Be careful who you take advice from—that’s a good piece of advice whether you are looking for medical advice, legal advice or investment advice. So, always go to a trained and bona fide doctor or lawyer or financial advisor. Sometimes, though, the advisor may not be who they say they are. And that can land you in trouble.
Why are we being so cautious, you may ask? Well, because of the frequency with which stock market scams have been coming to light. Take this recent case, for instance, where the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) found that a person in Madurai purportedly registered with the regulator as a research analyst was actually selling soap and snacks.
The person was Purooskhan, who SEBI found ran a provision store selling daily essentials and who was “not conversant with securities market activities”. In plain language, this supposed market guru had more experience weighing rice than picking stocks. Yet his name and registration number were splashed across a slick investment advisory website.
The site, run by a firm called Option Research Consultancy (ORC), promised “sure-shot” stock tips with no risk and even boasted of doubling investors’ money in no time. Enticed by such fantasy guarantees, people paid hefty fees to ORC – one customer shelled out Rs 50,000 upfront, only to see losses of up to Rs 4 lakh on those bets. Another hapless client paid a more modest Rs 5,000 and ended up Rs 16,000 poorer for his troubles.
For ORC, the masterstroke was borrowing Purooskhan’s legitimate credentials to appear authentic. All ORC needed was Purooskhan’s SEBI registration details and access to the associated email inbox – which, in a display of small-town trust or naiveté, he had willingly shared with one of ORC’s ringleaders, G. Faheeth Ali.
To his credit, when the first complaint hit, Purooskhan alerted SEBI that his registration number was being misused. He fired off emails to the regulators in late 2022 and filed a complaint with the Tamil Nadu police, followed by a cybercrime report. But ORC’s business of selling stock dreams carried on into 2023, until the regulators finally closed in.
When SEBI investigated, it found that ORC wasn’t a high-tech trading outfit at all but just a humble partnership firm run by a trio. ORC’s partners cheerfully collected fees in bank accounts linked to their own names, all while masquerading as a legit advisory service. In August 2024, SEBI ordered the three partners of ORC and an associate to refund Rs 30.4 lakh to defrauded clients and barred them from the securities market for two years. SEBI even slapped an additional Rs 6 lakh penalty on each culprit.
What happened to Purooskhan? SEBI has given him the benefit of the doubt – there wasn’t enough evidence that he knowingly colluded with ORC. However, SEBI noted that he had handed over his email login to a third party and said that such action by a registered intermediary could pose a “serious threat” to the orderly functioning of securities market. In other words, even if he wasn’t a con man, he had been too careless to be trusted with a market intermediary’s licence.
Facing a show-cause notice from SEBI, Purooskhan chose the path of least resistance. “Please cancel my certificate of registration,” he wrote to SEBI. His SEBI registration, obtained in 2018, was finally canceled in December 2025.
But wait, how did he get registered with SEBI in the first place? Well, we don’t really know that since the SEBI order doesn’t clarify this aspect. So, now that you know the grocery seller who was a “financial analyst” and how his credentials were used to run a mini-scam, be careful who you take advice from!
Unstable Views
The government and the Reserve Bank of India have been clear about cryptocurrencies. They pose risks to financial stability. But when it comes to one specific form of crypto, stablecoins, the signals are far less aligned.
This week, the RBI’s Financial Stability Report once again waved a red flag at stablecoins. It warned that the “risks from stablecoins to macrofinancial stability outweigh their purported benefits.” The concern is straightforward. If a stablecoin gains widespread acceptance, it could undermine the rupee, erode the RBI’s control over money supply, and ultimately weaken monetary sovereignty.
Just a couple of months ago, the finance ministry struck a very different tone. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in a speech, acknowledged that “innovations like stablecoins are transforming the landscape of money and capital inflows.” These shifts, she cautioned, may force countries to “adapt to new monetary architecture or risk exclusion.” She stressed that no nation can fully insulate itself from such global financial innovations and urged policymakers to prepare to engage with them, whether they are comfortable doing so or not.
For the uninitiated, stablecoins are a different breed from the volatile cryptocurrencies India has effectively smothered with heavy taxes. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, which can swing wildly in price, stablecoins are pegged to steadier assets, typically fiat currencies such as the US dollar. The idea, as the name suggests, is to keep their value stable.
The RBI, however, remains sceptical, if not openly hostile, towards private crypto assets, lumping stablecoins into the broader crypto crackdown. It sees private stablecoins as Trojan horses, calm and credible on the surface, but potentially capable of hollowing out the rupee and weakening financial control from within.
The finance minister, by contrast, appears more concerned about competitive risk. If other countries embrace dollar-linked stablecoins, especially now that the US has moved to legitimise them through Trump’s GENIUS Act, India risks missing the next evolution of money. Stablecoins could, for instance, streamline remittances and global trade payments, both critical to India, by lowering costs and speeding up transactions. Banning or ignoring them outright could isolate India from these efficiencies, even as other countries, and even a former US president’s family business, race ahead in the digital currency arena.
These mixed signals have left policy watchers in a bind. One authority has a foot on the brake, the other on the accelerator. The result is a policy stance that is anything but stable.
Revving It Up
Moving on to corporate developments, Indian automakers ended 2025 with a bang with sales surging during December as they continued to benefit from the GST rate cut in September.
Industry leader Maruti Suzuki’s total sales to domestic dealers jumped 37% in December to a record 178,646 units. Its portfolio of small cars such as Alto, Swift and WagonR—on which GST has been slashed to 18% from 28%—saw sales rising 50% to 92,929 units, the highest since January 2025.
Mahindra & Mahindra, which sells only SUVs that now carry a GST of 40% versus about 50% earlier, said its monthly sales jumped 23% in December to 50,946 units. M&M’s sales of SUVs such as Thar and Scorpio have soared 18% in 2025-26, helping it overtake Hyundai India and Tata Motors as India’s No. 2 automaker in the current financial year.
Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles reported a 13% rise in domestic sales in December to 50,046 units, with the Nexon and Punch compact SUVs driving growth. Tata said the GST cut helped it clock a 21% jump in sales during October-December and that it expects sales growth to pick up in coming months as it starts delivering new models like the Sierra SUV.
Hyundai’s domestic sales, however, grew only 0.5% in December to 42,416 units. But exports helped it boost the overall numbers. The company’s total monthly sales grew 6.6% to 58,702 units. Toyota Kirloskar Motor, which has a tie-up with Maruti to sell its rebadged cars, said local sales climbed 37% to 34,157 units last month.
Apart from carmakers, two-wheeler makers also recorded strong sales in December. Hero MotoCorp recorded a 40% jump in December sales to 456,479 units. TVS Motor’s total two-wheeler sales soared 48% to 461,071 units in December 2025, with domestic sales jumping 54% and exports increasing 35%. Eicher Motor said sales of its Royal Enfield bikes jumped 30% in December 2025 to 1,03,574 units, with a 37% rise in local sales offsetting a 10% drop in exports.
All in all, India’s car and bike industry is entering 2026 on a solid footing. Let’s hope it sustains the momentum!
Ringing Aloud
While automakers are going strong, telecom operator Vodafone Idea continues to hang by a thread.
India’s third-largest mobile phone operator—after Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel—received a little breather from the government this week on overdue payments and then it got a fresh tax notice.
First, the worse news. Vodafone Idea this week received an order by the tax department levying a penalty of Rs 638 crore for alleged “short payment” of goods and services tax. The company said it does not agree with the penalty order and will take legal action against the same.
Now, the good news. Well, almost. The government has approved a five-year moratorium on Vodafone Idea’s adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues of Rs 87,695 crore (about $9.76 billion). This defers repayments to the next decade, beginning in 2031-32 and running through 2040-41.
The move gives the loss-making and debt-laden company cash-flow relief in the near term but still disappointed investors hoping for a waiver as it won’t reduce its dues. The decision came after the Supreme Court said in November that the government should consider the company’s request to grant relief on its AGR dues.
To be sure, the partial moratorium won’t be enough to solve the problems of a company that posted a net loss of more than Rs 12,000 crore during the April-September 2025-26 period. But saving Vodafone Idea is critical, both for the telecom industry as well as the government itself.
This is because the government holds a 49% stake in the company after it converted some overdue licence and spectrum fee payments into equity. The Aditya Birla Group now owns just 9.5% while the UK’s Vodafone Group holds 16%. So, if the company that commands a market value of Rs 1.25 trillion shuts shop, the government would be the biggest loser.
More importantly, Vodafone Idea’s collapse would make the telecom industry practically a duopoly of Jio and Airtel. And as the IndiGo crisis last month reminded us, monopolies and duopolies are great for companies and their owners but really bad for consumers.
Market Wrap
India’s stock markets began the new year on a positive note with the NSE Nifty 50 scaling record highs on Friday and the BSE Sensex coming close to its all-time high.
The Nifty 50 hit a record high of 26,340 before ending up 0.7% at an all-time closing high of 26,328.55. The BSE Sensex closed at 85,762.01, just shy of the record 86,159.02 that it touched on December 1 last year.
For the week, the Nifty gained 1.1% and the Sensex rose 0.9%. In the broader market, the small-cap index added 0.8% and the mid-caps climbed 1.7%.
The rally was broad-based and 14 of the 16 major sectors rose this week. The indexes for banks, metals and automobile stocks hit record highs, too, on expectations of a strong earnings growth in the October-December quarter
State-run NTPC was the biggest gainer this week, advancing 8.6% on reports that it was exploring tie-ups with Russian and French companies for nuclear power plants. Metal stocks Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Coal India and Hindalco rose between 6% and 8% on rising commodity prices and as the government imposed a safeguard duty on some steel products from China.
Mahindra & Mahindra was the top auto stock, rising nearly 5% on strong December sales. Bajaj Auto jumped 4.8% while Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles gained 3.2%. Among financials, Shriram Finance was the top gainer, followed by State Bank of India and Axis Bank.
Among the laggards, IT stocks HCL Tech, Infosys, TCS and Tech Mahindra all ended in the red. Some healthcare stocks lost ground, too. These included Max Healthcare, Dr Reddy’s Labs and Apollo Hospitals. The Nifty stock that suffered the steepest drop this week was ITC, which plunged 13.4% after the government increased taxes on cigarettes.
Other Headlines
- Global crude oil prices fall 19% in 2025, logging steepest annual drop since 2020
- Govt imposes excise duty on cigarettes effective February 1; ITC, Godfrey Phillips stocks slump
- Gross GST collections rise 6.1% to Rs 1.74 trillion in December 2025
- Pension fund regulator PFRDA allows banks to sponsor pension funds under NPS
- Blackstone-backed Office developer Bagmane Prime Office REIT files DRHP for Rs 4,000-crore IPO
- Blackstone-owned warehousing developer Horizon Industrial Parks files DRHP for Rs 2,600-crore IPO
- Quick commerce company Zepto files DRHP for Rs 11,000-crore IPO
- SoftBank-backed Oyo Hotels’ parent Prism makes confidential IPO filing
- IndiGo to boost pilot allowances seeking to lift morale after mass flight cancellations
- IT firm Coforge to acquire US artificial intelligence firm Encora at enterprise value of $2.35 billion
- Banks’ bad loans may fall to 1.9% by March 2027 from 2.1% but risks rise for non-bank lenders: RBI report
- India’s April-November fiscal deficit at 62.3% of 2025-26 target
- Govt imposes safeguard duty of 11-12% for three years on some steel products to curb cheap imports
- Govt claiming $30 billion from Reliance, BP for underproduction from gas field, reports Reuters; RIL denies
- Govt approves proposals worth Rs 79,000 crore to buy radars, other equipment for army, navy and air force
That’s all for this week. Until next week, happy investing!
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