A few good businesses, held for years.

If any answer is no, we pass, however cheap the stock looks. If all three are yes, we work out what the business is worth from the cash it will produce, wait for a price below that, and then hold.

1. Could a well-funded rival copy it?

   We want a business that is hard to copy and whose customers are hard to take away. We read ten years of filings to find out, before we look at a share price.

2. Would we trust the people running it?

   Judged by what they have done with shareholders’ money, not by what they say. Honest with investors, careful with capital, experienced enough to have made mistakes already.

3. Are they still building?

   Owners who still want to lead their market and reinvest to get there. A business that has started to coast gets cheaper every year for a reason.

Three things arrive, and nothing else. No daily calls, no tips, no trading. Some years will be bad, and we will not trade our way out of them.

The list

A short list of listed Indian companies with the weight we would give each. Concentrated on purpose: enough names to spread risk, few enough that you can know every one.

The notes

A written research note for every company: what it does, why it can keep doing it, what it is worth, and what would make us wrong.

The updates

A message whenever something should change, with the reason and the action. Most months the message is that nothing has changed, and we say so.

This suits people who run their own demat account, think in years, and want to understand what they own. It does not suit anyone who needs the money back soon or wants targets for the week.

Devesh Varshney is a Chartered Accountant and a SEBI Registered Research Analyst. He spent five years at Goldman Sachs in New York valuing companies for a living, then seven years building two of his own. One he sold. One Covid took.

Running a business taught him what no spreadsheet does: what a moat feels like from the inside, how good management behaves when things go wrong, and how fast a company unravels when either is missing. That is what he looks for now, on your behalf. He holds many of the same stocks he recommends, and every research note says so where it applies.

2026

SEBI Research Analyst, INH000027371

2025

NISM-Series-XV, Research Analyst

2022–24

NAFA Capital Group, consumer and tech investing

2015–22

Founder, two consumer businesses

2010–15

Goldman Sachs, New York, investment banking

2007–10

KPMG India, audit

2008

Chartered Accountant, ICAI

The first conversation is about how this works and whether it suits you. No research changes hands until you have read the terms and said yes.