Specialist desk · Assignment or retained
Your external emerging-markets research desk.
Continuous comparative research across the emerging markets relevant to your organisation, built around your questions rather than a generic country feed, and delivered in whatever form the decision needs. Available for a specific EM assignment or as a retained specialist relationship; the peer group follows the question.
- Coverage
- The emerging markets your decisions actually touch — India, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and others, chosen with you rather than inherited from a benchmark.
- Method
- Every market read against the alternatives competing for the same capital, the same plant or the same customer.
- Cadence
- In a retained relationship, recurring notes and dashboards on an agreed rhythm, with event-driven briefs and rapid responses between them; a specific assignment runs on its own timetable.
- Formats
- Written research, decks, data exhibits, dashboards, research calls, committee and board briefings, agreed per engagement.
- Access
- Direct access to the people doing the work, with the founder involved on every desk. No account manager, no handoff.
- Terms
- A specific assignment or a retained relationship, scoped in writing before it starts. No tiers, no packages.
One of two specialist desks at Kakde Research, an independent consulting and research practice working across markets. Sister service: the India Desk, the firm’s deepest single-market capability. Both desks can run together.
The premise
Global capital allocates comparatively. So should the research behind it.
No emerging market can be understood only through its own domestic narrative. The dollar weighing India is also weighing Indonesia and Mexico, the broad index, and staying home. The plant that might go to Vietnam might go to Mexico. A country conclusion that cannot survive contact with the alternatives is not yet a conclusion. It is a description.
So the desk starts every question with a second one: compared with what? The peer set is chosen for the decision, not inherited from a benchmark. A manufacturing question runs against Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia and China. A domestic-demand question runs against Indonesia and Brazil. A market-access question runs across the whole classified EM set. Getting that choice right is the first task of any engagement, and most of the analytical value sits in it.
Global forces such as the dollar, US rates, oil, trade policy and China’s cycle do not hit emerging markets equally. They transmit through different current accounts, reserve positions, debt structures and export mixes into different allocation and business decisions. Reading that transmission across markets, in one frame, is what the desk is for.
The problem
The exposure justifies the questions. It rarely justifies the headcount.
Covering several emerging markets properly is not one job. It is an economist, a strategist, a policy analyst, a markets analyst and a data analyst for each, and someone whose job is the comparison between them. For an organisation whose exposure is meaningful but not dominant, that team never clears the bar. The questions still arrive:
Before every committee with an emerging-market line on the agenda.
After a US rates move, a dollar turn or an oil shock: which of our markets does it actually hurt?
When one market re-rates and the question becomes whether to fund it from another.
When the China allocation changes and EM ex-China has to be reasoned about, not assumed.
When a China+1 thesis needs testing against Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia and India on evidence.
When an election, a policy reversal or a currency regime change alters the case for one market and not its neighbours.
When a board asks which markets deserve deeper attention, and why not the others.
When the model’s country assumptions have not been re-examined since they were set.
The Emerging Markets Desk fills that gap: standing comparative research capacity, already up to speed on your markets and your priors, without the fixed cost of building the team. A question that spans developed and emerging markets is scoped under Consulting, with the desk supplying the emerging-market depth, on the same terms.
What the desk delivers
The vocabulary, not the menu
Not every desk carries every element. The engagement is designed around the questions your organisation actually faces and the markets it holds, and the scope is written down before it opens.
01 · Recurring comparative notes
Research on the cross-market questions your universe raises: the decision the month actually produced, answered comparatively, on a cadence agreed with you. Written to committee standard, with sources and the data shown.
02 · Country and sector dashboards
Maintained scorecards across the agreed markets covering growth, prices, external accounts, credit, currency, valuation and access, refreshed as the sources release, every figure sourced and dated.
03 · Event-driven briefs
When rates, the dollar, oil, trade policy, an election or a regulatory turn changes a decision across the set: what moved, which markets it reaches, and what it changes for you.
04 · Rapid research response
Short-turnaround analysis for questions that cannot wait for the regular cycle. Depending on the issue, the response may take the form of a concise memo, a data note, a briefing deck, a research call or a video discussion.
05 · Scenario analysis
Structured scenarios around the variables that matter for your markets, from rates, currencies and geopolitics to trade, regulation and demand, traced through to positioning or strategy, with the assumptions stated plainly enough to be argued with.
06 · Research calls and committee briefings
Live discussion with the people who did the work; presentations and briefing decks for investment committees, strategy teams and boards, built to be forwarded rather than summarised.
07 · Deep-dive research
Where a question outgrows the note it graduates into a dedicated study, whether a market comparison, an entry assessment or a supply-chain map, scoped inside the desk’s context rather than from zero.
What it is not
The desk is analyst capacity, not a product feed. It does not manage assets, execute trades, sell financial products or provide personalised regulated investment advice.
How the work arrives
- 01Written research — notes, memos and full reports
- 02Presentation decks for committees, strategy teams and boards
- 03Data exhibits, appendices and models your side can rebuild
- 04Dashboards and scorecards, maintained as the sources release
- 05Research calls and video discussions with the people who did the work
- 06Live briefings and walkthroughs ahead of a decision
The format follows the decision and the client. It is agreed per engagement, not imposed by the desk.
How the desk runs
Four steps, then a standing capability
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01
Define the universe
The markets you hold, the markets you are weighing, and the ones that only matter as comparators. Broad or focused; it can change by agreement as your exposure does.
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02
Agree the questions and the cadence
What recurs, what is event-driven, who on your side receives what and in which format. Written down before the desk opens.
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03
The desk runs
Notes, dashboards, briefs and calls arrive on the agreed rhythm; rapid responses and deep dives inside it. The team already holds your context, so no question starts cold.
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04
Re-scope as the mandate moves
A market enters or leaves the set, a theme becomes standing, a cadence changes. The engagement is re-scoped in writing, not silently re-priced.
The comparison set is chosen, not inherited.
Which markets a question actually runs against
The same market belongs in different peer sets for different questions. These are illustrative sets, not fixed baskets: the engagement names its own.
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Manufacturing and China+1 relocation
ChinaVietnamMexicoIndiaIndonesiaThailand— cost, logistics, policy, value captured locally
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Domestic demand and the consumer
IndiaIndonesiaBrazilPhilippinesMexico— income growth, credit depth, urbanisation, formalisation
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Commodities, current accounts and the currency
BrazilSouth AfricaIndonesiaChileSaudi ArabiaIndia— terms of trade, reserves, external financing, real rates
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Market access, ownership and investability
The classified EM setChinaTaiwanKoreaIndiaSaudi Arabia— index weight, foreign room, float, governance
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Global transmission: dollar, rates, oil, trade
The whole universe— each market’s exposure, sorted by what actually transmits
The desk’s data, in the open
Eight economies · World Bank series · maintained
A working exhibit from the desk’s own comparative dataset: the latest reported observation for each series, refreshed as the sources release. Every figure carries its series ID, its observation year and its retrieval date. Macro data is annual, and pretending otherwise would be decoration.
Real GDP growth
annual %
Source: World Bank Open Data, retrieved 5 September 2026. Reported annual observations only; no estimates, no interpolation. A country whose latest report is too old to compare shows n/a rather than a stale rank. Full series list, units and methodology on the data desk.
The engagement, stated plainly
No tiers, no cards, no packages
Bespoke by design
No off-the-shelf subscription. Each Emerging Markets Desk engagement, whether a specific assignment or a retained relationship, is designed around the organisation’s actual markets, questions and decision calendar. The modules above are the vocabulary, not the menu.
Scoped in writing
The covered universe, the deliverables, the formats and the fee are agreed in writing before work starts. A relationship that grows is re-scoped, not silently re-priced; a question outside the agreed scope is agreed as a separate assignment.
Founder-led, directly accessible
Kakde Research is founder-led. Pranav Kakde scopes every desk, reviews the work and stays on the client relationship; a team of six analysts assembles, checks and maintains the evidence. The people you speak to are the people doing the work, with no account-manager handoff. Founder review on every deliverable caps how many desks run at once, deliberately.
Independence
No brokerage, no execution, no product distribution, no asset-management incentive. Nothing about the desk earns more when the conclusion favours one market over another.
Organisations with meaningful India exposure often pair the desk with the India Desk: the comparative frame across the set, and the firm’s deepest specialist capability on the market that anchors it.
Discuss a project with the desk.
Describe the markets you follow, the decisions that recur and who answers them today. You will get a considered reply and a straight view on whether an assignment or a retained desk fits, before you have spent anything.