June car sales shift to low gear
Adani’s aviation play, spacetech race heats up, & peak hour fares take off.
🗓 Morning, folks!
Markets opened higher on Tuesday, riding on optimism around Trump’s pending trade deal—but the mood didn’t last.
Both the Sensex and Nifty closed down ~0.35% as investors booked profits and turned cautious ahead of the July 9 U.S. tariff deadline.
💡 Spotlight: June was a slow month for India’s auto industry.
Passenger vehicle wholesales dropped 6.4% YoY, and retail registrations slipped 4.4%, as demand cooled across segments.
Maruti Suzuki led the decline, with a 13.3% fall in PV wholesales, blaming weak demand for small cars.
Tata Motors saw a 14.8% dip, but EVs remained a bright spot.
Even Hyundai felt the pinch, though its popular Creta SUV held up with 15,786 units sold, still a top-seller despite a 13% MoM drop.
Zoom out: Industry analysts expect demand to stay soft until the festive season kicks in. Inventory correction and muted consumer sentiment are weighing on both retail momentum and wholesale volumes.
1 Big thing: Steamhouse India eyes ₹700 cr IPO 💰
Steamhouse India, an industrial steam and gas supplier, has filed for an IPO through the confidential route, aiming to raise ₹500–700 crore.
Founded in 2014, Steamhouse is headquartered in Surat and serves over 167 clients nationwide.
Worth noting: Steamhouse India is one of the first movers for IPO in this niche.
Most listed industrial companies are in power generation, oil & gas, EPC, or utilities, not specifically in dedicated steam and process gas supply as a core standalone business.
By the numbers: for FY24, the company reported revenue of ₹291.7 crore & profit of ₹25.9 crore.
Zoom out: India’s industrial gases market alone (oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc.) was valued at nearly ₹17,000 crore in FY23 & it is expected to grow at a rate of 8–10% over the next 5 years.
The industrial steam and gas sector is a critical backbone for manufacturing, supplying process steam and industrial gases used in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, food processing, and heavy industries.
2. Adani buys Air Works in ₹400 cr deal ✈️
Adani Enterprises has acquired a 85.1% stake in Air Works India through its defence arm for ₹400 crore in an all-cash transaction.
Gurugram-based Air Works is India’s largest private aviation services and Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) company, serving OEMs, airlines, lessors, and aircraft owners across India and abroad.
What’s up: Adani is betting big on the MRO segment, which is expected to grow rapidly as India’s aviation sector expands.
The why: in 2022, Air Works teamed up with Boeing to service P-8I aircraft for the Indian Navy at its Hosur facility showcasing its defence MRO capabilities. The company operates in 35 cities, with major hubs in Hosur, Mumbai, and Kochi.
Zoom out: the Adani group already controls India’s largest private airport network, managing hubs like Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and six others. By acquiring Air Works, Adani now adds aircraft MRO capabilities to its portfolio.
3. A new spacetech player in town 🚀
Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of crypto platform CoinDCX, has now entered the spacetech arena with Astrobase.
The deets: Neeraj has partnered with three senior ISRO scientists, Devakumar Thammisetty, Pawan Kumar, and Prashant M to start the new venture.
The funding scoop: the company raised ₹60 crore in its maiden funding round, led by BanyanCo.
The company has also secured an engine manufacturing facility in Bengaluru’s aerospace hub and is ready to begin production.
The why: Astrobase aims to address the growing demand for satellite launches by building cost-efficient, high-payload launch vehicles.
Why it matters: the company’s goal is to take the launch costs down to $300 per kilogram by the end of 2034. This will make satellite launches significantly cheaper for companies, government or research organisations.
Zoom out: spacetech startups are gaining momentum over the past few years. In 2024, 13 startups had raised $35 million in funding & in this calendar year, 10 such startups have announced fundraises worth over $15 million.
4. Stocks that kept us interested 🚀
1. Paras Defence bags anti-drone deal in France
Paras Defence surged 4% after securing a ₹22 crore international order from French defence firm Cerbair for its anti-drone systems.
Cerbair is a French company that makes anti-drone systems to detect, track, and neutralise rogue drones for security and defence.
The deets: the contract covers 30 units of CHIMERA 200, a special device that blocks signals to enemy drones, making them lose control or stop working so they can’t cause harm.
The order will be fulfilled by Paras Anti-Drone Technologies, the company’s specialised arm focused on drone jamming systems.
Why Paras Defence: the two companies already have an established partnership as they had worked together back in 2021.
Zoom out: from Rafale jets to Scorpène submarines, India-France partnership now extends into next-gen counter-drone technologies. As threats from unmanned systems grow, both countries are investing in shared solutions to secure strategic assets and critical infrastructure.
2. Keystone clinches ₹7,522 cr redevelopment deals
Keystone Realtors ended 2% higher after winning two major redevelopment projects in Mumbai worth ₹7,522 crore in just two days.
The deets: on Wednesday, the company bagged a ₹3,000 crore project from eight housing societies for a large-scale cluster redevelopment in Andheri West
A cluster redevelopment means rebuilding a group of old buildings together instead of fixing them individually.
On Tuesday, the company secured a ₹4,522 crore contract from MHADA to redevelop 20 residential buildings at GTB Nagar, Sion Koliwada, which will rehouse Sindhi refugee families and their descendants from the Partition era.
3. RITES goes up on double order win
RITES shares jumped nearly 6% after the company announced two major contract wins. One, from Africa & another from Indian Railways.
RITES is a player in the transport consultancy and engineering sector in India, and has diversified services and geographical reach.
The deets: the company received a purchase order from the African Rail Company. The order is to supply 2 fully overhauled ALCO locomotives for development in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana.
ALCO locomotives refers to older ALCO (American Locomotive Company)-designed trains that have been repaired, upgraded, or modernised to extend their life and improve performance.
While, in a separate filing, RITES has signed an Engineering, Procurement and Construction agreement for the redevelopment of Tumakuru Station under South Western Railway.
The order is worth ₹37.8 crore and is expected to be completed in 540 days from the date of agreement.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🌿 Green surge: India’s renewable power output jumped 24% to 134 billion kWh in H1 2025, fastest growth since 2022.
🚖 Surge unlocked: Govt lets Uber, Ola charge up to 2x base fare during peak hours; off-peak fares can drop to 50%.
That’s a wrap! Don’t let the weekday blues get to you.
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