One year to Operation Sindoor 🇮🇳
Bharat Forge pops, first spacetech unicorn, and personalised beauty reboot.
🗓️ Morning, folks and Happy Fridayyyy! ☀️
Dalal Street hit the brakes on Thursday. The Sensex and Nifty both slipped after rallying over 1.2% in the previous session.
Sectorally, FMCG, oil & gas, and IT stocks saw selling pressure. However, the broader market remained relatively steady.
The nervous mood was driven by multiple factors. Brent crude crossed $102 per barrel, foreign investors kept selling, and the rupee weakened to 94.77 against the dollar.
💡 Spotlight: Operation Sindoor turns one 🇮🇳
Operation Sindoor is now a year old, and its impact is still echoing through India’s defence ecosystem.
Over the last 12 months, India’s focus has sharply shifted towards defence modernisation, procurement, and most importantly, building more at home.
And the markets have noticed.
The Nifty India Defence Index is up nearly 30% over the past year.
Stocks like MTAR Tech have skyrocketed almost 350%, while Axiscades and Apollo Micro Systems have gained over 180% and 160%, respectively.
Even yesterday, defence stocks emerged as the top-performing sectoral index, with Paras Defence surging nearly 9%, while Hindustan Aeronautics and Cochin Shipyard gained a little over 3% each.
Let’s hit it! 💪🏻
1 Big thing: Bharat Forge flexes on strong outlook ⚙️
Bharat Forge gained nearly 7% after reporting Q4 earnings and projecting a strong 25% revenue growth ahead.
The numbers:
Note: at first glance, the profit decline looked weak.
But there’s a catch. The company took a one-time loss of nearly ₹99 crore, which dragged the bottom line lower. Excluding that, the operational performance was relatively stable.
The real excitement came from management commentary.
Bharat Forge said it remains confident of delivering 25% revenue growth ahead, signalling strong demand visibility across its businesses.
Zoom out: a big part of Bharat Forge’s future now depends on defence and heavy engineering and that opportunity is getting massive.
India’s defence production touched a record ₹1.27 lakh crore in FY24, while exports crossed ₹21,000 crore, both all-time highs.
The government now wants defence production to hit ₹3 lakh crore by 2029, with exports targeted at ₹50,000 crore.
2. India gets its first spacetech unicorn 🌌
Skyroot Aerospace is now in the big leagues.
What’s going on: the spacetech startup has raised $60 million in a new funding round co-led by Sherpalo Ventures and Singapore’s GIC.
With this, Skyroot’s valuation has crossed $1.1 billion, making it India’s first spacetech unicorn.
Skyroot is working on its Vikram series, including Vikram-I and Vikram-II, designed to offer faster, more flexible, and cost-effective satellite launches.
In fact, it already made history in 2022 by becoming the first private Indian company to launch a rocket into space with Vikram-S.
Zoom out: startups in this space have raised over $650 million in the last decade, with funding peaking in 2025 at over $196 million.
The government is also stepping up. India’s space budget has nearly tripled from ₹5,615 crore in 2013-14 to ₹13,416 crore in 2025-26.
While we are on fundraises 💸,
Quick home services startups are booming in India.
What’s brewing: Pronto has raised $20 million, taking its valuation to $200 million, with plans to scale within existing markets.
This comes just days after rival Snabbit raised $56 million, valuing it at nearly $400 million.
Why the rush: India’s home services market is huge, around $60 billion today and expected to hit $100 billion by 2030.
But supply remains a big challenge. Elections, summer migration, and festive demand swings often disrupt worker availability.
3. Apple’s India expansion gets greener 🌳
Apple has announced a major clean energy push in India, unveiling fresh investments and partnerships aimed at expanding renewable energy.
What are the plans: the company is investing ₹100 crore with CleanMax, a renewable energy developer, to build over 150 MW of clean energy capacity.
The project can generate enough electricity to power nearly 1.5 lakh Indian homes every year while reducing pollution by replacing coal-based power.
Apple has also partnered with WWF-India to strengthen recycling and waste-management systems in the country. Alongside this, the company is teaming up with Acumen, a non-profit investment firm, to support six Indian green startups.
Zoom out: these India-focused initiatives are part of Apple’s larger goal of becoming completely carbon neutral by 2030.
India is now central to Apple’s global strategy, producing nearly 25% of all iPhones worldwide, with around 55 million devices assembled in the country last year.
4. How scrap became Railways’ cash engine? 🚆
Indian Railways made over ₹6,800 crore by selling scrap, beating its target and turning waste into a major revenue stream.
But that is only the beginning of a bigger shift.
Non-fare revenue from ads, retail, and station services has grown from about ₹290 crore to over ₹770 crore in a few years.
5. Why is Amazon letting others use its supply chain? 👀
This week, Amazon opened its logistics network to outside businesses through Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS).
Brands can now use Amazon’s freight, warehousing and delivery infrastructure even if they don’t sell on Amazon.
Markets reacted fast. Shares of UPS and FedEx and DHL fell, and back home, Delhivery slipped too.
The scale is huge. Amazon already operates 100+ cargo aircraft, 80,000+ trailers and 1,200+ logistics facilities globally. Companies like P&G, 3M and American Eagle have already signed up.
The bigger story: Amazon is trying to do to logistics what AWS did to cloud computing. It spent 20 years building infrastructure for itself, and now it wants to sell that infrastructure to everyone else.
6. Stocks that kept us interested 🚀
What went up ⬆️
📈 IIFL Capital rose over 5% after global investor Fairfax decided to directly invest money into the company.
🛡️ Zen Tech stock ended more than 3% higher as the firm unveiled AI anti-drone, laser weapon systems and ₹1,000 crore order outlook.
🛵 Bajaj Auto shares gained more than 2% after Q4 net profit rose 34% to a record high.
💊 Indoco Remedies surged 9% reacting to a healthy set of quarterly results.
What went down ⬇️
🔌 KEI Industries ended flat but in the red on reports of I-T Dept conducting search operations at multiple locations.
⚡ Voltamp Transformers fell more than 3% after Prabhudas Lilladher downgraded the stock to ‘accumulate’ from ‘buy’.
👓 Lenskart ended more than 2% lower on likely block deal buzz.
⛏️ Coal India shares ended lower after report on likely ₹10,000-crore OFS by government.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
⚡EV surge: India’s electric passenger vehicle sales jumped 75% in April, with Tata Motors leading the market by selling 8,543 units.
🔋Battery push: India and the EU have launched a ₹169 crore programme to support EV battery recycling and critical mineral recovery through startups and universities.
💄Beauty buy: Emami has acquired a 60% stake in IncNut Digital for ₹321 crore, taking control of personalised beauty brands Vedix and SkinKraft.
🏗️ Investment plan: L&T plans to invest ₹45,000 crore over the next five years, focusing on green hydrogen and data centre businesses.
👔 Global buy: Arvind’s arm has acquired Dalco-GFT for $136 million in a debt-backed deal, expanding its global textile manufacturing footprint.
And that’s a wrap. Pour yourself an extra one this weekend.
We’ll be back like clockwork on Monday!
Hit that 💚 if you liked this issue.
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