Consulting & research Across markets Independent · Founder-led
Kakde Research works with investors, family offices, corporates and advisers on investment, commercial and strategic questions. The question sets the market and the work follows it, with particular depth in emerging markets and India. Available as individual projects or ongoing retained relationships.
Where does growth actually create value?
Return on capital less cost of capital · global industries · 2016–2026
SoftwareValue-creation spread
+12.5pp
Revenue CAGR 14.8% · five years
SemiconductorsValue-creation spread
+6.4pp
Revenue CAGR 7.8% · five years
PharmaceuticalsValue-creation spread
+5.5pp
Revenue CAGR 14.1% · five years
AutomotiveValue-creation spread
−5.1pp
Revenue CAGR 14.2% · five years
Similar growth. Very different value creation. Software, pharmaceuticals and automotive grew revenue at close to 14% a year over five years; their latest value-creation spreads run from +12.5pp to −5.1pp. Growth is an input. Value creation is the outcome.
Consulting · Research · Emerging Markets Desk · India Desk
All four services are available through individual projects and ongoing retained relationships. Consulting and research describe the work; the two desks describe where it goes deepest. Scope and cadence are agreed for each engagement, and the question decides whether it sits inside an existing relationship or needs a separately agreed assignment.
01Project or retainer
Research applied to a live decision: which market or opportunity, whether to enter or expand, whether an investment case holds, what a policy turn does to the plan.
How consulting works02Project or retainer
A question investigated to institutional standard, as a defined assignment or ongoing research support, and a library of published and private work to read or request.
Research03Project or retainer
Comparative research across the emerging markets a question names, for a specific EM assignment or a retained specialist relationship.
The Emerging Markets Desk04Project or retainer
The firm’s deepest single-market capability, read from India, for a specific India assignment or a retained specialist relationship.
The India DeskFounded 2025 · Based in India · Working globally
One team, every market.
Kakde Research works from India for clients across the world’s leading financial centres, in North America, Europe, the Gulf and East and South-East Asia. There is no twenty-year archive here and no network of offices, and we do not pretend otherwise. There is a founder and a team of six analysts who work every question together, in whichever market it lands: young enough to have no legacy to defend, exacting enough to hold every figure to the same standard, and quick enough to be looking at your question the morning it arrives.
Selected client feedback
Selected client feedback. Organisations are anonymised; roles and locations are shown.
Pranav will disagree with you. I actually like that. We gave him a brief where he thought we were asking the wrong question, and he said so. We changed the scope. He was right. For me, that is part of the value of the relationship. I would rather have someone challenge the investment case than produce a polished defence of what we already wanted to believe.
What I appreciate about the relationship is how little administration sits around an ordinary question. We can send it across and find out what is needed. Sometimes there is a straightforward answer; sometimes Pranav explains the work required to get to one. That process fits into our existing workflow. The retainer feels practical in day-to-day use.
We have relationships with larger research firms, and we use those too. With Kakde, I can send a specific question in the morning and usually have someone looking at it promptly. That is useful in its own right. There are occasions when what I need is a focused answer, and the ability to get the question in front of someone quickly matters more than receiving another long report.
Our assignments with Pranav have covered Europe and the US. There is considerable breadth in the team, and I would describe Kakde in those terms. The range of work we have given them goes across markets. For me, that is an important part of understanding the firm and the research and consulting capability it offers.
For us, the useful question is how one market compares with the alternatives available to us. An attractive India story still needs to be considered alongside Indonesia, Mexico, Vietnam or Brazil. Kakde keeps that comparison in the discussion. It reflects the way we have to think as capital allocators, and it is the part of their emerging-markets work that I value.
We didn’t make that project easy for them. There was a tight deadline to begin with, a change of scope partway through, and then another question from a partner near the end. They handled it without making a production of it. The final work didn’t feel as though it had been assembled overnight. That is the part I remember.
Our relationship with Kakde covers research, commercial questions and market work. They have also handled urgent requests ahead of internal meetings. What keeps us using them is the combination of speed and access. You know who is working on your question, and you can actually speak to that person. For us, that is a very practical part of the retained relationship.
The team has handled European commercial diligence and work involving a US company for us. Those were quite different assignments, and I was pleased with both. Their range comes through in the work itself. Different questions and different data, handled well across markets. That is how I would describe our experience with Kakde, and what I think is worth drawing attention to.
Seven published · Six sent on request
The published and private research shows how the work is done: how a question is framed, how the evidence is assembled and qualified, and how far a conclusion is allowed to go. The work to date goes deepest in India and the emerging markets it competes with; a research assignment follows wherever the client’s question leads.
Flagship institutional study
Can Global Investors Actually Capture India’s Economic Rise?
India, emerging markets and the competition for global capital
Flagship study · Published August 2026 · Direct download
A dollar invested in India captures part of India’s rise — materially less than GDP growth implies. Return depends on corporate earnings, valuation, dilution, investability and currency translation. India is structurally attractive but valuation-sensitive, and it has to be sized against the markets competing for the same capital. An India-centred question, answered inside a genuine comparative emerging-markets framework.
Report findings carry a 31 July 2026 data cut-off. Nothing in the study is live data.
Six themes · The past decade
Six of the many ways a question arrives. Each is a standing line of consulting and research work, scoped to the decision in front of you; none is a fixed product, and yours may be none of these. Bring it anyway.
Higher for longer: what the cost of capital does to valuations, leverage and allocation
Discuss this questionTariffs, trade policy and the re-pricing of supply chains
Discuss this questionAI capital expenditure and the concentration of equity returns
Discuss this questionPrivate markets and private credit: return outside listed equity
Discuss this questionEM ex-China: where the allocation goes when China is carved out
Discuss this questionIndia’s investability: ownership limits, free float and what a foreign investor actually captures
Discuss this questionThe research library, with six further published studies and the completed India studies, is on the Research page. The research library
Two desks · Assignment or retained
India is where the work goes deepest, not where it stops.
Two specialist desks sit inside the practice. The Emerging Markets Desk reads the emerging markets a question names against one another and against the developed-market anchors an allocator already holds; the peer group follows the question rather than a fixed list. The India Desk is the firm’s deepest single-market capability, read from India with the discipline of an institutional desk.
Both are available for a specific assignment or as a retained specialist relationship, and both run on the same comparative dataset and the same method as the wider consulting and research work.
Comparative research across the emerging markets that matter to your organisation.
The firm’s deepest continuous capability: India, read from India.
Where India stands inside the investable emerging-markets set, and when it does not.
Eight economies on one frame; every series sourced, dated and documented.
Six commitments · every engagement
Official data, filings and primary sources, pulled and cleaned in-house. Where a series is revised or interrupted, that is recorded rather than smoothed over.
Every conclusion is tested against the alternatives the decision actually runs between. The peer set is chosen for the question and written into the scope, whether it spans emerging markets, developed anchors or both.
Every figure carries its source and its date, and the data appendix is written so that your own team can rebuild it.
Where the evidence runs out and interpretation begins, the report says so, and states the conditions that would change the view.
You speak to the people doing the work. The founder scopes every engagement, reviews it and stays on the relationship; the analysts are reachable rather than hidden behind an account layer.
Consulting and research fees are the only revenue: no brokerage, no execution, no products, no asset-management incentive. A conclusion is allowed to be inconvenient.
Founder-led. You speak to the people doing the work.
Before starting Kakde Research I worked in London, at a global investment bank and at a financial-data company, across macro and market data. I trained as a computer engineer before an MSc in Finance, and the data pipelines behind the work are still built in-house rather than lifted from a vendor summary.
The practice exists because important investment and strategic decisions are so often made from generic research, inherited assumptions or evidence assembled a long way from the decision itself. The founder scopes every engagement, directs and reviews the work and stays on the relationship; a team of six analysts assembles, checks and maintains the evidence. Founder review on every deliverable caps how much runs at once, and the limit is deliberate.
Describe it and the markets it touches. We will tell you plainly whether it can be answered well, what evidence it requires and whether it is a project or an ongoing relationship.
Research request
Report title
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