on drill course for HNI and family office investors, syndicate leads and fund managers, and institutional alternative asset allocators. Working on one sample INR 250 crore book, you will map the Indian alternatives menu to underlying risk factors, unsmooth private market returns, build net-of-fee and net-of-tax assumptions, size private equity, private credit, real asset and liquid alternative sleeves, model commitment pacing and liquidity, stress test the whole book against real Indian market episodes, and write rebalancing rules that work when half the portfolio cannot be sold.
- How to map Category I, II and III AIFs, REITs, InvITs, gold and unlisted shares to equity, credit, real and inflation risk factors
- How to unsmooth reported private market returns so volatility and correlation estimates stop flattering the alternatives sleeve
- How to convert gross return assumptions into net-of-fee, net-of-tax figures across pass-through and fund-level-taxed vehicles
Practice Drills: Estimating Fair Value of a Currency Pair Using PPP
A hands-on drill course for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors who already know what purchasing power parity says and now want to use it. You will work one currency pair, USD/INR, end to end: source CPI series and exchange rate averages from RBI, MOSPI and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, estimate absolute PPP from price baskets and World Bank conversion factors, pick a defensible base year, project relative PPP fair value, measure misalignment, extend the method to EUR/INR, GBP/INR and JPY/INR, read the RBI REER index, apply a simple productivity correction, estimate how long a gap takes to close, and turn the result into a hedge ratio for an offshore allocation. Every number is worked and every step is repeatable with public data.
- Pull and align CPI series and exchange rate averages for India and the US from official sources
- Estimate absolute PPP for USD/INR from price baskets and World Bank PPP conversion factors
- Choose a base year and show how that choice moves the fair value estimate
Practice Drills: Evaluating a Pre IPO Unlisted Share Opportunity
A hands-on drill course for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors who have been offered pre IPO or unlisted shares. You take one illustrative dealer quote for an unlisted company and work it end to end: build the evidence file from MCA filings and annual reports, read three years of financials with no screener.in page to lean on, rebuild the fully diluted cap table, value the business against listed peers, price the illiquidity discount, check the transfer mechanics and dealer spread, model the post IPO lock-in, compute post-tax returns across exit scenarios, and finish with a scored checklist and a one-page buy, pass or wait memo.
- How to assemble an evidence file for an unlisted company from MCA filings, annual reports, funding disclosures and any DRHP
- How to read three years of unlisted financials and stress-test the growth and cash burn story yourself
- How to rebuild a fully diluted share count including ESOPs, CCPS and convertibles, and see what it does to the per-share price
Practice Drills: Evaluating a Startup Pitch Deck as an Angel Investor
A practice-first course for retail and HNI investors exploring angel investing. Instead of another lecture on how startups raise money, this course puts a real-looking pitch deck in front of you slide by slide and drills you on what to check, what to question, and what should make you walk away. Every drill uses Indian startup context: SAFE notes and CCPS, DPIIT recognition, AIF structures used for angel pooling in India, and the kind of numbers Indian founders actually put on slides.
- Spot structural red flags in a pitch deck before you even get to the numbers
- Sanity-check TAM, SAM and SOM claims instead of taking them at face value
- Read unit economics slides: CAC, LTV, burn rate and runway
Practice Drills: Hedging a Sample Commodity Position Using Futures
A hands-on drill course for experienced retail investors, HNIs, and business-owning investors who hold real commodity exposure and want to protect it. You will take three sample positions (physical gold held by a family, a fleet operator's diesel bill, and a trader's stored jeera) and hedge each one on MCX or NCDEX: map the exposure to a contract, size it in lots, estimate a minimum variance hedge ratio from price data, fund margins and daily mark-to-market through adverse moves, roll across expiries, measure basis at the exit, and compute the effective price the hedge actually locked in. The course closes with the tax treatment of hedge gains and losses in India and a complete hedge plan worksheet in Google Sheets.
- How to translate a physical commodity exposure into the right MCX or NCDEX contract by quantity, quality, location, and timing
- How to size a short hedge on physical gold and a long hedge on a future fuel purchase, including rounding to whole lots
- How to estimate a minimum variance hedge ratio from price changes when the exposure and the contract are not the same commodity
Practice Drills: Reading a Currency Pair Quote and Calculating Pips
A practice-first companion for anyone exploring currency markets alongside their usual equity or fund investments. Instead of re-explaining forex theory, this course puts you through real quote-reading and pip-calculation drills using actual USD/INR and EUR/INR examples, so you can read a quote and work out what a price move is actually worth without hesitating.
- Read a currency pair quote and identify the base and quote currency
- Tell a direct quote from an indirect quote, and why USD/INR is direct for an Indian trader
- Read a bid-ask spread and work out what it costs on a trade
Practice Drills: Structuring a Commodity Spread Trade
A hands-on drill course for active commodity traders and HNI or family office investors who already understand futures pricing and spreads. You will structure three spread trades on MCX from scratch: a gold calendar spread priced against cost-of-carry fair value, a gold-silver ratio trade with rupee-matched leg sizing, and a crude oil calendar spread in a backwardated curve. For each one you set the thesis, entry, target and stop, work out margin and return on capital, and then stress-test it against legging slippage, correlation breaks, curve flips and expiry traps. The course closes with a one-page trade ticket and the Indian tax treatment of commodity futures P&L.
- How to turn MCX contract specifications into spread arithmetic: lot values, tick values and spread P&L per point
- How to price a calendar spread against cost-of-carry fair value and decide whether to buy or sell it
- How to size an inter-commodity spread so both legs carry matched rupee exposure using full and mini lots
Practice Drills: Structuring a Micro VC Fund's Investment Thesis
A hands-on drill course for family office investors, syndicate leads and emerging fund managers, and institutional allocators who back first-time funds. Working on one sample INR 150 crore Category I venture capital fund, you will turn a sector hunch into a written investment thesis that an LP can test: size the fundable pipeline bottom-up, define the wedge and prove the why-now with Indian data, build the portfolio construction model from fund size to cheque size to reserves, run the power-law math that shows what the best outcome must return, write the investment criteria and decision rules, score sample deals against the thesis, and finish with a two-page thesis memo stress-tested against the objections Indian LPs actually raise.
- How to separate a real investment thesis from a sector slogan, using the questions an LP's investment committee asks
- How to size a fundable deal pipeline bottom-up instead of quoting a top-down market size
- How to define a defensible wedge of sector, stage and geography, and back the why-now with verifiable Indian data
Practice Drills: Structuring a Real Estate Development Financing Deal
A drill-heavy course for family office investors, angel syndicate leads and active traders moving into private real estate credit and equity. You work on one sample residential project in Thane from land purchase to possession. You build its cost stack and sales forecast, find the month by month funding gap, size a bank construction loan, price a credit AIF mezzanine NCD, split the equity between developer and investor, write the waterfall, covenants and security package, stress test the whole structure against delay, price and cost shocks, compute every party's returns, and finish by writing the term sheet and IC memo. All deal numbers are illustrative.
- Build a development project's full cost stack and month by month cash flow
- Forecast sales and collections under RERA's 70 percent escrow rule
- Find the funding gap and size senior construction finance against it
Practice Drills: Structuring a Sample Angel Investment Term Sheet
A drill-based course for angel investors, HNIs and experienced retail investors moving into startup deals. You work one sample Indian seed deal from start to finish: a deal brief, a starting cap table and a founder's ask. Each lesson is a drill that makes you set one set of terms yourself, run the numbers, and write the clause: instrument and holding vehicle, pre-money valuation, ESOP pool, price per CCPS, liquidation preference, anti-dilution, pro-rata and transfer rights, exit rights, information and governance rights, founder vesting, and the FEMA, valuation, stamp duty and Companies Act checks every Indian angel round needs. The course closes with full end-to-end drills: writing the complete term sheet, handling the founder's pushback, and scoring the final draft before you wire money. Educational content only, not investment or legal advice.
- How to turn a startup's deal brief into a complete angel term sheet, clause by clause
- How to set pre-money valuation, ESOP pool and price per CCPS, and build the post-money cap table
- How to test liquidation preference and anti-dilution choices against real exit and down-round scenarios
Practice Drills: Tracking a Commodity Price Trend Over a Quarter
A practice-drill course, not a lecture course. Over one quarter, you build and run a real tracking log on MCX gold: setting it up, reading price action, confirming trends with moving averages, telling a real trend from a whipsaw, and reviewing what the data actually showed you at the end. Every lesson pushes you back to your own log, not just the reading.
- How to set up a weekly commodity price tracking log from scratch
- How to read price action on a commodity chart without relying on indicators first
- How to use moving averages to confirm a trend rather than just eyeball it
Practice Drills: Valuing a Property Using Comparable Sales and Cap Rate
A hands-on drill course for experienced retail investors, HNIs, and angel investors who want to put their own number on a property instead of trusting the seller's or the broker's. Using sample Indian properties (a residential flat, a pre-leased office unit, and a high-street retail shop), you will build a clean comparables sheet from registrar data and portal listings, convert everything to a like-for-like carpet area rate, adjust for floor, age, amenities and timing, derive a market cap rate from recent leased sales, value an income-producing unit from its NOI, measure how sensitive that value is to the cap rate, and finally reconcile the two methods into a price range and a walk-away number you can take into a negotiation.
- How to assemble a comparables sheet from IGR registrar records, RERA filings, and portals like MagicBricks and 99acres
- How to convert super built-up, built-up, and carpet area quotes into one comparable carpet area rate
- How to apply percentage adjustments for floor, age, amenities, and time of sale, and weight comparables into a value range
Practice Drills: Verifying a Real Estate Project on RERA's Portal
A practical, step by step drill course for verifying a real estate project's RERA registration before you invest. You will learn what RERA registration actually guarantees, how to search and read a project's listing on your state's RERA portal, how to cross check the promoter and professional certificates on file, and how to spot red flags before signing anything.
- What a RERA registration number actually guarantees, and what it does not
- How to search for and open a project's listing on your state's RERA portal
- How to read a project page: promoter details, land title, approvals, and timelines
Real Estate Valuation Methods: Comparable Sales, Income Capitalization, and Replacement Cost
A practical, India-focused course on how real estate is actually valued, built for investors who already own or are evaluating property and want more than a broker's gut feel. Learn the three standard approaches valuers use: comparable sales, which prices a property against what similar properties recently sold for; income capitalization, which prices a property against the rental income and cap rate it commands; and replacement cost, which prices a property against what it would cost to rebuild today. See where each method is pulled from in the Indian market, from registrar and RERA data to cap rates on pre-leased offices and REIT portfolios like Embassy, Mindspace and Nexus Select, to construction cost tables and depreciation schedules. Work through full numerical examples for a residential flat, a pre-leased office unit and a standalone warehouse, learn why the three methods often disagree and how to reconcile them, and finish with a decision framework and checklist for valuing any property you are about to buy, sell or lend against.
Setting Up an MCX Trading Account for Commodity Trading
A practical, hands-on guide to opening and understanding a commodity trading account on the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX). Learn what actually trades on MCX, how a commodity contract differs from an equity trade, and who regulates the exchange and protects your money. Walk through the real process of activating the commodity segment with a broker like Zerodha, the documents and eligibility checks involved, and what to compare before choosing one. Understand margins, contract specifications, and how to read a live commodity contract before placing your first order. Built for retail investors, HNIs looking to diversify beyond equities, and anyone curious about commodities who wants to set up correctly instead of guessing their way through a broker's app.
- What MCX is, what commodities trade on it, and how it differs from NSE/BSE equity trading
- How commodity contracts, lot sizes, and expiries work
- How to activate the commodity trading segment with your broker, and what documents you need
Understanding AIF Categories: Category I, II, and III Explained
A deep-dive comparison of Category I, II and III Alternative Investment Funds for investors who already know what an AIF is and want to go further. Go past the basic definitions into the investment conditions, leverage limits and structural nuances that actually separate a venture capital fund from a hedge fund from a real estate AIF, compare how each category is taxed under the pass-through and fund-level regimes, and build a practical framework for choosing between categories as an HNI, angel investor or experienced retail investor moving into alternatives.
Understanding Commodity Futures Pricing: The Cost of Carry Model
A rigorous but practical look at how commodity futures actually get priced, built for experienced retail investors, HNIs, and angel investors who already trade or hold commodities and want the mechanics underneath the price. Covers the cost-of-carry formula step by step: interest, storage, insurance, and convenience yield, then uses it to explain contango, backwardation, and the shape of the MCX futures curve. Applies the model across gold, silver, crude oil, and agri commodities with real MCX data, and closes with how cash-and-carry arbitrage and calendar spreads actually use the mispricing the model reveals.
Understanding Commodity Futures and Hedging Mechanisms
Description coming soon.
Understanding Commodity Market Manipulation and Regulatory Safeguards
An advanced course on how commodity prices get manipulated, and what stands in the way. Starts with the mechanics: corners, squeezes, spoofing, wash trades and settlement price games, and why thin, delivery-linked commodity markets are easier to push around than large-cap equities. Works through the cases that rewrote the rules, from the Hunt brothers' silver corner and Sumitomo's copper squeeze to the NSEL collapse, the 2012 guar spike on NCDEX, the JPMorgan spoofing desk and the LME nickel cancellation of 2022. Then maps India's defences in detail: the FMC to SEBI merger, the PFUTP Regulations, position limits, margins, price bands, warehousing and exchange surveillance on MCX and NCDEX. Closes with a practical toolkit for spotting manipulation in price, volume and open interest data, judging platform and counterparty risk, and knowing where aggressive trading crosses the legal line. Built for HNIs, family offices and active commodity traders who already understand futures and hedging.
- Explain why commodity markets are structurally more exposed to manipulation than large-cap equities
- Recognise corners, squeezes, spoofing, layering, wash trades and banging the close from market data
- Draw the real lessons from the Hunt brothers, Sumitomo, NSEL, guar, JPMorgan and LME nickel cases
Understanding Convertible Notes and SAFEs in Startup Investing
An advanced, India-specific deep dive into the instruments that fund most early-stage rounds before a price is set. Learn why startups delay pricing, how convertible notes, SAFEs, iSAFEs and CCDs differ, and how the Companies Act deposit rules, DPIIT recognition and FEMA shape what Indian and NRI investors can actually sign. Master the valuation cap, discount, interest and maturity terms, run full conversion maths for notes and pre-money vs post-money SAFEs, and see what happens when several convertibles stack into one priced round. Work through down rounds, shutdowns, tax treatment on conversion and exit, then read a convertible term sheet clause by clause and follow a syndicate lead's ₹50 lakh note through two rounds to exit. Built for HNI and family office investors and experienced angel syndicate leads.
Understanding Currency Pairs and Exchange Rate Basics
A ground-floor primer for Indian retail and HNI investors who have never looked at currencies as something you can understand, let alone invest around. Before any talk of NSE currency futures, RBI reference rates, or parity theories, this course answers the questions a first-timer actually has: what is a currency pair, why does INR/USD look different from USD/INR, why isn't the rupee 'worth less' in any meaningful sense, and where do exchange rates actually show up in an ordinary Indian's financial life. No trading mechanics, no macro theory, no formulas. Just the vocabulary and mental models needed before moving on to how currency markets actually work.
- Explain what a currency pair is and why every exchange rate is really a ratio between two currencies
- Read INR/USD and USD/INR correctly and know which one you will actually see quoted in India
- Understand why the rupee and the dollar are not 'worth' different amounts in any meaningful sense
Understanding Currency Valuation: Purchasing Power Parity and Interest Rate Parity
A focused, technical deep dive into the two classical theories economists use to value currencies: purchasing power parity and interest rate parity. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors who already know what an exchange rate is and want the actual mechanics, not a repeat of the basics. Covers absolute and relative PPP, the real effective exchange rate (REER), the law of one price, covered and uncovered interest rate parity with worked INR/USD arbitrage math, the carry trade, the forward premium puzzle, and how to apply both frameworks when sizing currency risk in an offshore or alternative-asset portfolio. Anchored throughout in RBI data, NSE currency futures and real Indian examples.
- Explain the law of one price and how it underpins both PPP and interest rate parity
- Distinguish absolute PPP from relative PPP and apply each using real INR/USD and Big Mac Index data
- Calculate REER and interpret what it says about whether the rupee is over- or undervalued
Understanding Family Office Allocation to Alternative Assets
An advanced, India-specific guide to how family offices think about, size and run allocations to alternative assets. Learn what separates a single family office from a multi-family office or a promoter treasury, why long horizons and patient capital tilt these portfolios toward private markets, and how to write an investment policy statement with liquidity buckets and risk budgets. Work through the alternatives menu from the allocator's desk: PE and VC fund commitments and co-investments, private credit, real assets, Category III AIF strategies and commodity and currency hedges. Master the mechanics that decide outcomes in a private markets programme: commitment pacing, capital calls, the denominator effect, vintage diversification, manager dispersion and fee drag. Map the Indian regulatory and tax terrain across AIFs, PMS, LRS, GIFT City and holding structures, then apply it all in two full case studies. Built for HNIs and family office investors, angel syndicate leads managing co-investor capital, and experienced traders stepping into multi-asset allocation.
Understanding Forex Market Interventions by Central Banks
An advanced course on central bank currency intervention as it actually works, not as it is headlined. Built for HNIs, family office investors, active currency and commodity traders and experienced angels who already understand what moves the rupee and now want to understand the hand that leans on it. Covers why central banks intervene, the full instrument set (spot, forwards, NDFs, buy/sell swaps and verbal guidance), sterilisation and its liquidity consequences, the portfolio balance and signalling channels, reserve adequacy, and the politics of the US Treasury monitoring list. Goes deep on the RBI's managed float, its forward book and swap windows, with case studies from 2013 and 2022, then compares the SNB, Japan's Ministry of Finance, the PBoC and the Hong Kong currency board. Closes with how to read RBI data, detect intervention in real time, price and trade around it, and hedge offshore allocations when the RBI is in the market.
- Explain why a central bank intervenes and what it is actually trying to control
- Distinguish spot, forward, NDF, swap and verbal intervention and what each does to reserves and liquidity
- Trace how sterilised and unsterilised intervention flow through to money market rates and bond yields
Understanding Fractional Real Estate Ownership Platforms
A practical, India-specific guide to fractional real estate platforms like Strata, PropertyShare, hBits and Assetmonk. Learn how SPV and LLP-based co-ownership actually works, how SEBI's 2024 SM REIT regulations reshaped a once-unregulated market, and how to tell a registered platform from one that isn't. Go inside deal structuring to read rental yield, cap rate and exit assumptions the way platforms present them, and see where fees and waterfalls quietly eat into returns. Build a due diligence process for both the underlying property and the platform itself, understand why liquidity is the biggest risk in this asset class and how secondary markets and buybacks really work, and learn how rental income and capital gains from fractional holdings are taxed. Finish by working out how much of a portfolio should go into fractional real estate and how it compares to other alternative assets. Built for experienced retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying into private real estate, and angel investors rounding out a broader portfolio.
Understanding Fundamental Drivers of Currency Movements: Interest Rates and Trade Balances
A practical framework for how currencies actually move, built for experienced retail investors, HNIs, and angel investors who hold or are considering cross-border exposure. Covers exchange rate mechanics and the RBI's managed float, interest rate parity and the India-US rate differential, the carry trade, India's trade and current account deficit, capital flows and RBI intervention, and how to size and hedge currency risk in an offshore or alternative-asset portfolio. Anchored throughout in Indian data (RBI, CAD prints, FII/FPI flows) and real INR/USD examples.
Understanding MCX and Commodity Exchanges in India
A structural look at how commodity exchanges in India actually work, built around MCX. Understand how an exchange functions as an institution: order matching and price discovery, MCX's corporate structure and public listing, and the Clearing Corporation and Settlement Guarantee Fund that stand behind every trade. Then go inside the regulatory layer, from the 2015 FMC-SEBI merger to membership structures, position limits, circuit filters and market surveillance. Finish by placing MCX in context against NCDEX, ICEX and global exchanges like CME, ICE and LME, and how liquidity and open interest actually behave in the Indian market. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond equities, and curious first-timers who want to understand the exchange itself, not just how to place a trade.
Understanding Pre IPO Investing and Unlisted Shares
A practical guide to buying and holding shares of Indian companies before they list, built for investors who already understand listed equity and now want exposure to the unlisted market. Learn what pre-IPO and unlisted shares actually are, why Indian unicorns are staying private for longer, and how the informal grey market differs from the more formal unlisted-share ecosystem. Go deep on the actual mechanics of access: ESOP secondary sales, pre-IPO placements, dealer platforms, and the SEBI and Companies Act boundaries that govern all of it, plus the red flags that separate a legitimate deal from a scam. Finish with how to actually value a company with no listed market price, how cap tables and dilution affect your stake, how these shares are taxed in India, and the real exit routes once you're in.
- Tell a legitimate unlisted-share deal apart from a grey market trap
- Value a company that has no listed market price to anchor on
- Know how unlisted shares are taxed in India and what your real exit routes are
Understanding Real Estate Cycles and Timing the Market
An intermediate, India-specific guide to the boom-bust rhythm of real estate and what it means for your buy and sell decisions. Learn the four-phase cycle of recovery, expansion, hypersupply and recession, and why property cycles run longer and slower than stock market cycles. Track the signals that actually move a cycle: interest rates and home loan affordability, unsold inventory and months to sell, absorption and job growth, and developer credit stress. Read RBI HPI, NHB RESIDEX, launch-to-sales ratios and rental yield compression like a practitioner, and see why Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad rarely move in sync. Finish with a honest look at whether timing the market actually works, cycle-aware buying strategies, and the mistakes that trap investors who chase the peak or panic at the trough. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors who already understand property basics and want to time their next move.
Understanding Real Estate Investment Analysis: Cap Rate and Cash on Cash Return
A rigorous, numbers-first guide to the two metrics serious property investors actually underwrite with: cap rate and cash-on-cash return. Learn to build a clean NOI from gross rent down through vacancy and operating expenses, calculate cap rate the way institutional buyers do, and see why Indian commercial cap rates sit where they do across Mumbai, Bengaluru and the Tier-2 cities. Then bring in debt: build cash flow after debt service, see exactly how loan-to-value and interest rate move your cash-on-cash number, and learn to tell positive leverage from negative leverage before you sign anything. Use both metrics together to screen and compare real deals, stress-test your assumptions, and spot the red flags behind a cap rate or cash-on-cash figure that looks too good. Built for HNIs, experienced alternative-asset investors and angel investors who already know the basics of real estate and want to underwrite a deal properly instead of trusting a broker's pitch.
Understanding Real Estate Private Equity and Development Financing
An advanced course on how Indian real estate projects are really funded, and where a private investor can sit in that funding. Starts with the capital stack of a development project, from land and approvals through construction and sales, and explains why developers turn to NBFCs, real estate credit AIFs and private equity when bank funding runs short. Covers the instruments in detail: construction finance, lease rental discounting, structured NCDs, mezzanine debt and preferred equity, along with the escrow, cash sweep and security structures lenders use and the RERA escrow rule that reshaped project funding. Unpacks how real estate private equity funds are built, from core to opportunistic strategies, Category II AIF structures, hurdle rates, carried interest and distribution waterfalls, and the platform deals global and domestic investors strike with Indian developers. Then works through underwriting a development deal end to end, with a full pro forma, IRR and equity multiple, and sensitivity to price, absorption and delay. Closes with risk and distress, including the 2018 to 2020 credit crunch, SWAMIH and IBC resolution, exit routes, fund due diligence, taxation of returns, and a decision checklist before committing capital. Built for HNIs, family office investors and experienced syndicate leads evaluating real estate AIFs and structured deals.
- Map every layer of a development project's capital stack and who funds each one in India
- Explain why developers pay 16 to 22 percent for private capital when banks charge far less
- Compare construction finance, LRD, structured NCDs, mezzanine debt and preferred equity
Understanding Rental Yield vs Capital Appreciation
A focused, India-specific guide to the two ways property makes money: the rent it pays you every month and the price it gains over years. Learn to calculate gross and net rental yield properly, understand why Indian residential yields sit far below home loan rates while offices and warehouses pay more, and separate genuine capital appreciation from inflation, listing-price hype and hidden costs. Combine both engines into one honest number using cap rate, price-to-rent, CAGR and XIRR, see how leverage and tax change the answer, and decide whether a yield-first or growth-first strategy, or a REIT, suits your goals. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers weighing their first property purchase.
- Learn the two ways property actually pays investors
- Calculate rental yield and capital appreciation in depth
- Measure combined returns and choose your investing strategy
Understanding Residential vs Commercial Real Estate Investing
A practical, India-specific comparison of the two biggest segments of property investing: homes you rent to families and offices, shops and warehouses you lease to businesses. See how the Indian housing, Grade A office, retail and warehousing markets actually work, why residential yields sit near 2 to 3 percent while commercial assets pay 7 to 9 percent, and what you give up for that extra income. Learn how 11-month rent agreements differ from long commercial leases with lock-ins and escalations, what pre-leased property and lease rental discounting mean, and how ticket size, GST, tax, liquidity and vacancy risk change the answer. Finish with a Hyderabad case study, a decision framework, and the lower-ticket routes to commercial exposure through REITs, SM REITs and fractional ownership. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers deciding which kind of property to buy.
- See residential and commercial real estate as different businesses
- Compare residential and commercial investing head to head
- Choose the real estate route that fits your goals
Understanding Seasonality in Agricultural Commodity Prices
Agricultural commodities do not move like stocks or even like gold and crude. Their prices run on a calendar set by sowing windows, the monsoon, and harvest arrivals, layered with MSP policy and global crop cycles from the US, Brazil and China. This course builds a working method for reading that calendar: how to construct a seasonality chart, tell a real pattern from noise, act on it through MCX and NCDEX contracts, agri-linked equities and funds, and size the risk correctly when a drought or an export ban breaks the pattern. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors who already understand commodity trading basics and want to go deeper into agri-specific seasonality.
- Why agri commodity prices move on a predictable calendar tied to sowing, monsoon and harvest, not just news flow
- How to build and read a seasonality chart, and how to tell a genuine pattern from random noise
- Which Indian instruments, MCX and NCDEX contracts, agri-linked equities, AIFs and PMS, let you act on seasonality
Understanding Startup Equity, Valuation, and Cap Tables for Investors
A practical, India-specific guide to what you actually own when you invest in a startup. Learn how share capital, CCPS and fully diluted ownership work, how early-stage startups are valued using the scorecard, Berkus and VC methods, and how Indian rules like Rule 11UA and FEMA pricing shape the numbers. Build a cap table round by round, see how ESOP pools and convertibles quietly dilute you, track your stake from seed to Series C, and understand down rounds, anti-dilution and pro-rata rights. Finish by learning why a headline valuation is not what your stake is worth, how liquidation preferences split exit proceeds, and follow one angel cheque from first round to exit. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying into private markets, and first-timers curious about startups.
- Understand what you actually own in a startup
- Read and build a cap table with confidence
- Protect your stake through dilution and down rounds
Understanding Technical Analysis Applied to Forex Markets
A focused, India-specific guide to reading currency charts the way a forex trader actually needs to, not a repeat of generic stock-market technical analysis. Learn why the forex market's 24-hour structure, session overlaps and lack of a central exchange change how you read candles, volume and support and resistance, then apply trend lines, moving averages, chart patterns, RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci and Ichimoku directly to USD/INR, EUR/INR and major currency pairs. Built for experienced retail investors, HNIs and angel investors who already understand forex basics and want a systematic way to read currency charts.
Understanding Term Sheets From an Angel Investor's Perspective
A clause-by-clause guide to the term sheet, built for angels who already understand cap tables and valuation and now need to read the document that actually governs their investment. Learn what makes a term sheet binding versus non-binding, how the format differs across SAFE, CCD and CCPS instruments, and how to read a real Indian angel term sheet line by line. Go deep on the economic terms that decide your payout: participating versus non-participating liquidation preference, redemption and buyback clauses, conversion triggers, and how anti-dilution and pro-rata protections are actually worded and negotiated. Finish with the control terms that determine how much say you get after the cheque clears: board seats and observer rights, protective provisions and veto rights, and information and inspection rights.
- Read a real Indian angel term sheet clause by clause
- Understand which economic terms actually decide your exit payout
- Know which control and governance rights an angel can realistically negotiate
Understanding the Risk Return Profile of Alternative Assets vs Traditional Assets
A clear, India-specific guide to comparing alternative assets with the traditional trio of equity, debt and gold on equal terms. Learn why risk in alternatives goes far beyond volatility: liquidity, valuation, leverage and manager risk, the illiquidity premium, and the smoothed, appraisal-based returns that make private assets look calmer than they are. Benchmark long-run Nifty, fixed income and gold behaviour, then profile physical real estate, REITs and InvITs, PE, VC and angel investing, private credit and P2P lending, and commodities, collectibles and crypto. Compare them fairly using CAGR, IRR and yield after fees and tax, build a side-by-side scorecard, and decide how much of a portfolio alternatives deserve. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about real estate and startups.
- Compare traditional and alternative assets on one question
- View risk through a wider lens than usual
- Add alternative assets into your portfolio the right way
Using AngelList India for Startup Investing Opportunities
A practical, platform-focused guide to investing in Indian startups through AngelList India. Learn how the platform is structured under the AIF route, what eligibility and KYC actually involve, and the real differences between syndicates, funds and direct deals on AngelList India. Walk through the fees and carry you will actually pay, how to read a deal memo and cap table, and a due diligence checklist for evaluating early-stage startups before you commit capital. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about startup and real estate investing who want to actually use the platform, not just understand angel investing in theory.
Using Groww or Similar Platforms for Investing in REITs
A practical, platform-level walkthrough of investing in Indian REITs through apps like Groww, Zerodha and similar brokers, for anyone who already has a demat account and wants to add real estate exposure without buying property. Starts with what a REIT actually is and how India's listed REITs (Embassy Office Parks, Mindspace Business Parks, Brookfield India, Nexus Select Trust) work, then moves into the mechanics: opening the order screen, reading the listing page, and telling REIT-specific data apart from a regular stock quote. Covers how to judge a REIT before buying using distribution yield, NAV premium or discount, occupancy and WALE, walks through how REIT distributions and capital gains are actually taxed in India, and closes with sizing a position, judging liquidity, and the mistakes first-time REIT investors on these platforms tend to make. Written for retail investors exploring alternatives to direct equity and mutual funds, HNIs diversifying beyond stocks, and anyone curious about real estate exposure without the down payment.
Using LetsVenture for Angel Investment Deals in India
Angel investing in unlisted startups has moved from founder networks onto platforms like LetsVenture, but the mechanics, the paperwork and the risk are very different from buying a stock on NSE or BSE. This course walks through how LetsVenture actually works: the AIF and syndicate structures your money moves through, the regulatory rules SEBI places on angel funds, how to read a pitch deck and cap table, what due diligence the platform gives you versus what you have to do yourself, and what really happens after you wire the money, including the long odds of any single startup returning your capital.
- How LetsVenture's AIF and syndicate structures actually move your money into a startup
- The SEBI angel fund rules that govern who can invest and how much
- How to read a startup pitch deck, cap table and term sheet before committing capital
Using MagicBricks and 99acres for Real Estate Market Research
Real estate is one of the largest asset classes for Indian households, but most retail investors and HNIs have no repeatable process for researching it the way they do stocks or mutual funds. This course teaches you to use MagicBricks and 99acres, India's two largest property portals, to read locality price trends, verify listings, and build a shortlist before you ever contact a broker.
- Where real estate fits alongside equities and mutual funds when you're diversifying
- How to navigate MagicBricks and 99acres and know which platform to use for what
- How to read locality price trends, rental yields, and appreciation data on both platforms
Using MetaTrader for Forex Trading Basics
A practical, India-specific walkthrough of the MetaTrader platform (MT4 and MT5): what it actually is, how retail forex trading works through it, and exactly where the legal line sits for Indian residents under FEMA and RBI rules. Learn to install and configure the platform, read its charts and Market Watch window, place and manage market, limit and stop orders, and use stop-loss and take-profit levels to control risk, all practiced on a demo account before any real money is at stake. Builds directly on the legal and market-structure grounding from Introduction to Forex Trading, focused entirely on the mechanics of the tool itself. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers curious about how a live trading platform actually works.
Using RERA's Website to Verify Real Estate Projects
Every real estate project sold in India is supposed to be registered with its state's RERA authority, and that registration page holds more useful information than any broker's brochure: the promoter's track record, the actual land title, approved layout plans, the promised completion date, and any extensions or complaints filed against the project. This course walks you through finding a project on your state's RERA portal, reading what each section of its filing actually means, and spotting the red flags that separate a legitimate project from one you should walk away from.
- Understand what RERA registration actually guarantees, and what it doesn't
- Find and search for any project on your state's RERA portal
- Read a project's promoter details, land title status and approved plans
Using Smallcase for Alternative Asset Thematic Portfolios
Smallcase lets you invest in ready-made, professionally curated baskets of stocks and ETFs through your existing broker, without opening a new account. This course walks you through how smallcase actually works, the alternative asset themes available on the platform such as gold, REITs, InvITs and global equity, and how to evaluate a thematic smallcase before putting money into it.
- What a smallcase is and how it differs from a mutual fund or a stock
- How to invest in and exit a smallcase through your existing broker
- The alternative asset themes available on smallcase, including gold, REITs, InvITs and global equity
Tax & Wealth Planning
72 courses
Advanced Charitable Giving and Tax Efficient Philanthropy Structures
A practitioner-level course on how serious philanthropy actually gets structured in India: which deductions survive scrutiny, when a private foundation makes sense over ad hoc giving, and how CSR, trust law and cross-border rules interact for HNIs, business owners and family offices.
- How to claim Section 80G deductions correctly and avoid the documentation gaps that trigger scrutiny
- How CSR obligations under Section 135 interact with a business owner's personal giving and 80G claims
- When anonymous donations lose their tax shelter under Section 115BBC
Advanced Estate Planning: Cross Border Inheritance Considerations
An advanced course for high net worth individuals, business owners with complex income and family offices whose wealth, heirs or assets now span more than one country. Start with why residency, domicile and citizenship each pull in a different direction under Indian and foreign law, and what the RNOR window actually lets a returning NRI do. Work through how Indian succession law behaves when an estate crosses a border: intestate succession under personal law, will validity and probate recognition abroad, and the specific collision between forced heirship regimes overseas and testamentary freedom under Indian law. Finish with the structuring layer, trusts, power of attorney, nomination and family office governance, and what each vehicle actually achieves once more than one jurisdiction is involved. Country-specific corridors and treaty detail build on this foundation in later chapters.
- Tell residency, domicile and citizenship apart and know which one governs which decision
- Use RNOR status correctly in a cross-border wealth transfer plan
- Map a family's assets, heirs and jurisdictions before a succession event forces the issue
Advanced GST Planning for Business Owners
An advanced, India-specific GST course for owners and promoters who already file returns and now want to manage GST as a lever on margin, working capital and risk. Starting from the post-September 2025 GST 2.0 rate structure, you will work through place and time of supply, turnover thresholds, and the conditions and blocks that decide whether input tax credit is real money or a write-off. Learn to protect credit with GSTR-2B and the Invoice Management System, recover cash stuck in inverted duty structures, choose between one GSTIN and many, handle mandatory Input Service Distributor rules and value related-party supplies correctly. Then apply it to pricing and contracts, discounts and credit notes, reverse charge, exports under LUT, business transfers, bundled supplies and e-commerce TCS. Finish by building a monthly GST close, preparing for GSTR-9 and 9C, reading notices under Sections 73, 74 and 74A, calculating real exposure, and deciding when an appeal to the GST Appellate Tribunal is worth the pre-deposit.
- Map every invoice to the correct supply type, place of supply, time of supply and post-2025 rate
- Test each input tax credit against Section 16 conditions and the Section 17(5) blocked list
- Use GSTR-2B, IMS and vendor controls to stop losing credit you have already paid for
Advanced NRI Taxation: Residential Status and Global Income Rules
An advanced, India-specific course for NRIs, returning Indians, globally mobile professionals, business owners and family offices who need to get residential status right before anything else. Work through the 182-day and 60/365-day tests, the exceptions for Indians leaving for employment and visiting PIOs, the ₹15 lakh Indian-income trigger and deemed residency. Use the RNOR window deliberately when you return. Count days correctly, build year-of-departure and year-of-return timelines, and assemble the evidence the tax department asks for. Then map exactly what India can tax: income received or accruing in India, deemed accrual, NRE, NRO and FCNR interest, rent, salary and business connection, plus global income and Schedule FA once you turn resident. Finish with capital gains and TDS for NRIs: Section 195 withholding, equity and mutual fund rates after July 2024, selling Indian property, lower-deduction certificates, repatriation, refunds and the NRI return. Section references follow the Income-tax Act, 2025, with the 1961 Act equivalent shown where it helps.
- Determine residential status for any tax year using the day-count tests, exceptions and deemed residency rules
- Plan the year of departure and the year of return to use the RNOR window deliberately
- Count days of stay correctly and assemble the documents that prove your status
Advanced Tax Planning for High Net Worth Individuals
An advanced, India-specific course for high net worth individuals, business owners and family offices who have outgrown basic tax saving. Work out your real effective rate once surcharge and marginal relief kick in, and decide between the old and new regimes at high incomes. Plan capital gains at scale after the 2024 reset, harvest losses properly and use Sections 54, 54F and 54EC within their caps. Compare how direct equity, PMS, mutual funds, AIFs, debt instruments, REITs, InvITs, GIFT City funds and high-premium ULIPs are taxed. Structure how a business owner draws money out of a company or LLP, and use HUFs, gifts and private trusts without falling foul of the clubbing rules. Understand succession, inherited cost basis and family offices, then handle residency, LRS, TCS and foreign asset disclosure. Finish with GAAR, the scrutiny triggers for HNI returns, and a full-year tax plan for a ₹5 crore family.
- Calculate your true effective tax rate including surcharge, cess and marginal relief
- Plan large capital gains using harvesting, set-off and reinvestment exemptions
- Choose between direct equity, PMS, mutual funds, AIFs and other wrappers on a post-tax basis
Case Study: A Benami Transaction Case and Its Regulatory Fallout
An advanced case study that walks through a benami matter from the first quiet name-lending decision to the final bill. A composite Indian business family spent fifteen years parking assets in other people's names: a flat registered to the company driver, farmland in a farm manager's name, listed shares in a relative's demat account and cash routed through friends. You see how the tax department's data trail surfaced it, how the paper owner received the first notice, and how the Initiating Officer moved to show cause and provisional attachment. You then follow the defence before the Adjudicating Authority asset by asset, the appeal route, and the retrospectivity question the Supreme Court reopened in the Ganpati Dealcom litigation. The fallout spreads beyond the benami law into an income tax reassessment, money-laundering exposure, broker and SEBI consequences, and the banking and reputational costs nobody budgets for. The case closes by totting up the full cost, looking at the exposure of the people who lent their names, pricing what a clean structure would have cost, and distilling a clean-up playbook for families and their advisors. The family and its numbers are an illustrative composite; the laws, procedures and court rulings are real.
- Trace how a family's informal name-lending habits turn into benami arrangements under the 2016 law
- Explain how the tax department's data trail (AIS, SFT reporting, property registration and demat records) surfaces benami holdings
- Follow the full enforcement sequence from show cause notice and provisional attachment to adjudication, confiscation and appeal
Case Study: A First Time Filer's ITR Mistakes and Corrections
Follow a first-time salaried taxpayer through their first ITR filing season in India, from a Form 16 they barely understood to a return that needed correcting after the fact. Each chapter walks through a real category of first-timer mistake, why it happened, and the exact fix, so you can spot and avoid the same errors in your own filing.
- How to read a Form 16 and know what each part means for your return
- How to pick the correct ITR form for a salaried income profile
- Why Form 26AS and AIS matter and how to reconcile them before filing
Case Study: A Freelancer's Journey Through Presumptive Taxation
Follow Rohan, a fictional Pune-based software developer, from the year he quits his salaried job to the year his freelance practice outgrows presumptive taxation. Year by year you watch him handle a transition year with both salary and fees, decide whether the professionals' scheme (old Section 44ADA, now Section 58 of the Income-tax Act, 2025) beats actual expenses, scramble to pay his single advance tax instalment by 15 March, get paid by foreign clients and register for GST, file ITR-4, and then hit the limits: cash receipts, the ₹75 lakh ceiling, books of account, a tax audit and the question of an LLP or company. Every decision is worked through with real numbers and every mistake is costed. Built for freelancers, consultants and anyone with income from several sources. Educational content only, not tax advice; confirm figures for your own tax year with a chartered accountant.
- Handle the transition year when salary and freelance fees land in the same return
- Check whether a freelance profession qualifies for the professionals' presumptive scheme
- Compare 50 percent deemed income against actual expenses and pick the cheaper route with numbers
Case Study: A Small Business Owner's First Year Under GST
Follow a small hand block-print textile business in Jaipur through its first full year under GST, from the moment marketplace sales and out-of-state orders made registration unavoidable to the year-end reconciliation and annual return. Each chapter is one stretch of that year: the registration call, repricing and invoicing, chasing input tax credit, a missed deadline and a mismatch notice, and closing the books. You see the real numbers behind every decision, so you can run the same year for your own business with fewer surprises.
- How to tell when GST registration stops being optional for a small seller, including marketplace and interstate triggers
- How to run the composition vs regular scheme decision on your own turnover and margins
- How to reprice a catalogue and raise correct intrastate, interstate and B2C invoices
Case Study: An ESOP Exit's Tax Planning During a Startup Acquisition
An acquisition is usually the single largest tax event in an ESOP holder's life, and most of the planning has to happen in the weeks before closing, not at return-filing time. This case study follows Vistarlok Technologies, an illustrative Pune B2B SaaS startup built from real Indian deal practice, as it is bought by a listed Indian acquirer for a mix of cash, acquirer shares, an escrow holdback and an earn-out. You meet four employees whose ESOP positions could not be more different: an early engineer holding exercised shares for years, a manager with vested but unexercised options, a recent joiner whose unvested options are rolled into the acquirer's plan, and a senior executive who used the eligible startup tax deferral. You read the deal documents through a tax lens, decide whether to exercise before closing or take a cash-out, time the sale around the 24-month long-term line, fund advance tax on consideration that has not all arrived, and tax each leg of the price, including acquirer shares and contingent payments. The course closes with surcharge and marginal relief on a crore-plus payout, reinvestment and loss set-off, gifting to family, a side-by-side scorecard of the four after-tax outcomes, and a pre-signing checklist. Built for HNIs with large ESOP holdings, founders and business owners with complex income, and family offices managing startup wealth. Educational content only, not tax advice.
- Read an acquisition term sheet and map every component of the price, and every option treatment, to the tax it triggers
- Decide between exercising options before closing and accepting a cash-out, with the after-tax numbers to back the choice
- Work out when tax deferred under the eligible startup rules falls due on an exit, and plan the cash to pay it
Case Study: An NRI's Tax Planning Using DTAA Between India and the US
An NRI working in the US still earns in India: FD interest, dividends, rent, capital gains. Both countries want a share, and the India-US treaty decides who gets what. This case study follows one engineer in Seattle through a full year, income stream by income stream, from Indian TDS to the US foreign tax credit, and shows the restructuring that cut her combined tax and compliance risk.
- How to establish residency in both India and the US, and when the treaty tie-breaker applies
- How each Indian income stream (interest, dividends, rent, capital gains) is taxed under the India-US treaty
- How Indian tax paid becomes a credit on the US return, and where credits get lost
Case Study: Comparing Tax Outgo Under Old vs New Regime for a Salaried Individual
A single running case study follows one salaried professional's CTC through both the old and new income tax regimes, line by line, to show exactly where the tax outgo diverges and why. Ends with a decision framework you can apply to your own salary slip.
- How the old and new tax regime slabs and deductions actually differ, not just in headline rates
- How to compute tax payable under both regimes for a real salary structure
- Which deductions and exemptions swing the decision, and by how much
Case Study: Cross Border Inheritance Planning for an NRI Family
A single running case study follows the Rao family: a Hindu NRI couple in Dubai preparing to return to Bengaluru, a son who is a US citizen with an OCI card, and a daughter who has lived in London for nine years. Their wealth sits in a Bengaluru flat, ancestral farmland in Karnataka, a Zerodha portfolio, Indian mutual funds, NRE and NRO deposits, a Dubai apartment and a US brokerage account. First stress-test what happens if the head of the family dies today with no plan, asset by asset and country by country. Then map the tax exposure in India and in each heir's home country, including TDS on NRI property sales, the USD 1 million repatriation route and foreign estate tax traps. Finish by building the plan: mirror wills, aligned nominations, a private trust decision and the timing of the return to India, ending with a reusable checklist for any NRI family.
- Build a complete family file: residential status, citizenship and domicile for every member, and the legal location of every asset
- Trace exactly what happens to each asset class when an NRI dies without a plan, and which law governs each one
- Apply FEMA rules on what NRI and OCI heirs can inherit, hold and repatriate, including agricultural land
Case Study: How a Business Family Structured a Multi Generational Trust
Most Indian business families know they need a succession plan. Far fewer know what it actually takes to build one that survives the founder, a family quarrel and the arrival of a third generation. This case study follows an illustrative, composite promoter family, the Kulkarni family of Pune, whose patriarch controls a listed engineering company, a family holding company, commercial property and a large investment portfolio. You see what triggered the plan, which vehicles the family rejected and why, how the private discretionary trust was designed to last across generations, which deed clauses mattered, how promoter shares and property were moved in under SEBI's takeover rules, stamp duty and tax, how the trust is taxed and runs its distributions year by year, and how the structure held up when the founder died, siblings disagreed and grandchildren came of age. Built for HNIs, business owners and family office advisers who want to see a trust work end to end before building one of their own.
- How a business family maps its assets, people and fault lines before choosing a succession vehicle
- Why the family chose a private discretionary trust over a will, an HUF or a holding company alone, and what each alternative would have cost them
- How a trust is designed to last across generations, within the limits Indian property law puts on gifts to unborn beneficiaries
Case Study: How a Family Used a Trust to Structure Inheritance
An illustrative case study of an Indian family with a small business, a listed portfolio, property and three very different heirs, and how they designed, funded, taxed and ran a private trust to pass on their wealth cleanly.
- How to diagnose what goes wrong when a family with mixed assets has no succession plan
- Why this family chose a private trust over a will alone, nominations or outright gifts
- How the trust was designed, drafted and funded, including gift tax, capital gains and stamp duty checks
Case Study: How a Salaried Professional Structured CTC to Save Tax
Most salaried employees leave money on the table simply because their CTC is structured badly. This case study follows one professional's payslip from a generic, tax-inefficient package to a restructured one, showing exactly which components to negotiate, which exemptions to claim, and which regime to pick.
- How a CTC breaks down into basic, allowances, and employer contributions
- How to compare the old and new tax regimes for your own numbers
- Which salary components are worth negotiating for tax efficiency
Case Study: Structuring Charitable Giving Through a Family Foundation
A single running case study follows the Kapadia family: a Pune promoter family whose listed auto-components company also carries a CSR obligation, and who want to move from scattered cheque donations to one organised family foundation. Start with the brief and what the family really wants from its giving. Compare direct 80G giving, a registered public charitable trust and a Section 8 company, and watch the family pick one. Then build it: the charter, the registration sequence under Section 12AB, Section 80G and CSR-1, funding with cash and listed shares, and routing company CSR money without breaking the rules. Finish with the compliance engine that keeps the exemption alive, the traps that cost families their registration, a five-year numbers review and a reusable playbook for any family.
- Turn a family's loose wish to give into a written brief with causes, budget, control and legacy goals
- Cost the family's current ad hoc giving and see exactly what a structure would change
- Compare direct 80G giving, a public charitable trust and a Section 8 company on tax, control, cost and permanence
Case Study: Tax Loss Harvesting During a Volatile Market Year
A case study for investors with more than one income source, freelancers and small business owners, and anyone building long-term wealth. You follow an illustrative freelancer with a Zerodha portfolio of NSE-listed stocks and mutual funds through FY 2024-25: a year in which the Nifty 50 swung from the election-day crash to a record high in September and then into a long sell-off led by midcaps and smallcaps, while the 23 July 2024 Budget changed capital gains rates, the LTCG exemption and holding periods partway through the year. You see how the gains booked before and after Budget day were taxed, why booking gains near the peak used the exemption well, how losses were found and harvested in the fall without leaving the market, how the trades were timed around the last trading days of March, what the final computation and real saving looked like after costs, how it was reported in ITR-3 so the losses carried forward, and how the same year would play out under the Income-tax Act, 2025.
- How a volatile year creates both gains worth booking and losses worth harvesting, and how to spot each as the market moves
- How the 23 July 2024 Budget split one year's capital gains into two rate regimes, and how that changed which gains a loss should be set against
- How to book long-term gains inside the annual exemption near a market peak, and why that resets your cost base usefully
Case Study: Understanding a Real Form 16 Line by Line
You already know what Form 16 is. This case study puts that knowledge to work on one real, fully filled-out Form 16 belonging to Rohan, a Bengaluru software engineer, and reads it field by field the way a careful taxpayer should. Verify the employer and TAN details in Part A, work through the quarterly TDS table, and trace Part B's gross salary breakup down to the exemptions and Chapter VI-A deductions actually claimed on this form. Cross-check every number against Form 26AS and AIS, catch a real error planted in this document before it becomes a tax notice, and follow the final figures through to a filed ITR. Built for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers who want to read their own Form 16 with the same confidence by the end.
- Verify employer, TAN and PAN details in Part A before trusting the rest of the form
- Read the quarterly TDS summary table and confirm it adds up correctly
- Trace a real gross salary breakup through to the exemptions and deductions claimed in Part B
Introduction to Advance Tax and Who Needs to Pay It
A plain-language, India-specific guide to advance tax for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand why the government collects tax during the year, how advance tax fits alongside TDS and self-assessment tax, and what the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the new tax year mean for you. Learn the 10,000 rupee threshold, why a salaried employee with capital gains, rent, FD interest or freelance income can still owe advance tax, and how investors, F&O traders, freelancers on presumptive taxation and senior citizens are treated. Estimate your liability, follow the 15%, 45%, 75% and 100% instalment schedule, pay online through the e-filing portal and check it in AIS and Form 26AS. Finish by working out the interest for missed or short instalments, avoiding the most common mistakes, and following a case study of one Indian professional planning a full year of advance tax.
- Explain what advance tax is and how it differs from TDS and self-assessment tax
- Decide whether advance tax applies to you using the 10,000 rupee threshold
- Identify the income that makes salaried employees, investors and freelancers liable
Introduction to Capital Gains Tax on Different Asset Classes
A practical, India-specific guide to how capital gains are taxed across every asset class an ordinary investor is likely to own, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand what a capital asset is, how holding periods decide whether a gain is short-term or long-term and how to compute a gain from sale value, cost and expenses under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Work through listed shares, equity mutual funds, ETFs and SIPs, grandfathering for pre-2018 holdings and the tax effect of bonuses, splits and buybacks. Learn how debt funds, bonds and every form of gold are taxed, then move on to property, unlisted shares and ESOPs, US stocks and crypto. Cut your tax legally with loss set-off, tax-loss harvesting, reinvestment exemptions and the basic exemption limit, then report it all correctly in your ITR using your broker P&L and CAS. Finish with the mistakes that trigger notices and a case study of one salaried investor's gains across five asset classes.
- Identify capital assets and classify any gain as short-term or long-term
- Compute capital gains on shares, mutual funds, debt funds, bonds and gold
- Apply grandfathering and handle bonus shares, splits and buybacks
Introduction to Estate Planning: Wills and Nominations
A practical, India-specific guide to passing on your wealth cleanly. Learn what actually happens to bank balances, demat holdings, mutual funds, insurance, EPF, PPF, NPS and property when someone dies with or without a will, and why a nominee is usually not the final owner. Understand intestate succession under the Hindu Succession Act and the rules for Muslims, Christians and Parsis, the difference between self-acquired and ancestral property, and where an HUF fits. Set up nominations correctly across every account, draft a legally valid will clause by clause, and avoid the mistakes that send Indian families to court. Finish with probate, succession certificates, transmission of shares and funds, the tax position of heirs, special cases for minors, business owners and blended families, when a private trust makes sense, and a full case study of one family's estate plan.
- Explain what happens to each type of asset when a person dies with or without a will
- Distinguish a nominee from a legal heir and know when each one ends up owning the asset
- Apply intestate succession rules for Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis
Introduction to Filing Income Tax Returns (ITR) in India
A practical, step-by-step guide to filing your own Income Tax Return in India, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning journey. Learn what an ITR is, who must file and why filing pays off even when it is not mandatory. Get your PAN, Aadhaar and income tax portal account in order, read Form 16, Form 26AS and AIS with confidence, and understand the five heads of income, the old vs new tax regime choice and the deductions that actually reduce your tax. Pick the right form from ITR-1 to ITR-4, file and e-verify your return on the income tax portal, then track your refund, handle intimations and notices, and fix mistakes through revised, belated and updated returns. Real Indian numbers, forms and workflows throughout.
Introduction to GST Basics for Freelancers and Small Business Owners
GST touches almost every freelancer and small business owner in India the moment their income crosses a threshold, yet most learn it the hard way, through a notice or a rejected input tax credit claim. This course builds GST from the ground up: what it actually is, when you must register, how to invoice correctly, how to claim back tax you have paid, whether the composition scheme suits you, and how to file GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B without missing a deadline. Every example uses Indian context, real thresholds, and real portal steps.
- What GST is, how CGST, SGST and IGST split between the Centre and states, and whether you are liable to pay it
- Whether you need to register for GST, at what turnover, and when voluntary registration works in your favour
- How to find the correct HSN or SAC code and GST rate for what you sell
Introduction to NRI Taxation Basics
A practical walkthrough of how Indian tax law treats non-resident Indians: how residential status is actually determined, what income gets taxed here versus abroad, how NRE, NRO and FCNR accounts differ in tax treatment, and how TDS and DTAA work on capital gains.
- How to determine your residential status under the Income Tax Act, including the day-count tests
- Why residential status can change from year to year and what that means for your return
- Which income is taxable in India for an NRI versus what stays out of scope
Introduction to Trusts as a Wealth Planning Tool
A practical, India-specific introduction to trusts: what they are, when they beat a will or direct ownership, how to set one up under the Indian Trusts Act, and how trust income is actually taxed.
- When a trust is the right tool versus a will, HUF, or direct gifting
- The core roles in a trust and how private and public trusts differ
- How to set up a trust under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882
Masterclass Case Study: A Family Office's Cross Border Tax Residency Planning Journey
A long-form case study for family office principals, senior HNIs and wealth professionals who serve UHNW families. You follow a composite, fictional Indian business family, built from patterns common among real promoter families, over eight years of cross-border residency planning. It starts in 2018 with an auto-components promoter in Chennai, a son eyeing Dubai and a daughter heading to Singapore. Along the way the rules move under the family's feet: the Finance Act 2020 residency amendments, COVID-era stranded days, the 2023 LRS tax collected at source changes, UAE corporate tax, the abolition of the UK non-dom regime and, from 1 April 2026, the Income-tax Act, 2025. You see how the family office proved treaty residence, built substance abroad, kept its holding company's management in India, handled foreign tax credit and disclosure, moved wealth to non-resident heirs and re-papered everything for the new Act. Each chapter ends with what the family got right, what it got wrong and what it cost. All family figures are illustrative; the rules and regulatory events are real and stated as at the date of last review.
- Trace how one family's residential status changed year by year as members moved and the law changed
- See how the Finance Act 2020 deemed residency and 120-day rules forced a live plan to be rewritten
- Understand what it actually took to prove UAE treaty residence and Singapore substance in practice
Masterclass Case Study: How a Leading Indian Business Family Structured Global Succession
A masterclass case study for senior HNIs, family office principals and UHNW wealth advisers. We follow the Vardhan family, a composite built from patterns common to Indian promoter groups: a third-generation patriarch, a listed manufacturing flagship on NSE and BSE, unlisted group companies, overseas subsidiaries in Singapore, the UAE and the UK, and heirs who now live in Mumbai, London, New York and Dubai. A health scare forces the question every such family postpones. We first stress-test what breaks if nothing is done: intestate succession across several countries, promoter shares stuck in transmission, Takeover Code and SEBI disclosure triggers, and the foreign tax exposure of heirs abroad, read against public Indian family disputes. We then build the answer in the order the family did: a family constitution first, then the Indian holding architecture (inter se transfers, a private family trust at the apex, a family investment company), then the global layer (ODI under the 2022 Overseas Investment Rules, the choice between Singapore, Dubai and GIFT City, UK and US rules for non-resident heirs, and Indian reporting of foreign assets). The course closes with a three-year execution timeline, liquidity for the branch that leaves the business, market communication, a comparison with the Godrej realignment of 2024, and a capstone where you design global succession for your own family group. Educational content only, not legal, tax or investment advice.
- Map a promoter group's listed, unlisted, overseas and personal assets to the law and tax regime that governs each one
- Stress-test a business family's position if the patriarch dies without a plan, across Indian and foreign jurisdictions
- Sequence a succession correctly: family constitution first, holding structure second, transfers third
Masterclass: Building a Multi Generational Succession and Governance Framework
A masterclass for senior HNI individuals, family office principals and UHNW wealth advisers who need to move a family's wealth, business and values across generations without litigation, tax leakage or a split. You will learn why most Indian family fortunes fail by the third generation, how Indian succession law actually transfers ownership (wills, nominations, the Hindu Succession Act, HUF), how to use private family trusts, holding companies and LLPs to consolidate control, and how to write a family constitution, run a family council and draft shareholder agreements that survive a dispute. The course closes with operating business succession, family office design for the next generation, liquidity and insurance planning, cross border heirs under FEMA, and a twelve month implementation roadmap, anchored throughout in real Indian cases including Reliance, Bajaj, Murugappa, Godrej, TVS and Raymond.
- Diagnose why wealth fails across generations and map your own family's ownership, management and stakeholder fault lines
- Know exactly what transfers ownership in India: wills, nominations, joint holdings, intestate rules under the Hindu Succession Act and the Indian Succession Act
- Use HUFs, private family trusts, holding companies and LLPs to consolidate control and decide who benefits, when and how
Masterclass: How Ultra High Net Worth Families Structure Global Wealth
A structural, not a product, view of how ultra high net worth Indian families hold wealth across the operating business, listed promoter stakes, liquid portfolios, real assets and offshore holdings. You will learn why these families separate ownership, control and benefit, how HUFs, private family trusts, holding companies and family constitutions fit together, and what FEMA, LRS, ODI, residential status rules and GIFT City allow when wealth crosses the border. The course covers Singapore, Dubai and Jersey structures, the anti-avoidance net of GAAR, POEM, the Black Money Act and CRS, cross-border succession and estate tax exposure, residency migration, liquidity events, and the operating model of a modern family office. Built for senior HNI individuals, family office principals and wealth professionals serving UHNW clients. Educational content only, not legal, tax or investment advice.
- Map a global family balance sheet and separate ownership, control and benefit across every asset
- Choose between HUF, private family trust, holding company and LLP for each layer of Indian wealth
- Apply FEMA, LRS, ODI and residential status rules before moving any capital abroad
Masterclass: Lessons From India's Leading Family Offices on Tax and Estate Structuring
A masterclass for senior HNIs, family office principals, and the advisers who serve them. It studies how India's leading family offices actually structure wealth: which holding vehicle owns what, why a private family trust sits at the centre of most modern structures, how the Hindu Undivided Family still earns its place, and how a family investment company, an LLP, or an AIF feeder is chosen for a given asset. It then works through the tax mechanics that drive those choices, from capital gains and dividend tax across vehicles to gift tax under Section 56, clubbing, GAAR, and the LRS and RBI rules that govern offshore holdings. The estate half covers wills, nominations, trusts, and succession in a country with no estate duty today but a live debate about one tomorrow, including cross-border heirs and NRI beneficiaries. Every chapter closes with the practical decisions a smaller family can copy, and the ones it should not.
- Map the holding structure of a modern Indian family office: trust, holding company, LLP, HUF, and individual accounts, and what each layer is for
- Compute the after-tax return of the same investment held through an individual, an HUF, a company, and a trust, and see why vehicle choice matters
- Apply Section 56 gift tax, clubbing under Section 64, and the relative exemption correctly before moving assets between family members
Masterclass: Navigating International Tax Residency for Globally Mobile Families
A masterclass for Indian families whose members, businesses and assets sit in more than one country. Start with the Section 6 day-count tests, deemed residency, RNOR status and the FEMA definition that runs on a different clock from the Income Tax Act. Then fix the scope of what India taxes once status is settled: NRI rent and capital gains, TDS under Section 195, foreign salary and ESOPs for returning residents, and foreign tax credit through Form 67. Learn to read a tax treaty article by article, apply the Article 4 tie-breaker, and assemble the TRC and Form 10F paperwork without which no treaty relief exists. Cover Schedule FA, the Black Money Act, CRS and FATCA data flows, LRS limits and the NRE, NRO and FCNR banking layer. Finish with country playbooks for the UAE, Singapore, the UK and the US, cross-border trusts and gifts, estate tax exposure, the returning NRI window and a 12-month family residency calendar that turns all of it into a repeatable system.
- Determine every family member's Indian tax residency for a year using the day-count, deemed residency and RNOR rules, and see where FEMA gives a different answer
- Work out which income India taxes for a resident, an RNOR and a non-resident, and apply the correct TDS, rate and foreign tax credit treatment
- Read a DTAA, run the Article 4 tie-breaker for a dual resident and assemble the TRC and Form 10F file that makes the treaty usable
Old Tax Regime vs New Tax Regime: Which One to Choose
A practical, India-specific guide to choosing between the old and new income tax regimes, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand why India runs two regimes side by side, how the new regime became the default, and what the slabs, standard deduction and rebate look like under each. Learn exactly which deductions and exemptions you give up in the new regime, from Section 80C, 80D and NPS to HRA and home loan interest, and which benefits survive in both. Compare your tax step by step, work out the breakeven level of deductions where the old regime starts to win, and follow worked examples across salary levels. Finish by learning how to declare your choice to your employer, the switching rules for salaried and business income, how to pick your regime while filing your return, and a case study of three Indian taxpayers who make three different choices.
- Explain how the old and new tax regimes differ in slabs, rebate and deductions
- Identify which deductions and exemptions you lose by choosing the new regime
- Calculate your tax under both regimes and compare them side by side
Practice Drills: Advising on a Simulated Family Office Tax Residency Case
A simulation course for advisers, family office principals and senior HNIs who already know the residency rules and now want to apply them to a messy, real-world file. You are handed the case of a fictional Indian business family spread across Bengaluru, Dubai, Singapore and London: a patriarch who still runs the operating company, a son relocating to the UAE, a daughter on a Singapore employment pass, a grandchild studying in the UK and a family investment company plus private trust sitting above them all. Working as the family office's tax adviser, you build the day-count ledger, fix each member's residential status under Indian law and FEMA, run treaty tie-breakers, test the plan against the principal purpose test and GAAR, map every income stream to its taxing country, compute foreign tax credit, complete foreign asset disclosures, re-paper bank accounts, check gifts and trust distributions to non-resident beneficiaries and test where the holding company is effectively managed. You finish by writing the residency advice memo and running a full case on a new family. All family figures are illustrative; the rules are real and stated as at the date of last review, under the Income-tax Act, 2025.
- Build a day-count ledger and fix residential status, including deemed residency and RNOR, for every family member
- Separate FEMA residential status from income-tax status and see where the two clocks diverge
- Run the treaty tie-breaker for a UAE relocation and assemble the paperwork a treaty claim needs
Practice Drills: Applying DTAA Benefits to a Sample NRI Tax Case
A hands-on drill course built around a single sample case: a US-resident NRI with interest on NRO deposits, dividends from NSE-listed shares, capital gains on equity and mutual funds, and rent from a flat in Pune. You confirm residential status and treaty eligibility first, then apply the India-US DTAA to each income stream, compare the treaty rate with the Indian domestic rate, sort out the TRC and Form 10F paperwork, recover excess TDS through the ITR, and finish with a complete start-to-finish tax computation for the year.
- Confirm residential status and treaty eligibility before applying any DTAA rate
- Compare the treaty rate with the domestic rate for interest, dividends, capital gains and rent, and pick the lower one correctly
- Spot which income streams the treaty does not help with, so you do not claim relief that is not there
Practice Drills: Building an LRS Compliant Overseas Investment Plan
A drill course for HNIs, business owners and family office teams who understand the LRS and its tax rules but have never built a full overseas investment plan end to end. You work on one sample family throughout: setting the plan template, mapping and classifying every remittance, sizing and sequencing transfers across members and years, modelling TCS cash flow, choosing between routes on cost, stress-testing estate and withholding exposure, and projecting tax, foreign tax credit and Schedule FA reporting. You finish by auditing a deliberately flawed plan and writing the family's one-page LRS investment policy and compliance calendar. Educational content only, not investment or tax advice.
- Turn a family's overseas allocation goal into a written, checkable LRS investment plan
- Map every proposed remittance to its limit, purpose code and permitted route before money moves
- Classify proposed holdings as OPI or ODI and spot the ones that need a different structure
Practice Drills: Calculating Tax Liability Under Both Regimes
A hands-on practice course for salaried taxpayers who already know that India has two tax regimes and want to get fast and accurate at computing their actual liability under each one. Every lesson works through real salary scenarios, building from a single straightforward payslip to full side-by-side comparisons that account for deductions, exemptions, and the Section 87A rebate.
- How to gather the income, exemption, and deduction inputs you need before calculating either regime
- How to compute tax liability step by step under the old regime, including standard deduction, HRA, and Chapter VI-A deductions
- How to compute tax liability step by step under the new regime, including the current slabs and the Section 87A rebate
Practice Drills: Calculating Tax Under Presumptive Taxation Schemes
A practice-first companion to Understanding Presumptive Taxation for Freelancers and Small Businesses. You already know what the presumptive schemes for professionals, small businesses and goods carriage owners are; this course makes you run the numbers. Each drill starts from a realistic Indian taxpayer's receipts, bank statement split and fleet register, checks eligibility first, computes presumptive income at the right rate, then carries it all the way through other income, the old and new regimes, rebate, cess and advance tax to a final payable figure. You will test the turnover and receipts limits at their edges, work the five-year lock-in, handle vehicles bought and sold mid-year, and decide when declaring above the presumptive floor or keeping regular books makes more sense. The course closes with two end-to-end capstones. Built for freelancers, small business owners and anyone filing with income from several sources. Educational content only, not tax advice; confirm figures for your own tax year with a chartered accountant.
- Check eligibility for each presumptive scheme before computing a single rupee of income
- Compute presumptive income for a professional at 50 percent of gross receipts and test the receipts limit and cash condition
- Split a small business's turnover into digital and cash receipts and apply the 6 and 8 percent rates correctly
Practice Drills: Calculating Tax on an ESOP Exercise and Sale Event
A practice-first course for employees with large ESOP and RSU holdings, founders and business owners with complex income, and family office teams who plan around equity liquidity events. You work through a set of sample employees and grants and calculate every rupee of tax yourself. First the exercise event: the perquisite value using listed-share FMV or a merchant banker valuation, slab tax, surcharge and marginal relief, employer TDS, and the deferral available to employees of eligible startups. Then the sale event: cost of acquisition, holding period, short-term versus long-term classification for listed, unlisted and foreign shares, and the effect of sell-to-cover and same-day sales. You then handle the special cases that trip up high earners: RSUs from a US parent with exchange-rate conversion and foreign tax credit, selling foreign shares and reporting them, and company buybacks or liquidity programmes. The course closes with three full drills that run a grant from exercise to exit and reconcile the result against Form 16, AIS and the return. Educational content only, not tax advice.
- Compute the taxable perquisite on an ESOP exercise for a listed company and an unlisted startup, using the correct FMV rule for each
- Calculate slab tax, surcharge, marginal relief, cess and employer TDS on a large perquisite year
- Work out when deferred perquisite tax at an eligible startup falls due, and what triggers it early
Practice Drills: Comparing ELSS, PPF, and NPS for Tax Efficiency
A drills course for taxpayers who already know what ELSS, PPF and NPS are and now want to compare them properly. You work through the tax saved at entry under each regime and slab, the extra NPS deduction and employer contributions, the tax treatment at exit for ELSS redemptions, PPF maturity and the NPS lump sum and annuity, and then build a full post-tax corpus comparison that prices in lock-in, liquidity and a weak equity decade. The course ends with allocation drills for a salaried taxpayer in the top slab, a freelancer with uneven income and a household with several income sources. All taxpayer figures are illustrative; the tax rules are stated as at the date of last review, under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Educational content only, not investment advice.
- Check which deductions each tax regime allows before choosing a product
- Compute the real tax saved by an ELSS, PPF or NPS investment at every slab
- Stack the additional NPS deduction and employer NPS contributions correctly
Practice Drills: Filling Out a Sample ITR Form
A hands-on walkthrough of filing your Income Tax Return in India, from gathering documents to e-verification. Built for salaried professionals and first-time filers who want to file their own ITR-1 correctly and confidently, without hiring a CA.
- Which documents you need before you start filing: Form 16, AIS, 26AS, bank interest certificates
- How to pick the right ITR form for your income type
- How to compare the old and new tax regimes and choose correctly
Practice Drills: Harvesting Tax Losses on a Sample Portfolio
A hands-on drill course for investors with more than one income source, freelancers and small business owners, and anyone building long-term wealth who already knows what tax-loss harvesting is and now wants to do it properly. You take one illustrative investor's portfolio of NSE-listed stocks, equity, debt and international mutual funds, plus a few intraday and futures and options trades, and work through a full year-end harvest: build the lot-level holdings register from a broker tax P&L, mark every lot to market, net the gains already booked, rank harvestable lots by the set-off rules, size the harvest around the annual LTCG exemption, harvest gains as well as losses, handle the asset classes that follow different rules, stay invested without walking into the stripping rules, time the trades around settlement and 31 March, measure the real saving after costs, and report it all so the carried-forward losses survive.
- How to build a lot-level holdings register with FIFO cost, purchase dates and grandfathered cost from a broker tax P&L
- How to split unrealised gains and losses into short-term and long-term buckets and net them against gains already booked this year
- How to rank harvestable lots using the set-off rules, so short-term losses go where they save the most tax
Practice Drills: Reconciling Form 26AS With Form 16
A practical, India-specific drill for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers on reconciling Form 16 against Form 26AS before filing a return. Learn what each document actually shows, why TDS deducted by your employer can differ from TDS reflected against your PAN, and how to work through a line-by-line reconciliation using real Indian salary slip and Form 26AS examples. Cover downloading Form 26AS, AIS and TIS from the income tax e-filing portal, the most common causes of mismatch such as late TDS deposit, PAN errors and other deductors' entries, what to do when a mismatch turns up, and how to reconcile across multiple Form 16s after a job change.
- Read Form 26AS and Form 16 and know exactly what each one is telling you
- Explain why TDS in your Form 16 can differ from what shows against your PAN in Form 26AS
- Download Form 26AS, AIS and TIS from the income tax e-filing portal
Practice Drills: Structuring a Basic Will and Nomination Plan
A practice-first course for taxpayers with several income sources, freelancers and small business owners, and anyone structuring wealth for the long term. You take four sample Indian households and build their estate plans yourself. First you map every asset, liability and account into a register, then audit the nominations on bank accounts, demat accounts, mutual fund folios, insurance policies, EPF, PPF and NPS, and find where a nominee, a joint holder and a will point to different people. Next you draft the will itself: the distribution schedule, executor and guardian clauses, residuary and contingency clauses, and the execution checklist for witnesses, registration and storage. You then handle the situations that break simple plans: a freelancer's receivables and digital accounts, a business owner's partnership share or private company shares, second marriages, minor children and dependants with special needs. The course closes with three full drills, including fixing a badly drafted sample will. Educational content only, not legal or tax advice.
- Build a complete asset and liability register that an executor could act on without guesswork
- Audit nominations across bank, demat, mutual fund, insurance, EPF, PPF and NPS accounts and record every gap
- Identify conflicts between a nominee, a joint holder and a will, and decide which one controls each asset
Practice Drills: Structuring a Family Trust for Succession
A simulation course for HNIs, business owners and family office advisers who already understand how private trusts work in India and now want to build one. You are handed the file of a fictional Pune promoter family: a founder in his late sixties holding a stake in a listed auto-components company, an unlisted holding company, commercial and residential property, a son running a leveraged side business, a daughter settled in Singapore and two minor grandchildren. Working as the family's succession adviser, you map every asset to its succession risk, choose the right vehicle, assign the trust roles, draft the deed clauses that matter, settle listed promoter shares without triggering an open offer, move unlisted shares and property into the trust, test every transfer for gift tax, capital gains and clubbing, compute trust tax, handle distributions to the non-resident beneficiary, stress-test asset protection against a creditor claim and tie the trust to a family constitution. You finish by writing the structuring memo and running a full case on a new family. All family figures are illustrative; the rules are real and stated as at the date of last review, under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 and the Income-tax Act, 2025.
- Map every family asset to its succession risk and pick the vehicle that actually solves it
- Choose between specific and discretionary, revocable and irrevocable structures and defend the choice
- Assign settlor, trustee, protector and beneficiary roles without creating control or tax leaks
Practice Drills: Structuring a Multi Jurisdiction Succession Plan
A practice-first masterclass for senior HNIs, family office principals and wealth professionals advising UHNW families whose heirs and assets sit in more than one country. Working from a sample Indian promoter family with a resident founder, children in the UK, UAE and Singapore, a US citizen grandchild, and assets spread across listed Indian shares, Mumbai real estate, a Dubai apartment, a London flat and overseas portfolios, you will map domicile, residence and citizenship for every family member, build an asset register by situs and governing law, and work out which succession law actually decides who inherits each asset. You will then measure US estate and gift tax, UK inheritance tax and Indian tax and FEMA exposure in rupees, test treaty relief, and choose between an Indian private trust, an offshore holding structure, situs wills and lifetime gifts. Every drill ends with a decision you can defend to the family. The course closes with three end-to-end drills and a before-you-sign scorecard. Educational content only, not legal, tax or investment advice.
- Map domicile, tax residence and citizenship for every family member and spot who drags which country's tax net into the plan
- Build a cross-border asset register by situs and governing law, and tell movable from immovable property the way a court will
- Work out which succession law governs each asset under Indian personal law, conflict of laws rules and UAE default rules
Practice Drills: Structuring a Sample Salary for Tax Efficiency
A hands-on companion to Understanding Tax Implications of Salary Structuring. Instead of more theory, you work a single sample CTC of eighteen lakh rupees from raw numbers to a finished, tax-efficient structure: sorting every component into taxable, exempt or flexible, computing the HRA exemption step by step, building the full tax computation under both the old and new regimes, and reshuffling the structure using NPS, flexi-benefits and meal cards to see the take-home difference. Every drill uses real numbers you compute yourself, not a narrated case study, and the final lesson hands you a second CTC to structure on your own.
- Sort a full CTC into taxable, exempt and flexible components
- Calculate HRA exemption for a real salary figure step by step
- Build the tax computation under both the old and new regimes for the same CTC
Practice Drills: Structuring a Tax Efficient Charitable Giving Plan
A practice-first course for high-net-worth individuals, business owners with complex income and family office teams who give seriously and want every rupee of it to work. You work through a set of sample donors and calculate the outcome yourself. First personal giving: the deduction across each donee category, the qualifying limit on adjusted gross total income, the old versus new regime decision, cash limits and matching your claim to the donee's statement. Then business and promoter giving: a company's CSR obligation, how CSR spend sits alongside a promoter family's personal giving, and the tax result of donating shares or property instead of cash. Then your own giving vehicle: when a family trust beats direct giving, and how to test a trust's books against the application and related-party rules that decide whether its exemption survives. The course closes with three full drills that build and review complete giving plans. Educational content only, not tax advice.
- Compute the deduction on a donation for each donee category, with and without the qualifying limit
- Calculate adjusted gross total income and apply the 10 percent qualifying limit correctly
- Decide whether a large giving year changes the old versus new tax regime choice, with the numbers to prove it
Taxation and Regulatory Basics for Indian Investors
A practical, no-jargon guide to how India actually taxes and regulates your investments, built for first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers and retirees who want to understand their money, not just track it. Covers how capital gains on equity, mutual funds, debt funds, FDs and bonds are taxed, how dividends and TDS work, which ITR form and schedule to use for reporting gains, and the roles SEBI, the exchanges and the depositories play in protecting you. Uses real Indian numbers, forms and workflows throughout: Form 26AS, AIS, Schedule CG, SCORES, and current CBDT and SEBI rules.
- Understand how equity, debt funds and gold get taxed
- Learn to file your income tax return as an investor
- See how SEBI, exchanges and KYC rules protect you
Understanding Benami Transactions and Regulatory Risk
An advanced, India-specific course on the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988, as overhauled in 2016, built for HNIs, business owners and family offices. Understand exactly what makes a transaction benami, the statutory exceptions that protect genuine family holdings, and why paying for an asset from unexplained money is the fault line. Work through the enforcement machinery from provisional attachment to confiscation, the penalties, and the Supreme Court's turn on retrospective application. See how benami risk overlaps with the income tax law on unexplained investments, the Black Money Act, PMLA and SEBI's actions against mule and name-lending demat accounts. Finish with the everyday situations where legitimate families drift into benami exposure, including property in a relative's name, promoter shares parked with associates and cash-funded purchases, and a practical framework for documenting source of funds and cleaning up legacy holdings.
- Identify the elements that make a transaction or arrangement benami under Indian law
- Apply the statutory exceptions for HUF, fiduciary and family holdings to real situations
- Trace the enforcement process from notice and provisional attachment to confiscation and appeal
Understanding Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAA)
For Indian taxpayers with income from more than one country: NRIs, remote workers paid abroad, freelancers billing international clients, and investors holding foreign assets. Walks through India's Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements from first principles, how residential status decides which country taxes you first, how to claim relief under Section 90/90A using the exemption or tax credit method, and what a Tax Residency Certificate and Form 10F actually need to show on your ITR. Uses real treaty mechanics from India's DTAA with the US and UAE, and works through complete examples combining NRI salary income, foreign dividends, and Indian rental income.
- Determine your residential status and whether DTAA even applies to your income
- Claim DTAA relief correctly using Form 10F and a Tax Residency Certificate
- Choose between the exemption method and the tax credit method under Section 90/90A
Understanding Family Trusts and Succession Structuring in India
An advanced, India-specific course on private family trusts and succession structuring, built for HNIs, business owners and family offices. Understand how a private trust works under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882, the roles of settlor, trustee, beneficiary and protector, and how a trust compares with a will, an HUF and a holding company. Learn the choices that decide everything else: revocable or irrevocable, specific or discretionary, living or testamentary. Work through the tax treatment of settling assets into a trust, of income earned inside it, and of distributions to beneficiaries, including the maximum marginal rate trap for discretionary trusts and clubbing on revocable transfers. Cover the practical mechanics of drafting a trust deed, stamp duty and registration, moving listed shares, unlisted shares and property into a trust, and the SEBI and FEMA angles for promoter holdings and NRI beneficiaries. Finish with succession structures for family businesses, family constitutions, asset protection limits, the disputes that break structures, and case studies of how Indian families have planned, or failed to plan, their succession.
- Explain how a private family trust works and the legal roles of settlor, trustee, beneficiary and protector
- Choose between a will, an HUF, a holding company and a trust for a given family goal
- Distinguish revocable from irrevocable and specific from discretionary trusts, and the tax result of each
Understanding Form 16, Form 26AS, and AIS
A plain-language, India-specific guide to the three documents every salaried professional and first-time taxpayer should check before filing an income tax return. Learn how your employer, bank, broker and mutual fund house report your income and tax to the Income Tax Department, and what Form 16, Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement (AIS) each show. Read Part A and Part B of Form 16 line by line, see how the old and new tax regimes appear in it, and handle a job switch or a missing Form 16. Download and read Form 26AS, trace every TDS, TCS and advance tax credit, and fix missing TDS with the deductor. Use AIS and TIS to spot interest, dividends, share and mutual fund sales and high-value transactions, and submit feedback on wrong entries. Finish by reconciling all three documents against your pre-filled ITR, understanding mismatch notices, and following a case study of one Indian professional doing the full reconciliation.
- Explain what Form 16, Form 26AS and AIS are, who issues each and when
- Read Part A and Part B of Form 16 and check your salary, exemptions and deductions
- Download Form 26AS and verify every TDS, TCS and advance tax credit against your records
Understanding Gift Tax Rules in India
A practical walkthrough of Section 56(2)(x) and India's gift tax rules: which gifts are taxable, which relatives and occasions are exempt, how to value and report a gift correctly, and the documentation that keeps you audit-ready.
- Which gifts of money and property are taxable under the Income Tax Act
- The full legal definition of a relative for gift tax purposes
- Which occasions and categories are exempt from gift tax regardless of who gives
Understanding House Rent Allowance (HRA) Tax Exemption
A practical, India-specific guide to the House Rent Allowance exemption, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand what HRA is, why it appears in your salary slip, who can claim the exemption and how it works under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Master the three-limit rule, learn what counts as salary for HRA, how the metro and non-metro percentages apply and how to handle rent changes, city moves and job switches during the year. Work through special situations such as paying rent to your parents, claiming HRA alongside a home loan, shared flats and claiming rent under Section 80GG when your salary has no HRA. Get your rent receipts, rent agreement and landlord PAN in order, declare rent to your employer, claim a missed exemption while filing your ITR and meet your TDS duties on high rent. Finish with the most common HRA mistakes that trigger tax notices and a case study of one Indian professional working out HRA across a mid-year move.
- Explain what HRA is and check whether you are eligible to claim the exemption
- Calculate the exempt portion of HRA using the three-limit rule
- Apply the correct salary definition and metro or non-metro percentage
Understanding Presumptive Taxation for Freelancers and Small Businesses
A practical, India-specific guide to presumptive taxation for freelancers, consultants and small business owners who want to spend less time on bookkeeping and audits. Understand exactly who qualifies under Sections 44AD, 44ADA and 44ADE, how the presumptive income is computed under each, and when the scheme actually saves you tax versus when maintaining regular books works out better. Work through the digital-receipts versus cash-receipts split under 44AD, the 5-year lock-in if you opt out early, and how presumptive income interacts with advance tax and GST registration thresholds. Finish with real Indian scenarios, a consultant, a kirana store owner and the common mistakes that trigger scrutiny.
- Determine whether you qualify for presumptive taxation under Section 44AD, 44ADA or 44ADE
- Compute presumptive income correctly under each section, including the digital-receipts split
- Decide when presumptive taxation saves you money and when regular books work out better
Understanding Section 80C and Common Tax Saving Investments
A practical, India-specific guide to Section 80C and the most common tax saving investments, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand what Section 80C is, who can claim it, why it only works under the old tax regime, and how the Rs 1.5 lakh limit translates into actual tax saved at each slab. Work through every major 80C option, from PPF, EPF, VPF, NSC, tax-saver FDs, Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana and SCSS to ELSS mutual funds, NPS and life insurance, along with expenses like tuition fees and home loan principal that also qualify. Compare lock-ins, returns, risk and tax treatment side by side, look beyond 80C at deductions such as 80CCD(1B) and 80D, and finish by learning how to declare investments to your employer, avoid the classic March rush mistakes, and build an 80C plan through a case study of three Indian taxpayers.
- Explain how Section 80C reduces taxable income and who is eligible to claim it
- Calculate the actual tax saved from 80C investments at your tax slab
- Compare PPF, EPF, ELSS, NPS, NSC, tax-saver FDs and other 80C options
Understanding TDS: Tax Deducted at Source Explained
A plain-language, India-specific guide to Tax Deducted at Source for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand why TDS exists, how money flows from the deductor to the government and back to you as a tax credit, and what the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the new tax year change. See how your employer calculates TDS on salary every month, how investment declarations and your regime choice affect it, and how to avoid short deduction after a job switch. Learn the TDS rules on FD interest, dividends, EPF withdrawals, rent, freelance fees, property purchases, crypto and online gaming winnings. Use Form 15G and 15H, keep your PAN operative and apply for lower deduction certificates to stop excess TDS legally. Finish by checking credits in Form 26AS and AIS, claiming TDS and refunds in your ITR, fixing deductor errors, telling TDS apart from TCS, and following a case study of one Indian professional tracking TDS across a full tax year.
- Explain what TDS is, who deducts it and how it becomes a credit against your final tax
- Work out how your employer calculates monthly TDS on salary under either regime
- Identify the TDS rates and thresholds on interest, dividends, rent, fees, property and winnings
Understanding Tax Efficient Investment Vehicles: ELSS, PPF, NPS
A focused, India-specific course for taxpayers who already understand Section 80C and want to go deeper into ELSS, PPF and NPS specifically. See how ELSS's three-year lock-in and equity LTCG taxation compare to PPF's guaranteed, government-backed EEE status and NPS's extra Section 80CCD(1B) deduction. Work through fund selection for ELSS, the mechanics and withdrawal rules of PPF, and the Tier I vs Tier II and asset allocation choices inside NPS, then bring all three together into one coherent tax-saving plan suited to your income, liquidity needs and time horizon. Built for taxpayers with multiple income sources, freelancers and small business owners, and anyone structuring long-term wealth.
- Understand how Section 80C ties ELSS, PPF and NPS together as tax-saving options
- Evaluate ELSS funds and understand the three-year lock-in and LTCG taxation on redemption
- Use PPF effectively, including its 15-year tenure, loan and withdrawal rules and EEE tax treatment
Understanding Tax Implications of ESOP Exercises and Startup Exits
An advanced, India-specific guide to the tax consequences of employee equity, built for HNIs with large ESOP holdings, founders and business owners with complex income, and family offices managing startup wealth. Master the two tax events in every ESOP, perquisite tax at exercise and capital gains at sale, and the fair market value, cost and holding period rules that decide how much each one costs you. Learn to time an exercise, fund tax on gains you have not yet received, and use the eligible startup deferral correctly. Work through every major exit route, from buybacks taxed as deemed dividend and secondary sales to investors, to acquisitions with share swaps, earn-outs and escrows, and IPOs followed by a sale on NSE or BSE. Handle foreign parent RSUs, Schedule FA reporting, foreign tax credit and residency changes mid-vesting. Finish with planning for large gains: surcharge caps, loss set-off, reinvesting exit proceeds in a house, gifting shares to family and trusts, and a case study of one ₹5 crore exit with three very different tax outcomes.
- Calculate perquisite tax at exercise and capital gains at sale for listed, unlisted and foreign shares
- Apply fair market value, cost of acquisition and holding period rules without the common errors
- Decide when to exercise and how to fund tax on gains that are still on paper
Understanding Tax Implications of Multiple Income Sources
A practical walkthrough of Indian income tax for people whose income doesn't fit in one box: a salary plus freelance or consulting work, rental income, or gains from equity and mutual funds. Covers the heads of income, what's already taxed at source versus what isn't, presumptive taxation for freelancers, and how to pick the right ITR form when multiple income streams collide.
- How India's heads of income and slab system work together, and why residential status changes the whole calculation
- What's already deducted at source on salary versus what you're responsible for reporting yourself
- How presumptive taxation under Section 44ADA works for freelancers and consultants, and when regular books make more sense
Understanding Tax Implications of Overseas Investments Under LRS
An advanced, India-specific course for HNIs, business owners and family offices who invest abroad under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme and need to get every rupee of tax and every disclosure right. Start with how LRS works, the USD 250,000 annual limit, what the Overseas Investment Rules 2022 permit and how the OPI vs ODI distinction shapes your tax position. Understand TCS on outward remittances, why it is a prepaid tax and not a cost, and how to plan remittances across family members and financial years. Work through the taxation of foreign shares, international funds and ETFs, dividends, interest, RSUs, ESPPs and overseas property, including currency conversion rules. Claim foreign tax credit correctly through DTAAs and Form 67, and avoid withholding and US estate tax traps. Master Schedule FA, FSI, TR and AL, understand Black Money Act exposure and handle residential status changes. Finish with holding structures, succession planning for foreign assets and a full case study of one family's global portfolio from remittance to ITR.
- Use the LRS limit and the Overseas Investment Rules 2022 to invest abroad through the right route
- Plan remittances so TCS is recovered in full and never becomes a permanent cost
- Compute tax on foreign shares, funds, dividends, RSUs, ESPPs and overseas property in INR
Understanding Tax Implications of Salary Structuring
A practical, India-specific guide to how your salary structure decides how much tax you pay, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Learn why your CTC is not your take-home pay, what basic pay, HRA, special allowance, bonus and employer contributions to PF, NPS and gratuity really mean, and how the new Labour Codes and their 50% wage rule reshape salary structures. Understand which components are fully taxable, partly exempt or fully exempt, work through the HRA exemption calculation, and see how allowances, reimbursements and perquisites like a company car or rent-free housing are taxed under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Discover why structuring matters less in the new tax regime and where it still counts, from employer NPS to the retirement contribution cap. Finish by taking apart a real salary breakup, using flexi benefit plans, negotiating a tax-efficient offer, avoiding common mistakes and following a case study of three salary structures with three different take-home outcomes.
- Break down a CTC into gross salary, deductions and in-hand pay
- Explain how each salary component is taxed under the Income-tax Act, 2025
- Calculate your HRA exemption and the taxable value of common perquisites
Understanding Tax Loss Harvesting Strategies
Learn how to use tax-loss harvesting to reduce your capital gains tax liability under Indian tax law. This course covers how STCG and LTCG are taxed across equity, debt and other assets, the set-off and carry-forward provisions under Sections 70 to 74 of the Income Tax Act, and practical execution using broker reports and screener.in, with real Indian portfolio examples and the common traps, like bonus stripping, to avoid.
- How STCG and LTCG are taxed differently across equity, debt, and other assets in India
- How to use Sections 70 to 74 to set off and carry forward capital losses
- How to identify harvestable losses in your own portfolio before the financial year ends
Understanding Tax on Capital Gains From Equity, Debt, and Real Estate Together
Most investors learn capital gains tax one asset class at a time, and end up with rules that contradict each other in their head. This course puts equity, debt instruments, and real estate side by side, using the same framework of holding period, cost of acquisition, indexation, and set-off throughout, so you can see exactly where the rules diverge and why. Built for anyone with income from more than one asset class who needs to plan a sale, not just understand it in theory.
- How holding period, cost of acquisition, and indexation work as a common framework across equity, debt, and real estate
- Current STCG and LTCG rules for listed equity and equity mutual funds, including the LTCG exemption threshold and grandfathering
- How the 2023 reform changed debt mutual fund taxation, and how bonds and G-Secs are still taxed
Understanding Wealth Tax Equivalent Structures and Compliance Globally
An advanced course for HNIs, business owners with complex income and family offices who hold or plan to hold wealth across borders. India abolished its wealth tax in 2015, but wealth is still taxed here through surcharge, disclosure schedules, deemed rent, gift rules, stamp duty and transaction taxes. Learn how those wealth tax equivalents work, then see how other countries tax wealth directly: annual net wealth taxes in Switzerland, Norway and Spain, narrow asset taxes in France and Italy, the Dutch deemed return model, and estate and inheritance taxes in the US, UK and Japan. Understand exit taxes, the global billionaire minimum tax debate and why wealth taxes succeed or fail. Finish with the compliance an Indian resident with foreign assets cannot skip: Schedule AL, Schedule FA, the Black Money Act, CRS and FATCA reporting, and LRS with TCS.
- Distinguish a tax on wealth from a tax on income and identify where Indian law taxes wealth indirectly
- Explain how India's Wealth Tax Act, 1957 worked, why it was abolished and what replaced it
- Compare annual net wealth taxes, narrow asset taxes, deemed return systems and death taxes across major jurisdictions
Understanding the Indian Income Tax Slab System
A clear, India-specific guide to how the income tax slab system actually works, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand progressive taxation, the tax year, residential status and how gross income becomes taxable income before any slab is applied. Walk through every rate band in the new and old regimes, the higher exemption limits for senior citizens, and the crucial difference between your marginal rate and your effective rate. Learn what sits on top of the slabs: the rebate that makes income up to 12 lakh tax-free under the new regime, marginal relief near the threshold, surcharge for high earners and the 4% health and education cess. See which incomes, like capital gains and lottery winnings, are taxed outside the slabs, then compute tax on a real salary from start to finish, bust the most common slab myths and finish with a case study of four Indian taxpayers.
- Explain how progressive slab taxation works and why only the income inside each band is taxed at that band's rate
- Apply the new and old regime slabs, including the age-based limits for senior citizens
- Distinguish your marginal tax rate from your effective tax rate
Using ClearTax for Tax Filing and Planning
A hands-on, screen-by-screen guide to filing your Income Tax Return and planning your taxes using ClearTax, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning journey. This course assumes you already know the basics of ITR filing and focuses entirely on the ClearTax platform itself: setting up your account and picking the right plan, letting ClearTax auto-read your Form 16, reviewing and correcting pre-filled income and deductions, comparing the old and new tax regimes with ClearTax's calculator, importing capital gains from your broker and mutual fund statements, e-verifying your return, and using ClearTax's planning tools for tax-saving investments and advance tax. Real Indian screens, forms and numbers throughout.
Using EPFO's Portal to Track Provident Fund Contributions
A practical, India-specific walkthrough of the EPFO member portal for salaried professionals who want to see exactly where their provident fund money goes. Understand what EPF is, how your Universal Account Number (UAN) ties your job history together, and how the 12% employee and 12% employer contribution actually splits between EPF and EPS. Activate your UAN, log into the EPFO e-Sewa portal, and link Aadhaar, PAN and your bank account for KYC. Download your EPF passbook, read it line by line, understand how interest is credited and why the wage ceiling can make your numbers look smaller than expected, and learn what to do when an employer's contribution is missing or delayed.
- Explain what EPF is and how the employee and employer contributions are split between EPF and EPS
- Activate a UAN and understand why it is the single identifier across every employer
- Log into the EPFO e-Sewa member portal and link Aadhaar, PAN and bank details for KYC
Using Excel to Build a Personal Tax Saving Tracker
A hands-on course for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers who want a spreadsheet that actually tells them where they stand. You will build a working Excel or Google Sheets tracker from scratch: income and deduction inputs, an old-regime versus new-regime tax calculator, and a dashboard that shows how much more you can invest before the financial year closes.
- How to decide between the old and new tax regimes for your own income
- How to structure an Excel sheet to capture salary, HRA, and other income cleanly
- How to track Section 80C, 80D, and other deductions without missing anything
Using Form 26AS and AIS to Verify Tax Credits
A hands-on guide to Form 26AS, AIS and TIS for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers who want to confirm their tax credits before they file. Walks through downloading each document from the income tax e-filing and compliance portals, reading every section without confusion, and catching mismatches between what your employer or bank reported and what actually reflects in your account. Built around real Indian workflows: TRACES, the e-filing portal, AIS/TIS categories, and the entries that most often go unclaimed or unmatched.
- What Form 26AS, AIS and TIS each track, and how they differ from one another
- How to download Form 26AS and AIS/TIS from the income tax portals
- How to read every part of Form 26AS without missing a TDS or TCS entry
Using the Income Tax Portal for Filing ITR
A hands-on, practical guide to the Income Tax Department's e-filing portal (incometax.gov.in) for salaried, first-time filers. This course walks through the portal itself, screen by screen, from creating your account to submitting and e-verifying your return, tracking your refund, and downloading your filed ITR later. It focuses on how to operate the portal correctly and confidently, not on tax theory or planning.
- How to register on and log in to the Income Tax e-filing portal
- How to navigate the portal's dashboard, services and document library
- Where to find your pre-filled data (Form 26AS, AIS, TIS) on the portal