Specialist desk · Assignment or retained
Most India research is written a long way from India.
The India Desk is the firm’s deepest continuous capability: specialist research on India’s economy, policy and markets, read from India with the discipline of an institutional desk, and set against the emerging markets competing for the same capital. Available for a specific India assignment or as a retained specialist relationship.
- Coverage
- Macro, the RBI, fiscal policy, markets, banking and credit, capital flows, corporate earnings, ownership, valuation, market structure, political economy, continuously.
- Frame
- India read within itself, against the global anchors, and against its EM peers: Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, China, or the set your committee actually debates.
- Cadence
- In a retained relationship, a monthly research note and discussion, with rapid responses, event briefs and deep dives between them; a specific assignment runs on its own timetable.
- Formats
- Written research, memos, briefing decks, data exhibits, research calls, video discussions, committee briefings, agreed per engagement.
- Access
- Direct access to the people doing the work, based in India, 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.
The deeper of the two specialist desks at Kakde Research, an independent consulting and research practice working across markets. Sister service: the Emerging Markets Desk, the comparative frame across the wider set. Both desks can run together.
The problem
The exposure justifies the questions. It rarely justifies the headcount.
Covering India properly is not one job. It is a dedicated India economist, a macro strategist, a policy analyst, a financial-markets analyst, an EM comparative analyst, a data analyst and a research writer: a desk. For an organisation whose India exposure is meaningful but not dominant, that desk never clears the bar.
The questions do not wait for the hire. They arrive on their own schedule:
Before every investment-committee meeting with India on the agenda.
After an RBI decision, a Budget, an election, a policy reversal.
After a sharp move in the rupee, or a change in foreign-ownership rules.
When index composition shifts, and the India weight moves without you trading.
When India trades at a growing premium and someone has to say whether it is justified.
When the China allocation changes and the EM ex-China question lands on India.
When a China+1 thesis needs testing against Vietnam, Mexico and Indonesia.
When the model’s India assumptions have not been re-examined since they were set.
The India Desk fills that gap: standing research capacity, already up to speed on your context, without the fixed cost of building the team.
What the desk delivers
Seven modules, scoped to fit
Not every engagement carries every module. The engagement is designed around the questions your organisation actually faces, and the scope is written down before it starts.
01 · Monthly research note
A bespoke research paper each month, built around an India question you nominate, or an India-relative-to-EM question the desk believes you should be asking. Written to committee standard, with sources and the data appendix shown.
02 · Rapid research response
Short-turnaround analysis for questions that cannot wait for the regular research 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.
03 · Monthly research discussion
A structured conversation around the month’s note, the EM comparison, and whatever the month raised, with the people who did the work, not an account manager relaying it.
04 · Comparative EM monitoring
India’s position tracked against the peers relevant to your allocation (Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, or the set your committee actually debates) rather than a fixed basket.
05 · Maintained data
Continuously maintained datasets, comparisons and dashboards behind the written work, refreshed as the sources release, with each revision noted.
06 · Priority research capacity
A desk that already knows your portfolio and your priors. New questions start from context, not from a cold scoping exercise every time.
07 · Deep-dive research
Where a question outgrows the monthly note, it graduates into a dedicated paper or a committee presentation, scoped and quoted separately, with the desk’s context already built.
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: the monthly note, memos and full papers
- 02Briefing decks for committees and strategy teams
- 03Data exhibits and appendices your side can rebuild
- 04Dashboards, maintained as the sources release
- 05Research calls and video discussions with the people doing the work
- 06Committee and board briefings ahead of a decision
The format follows the decision and the client. It is agreed per engagement, not imposed by the desk.
The desk answers compared with what?
The emerging-markets lens
What happened in India is available from the wires, the banks and the same sources everyone reads. The India Desk exists for the harder half: whether it makes India more or less attractive relative to the alternatives. The kind of question it is built for:
Does the latest RBI move improve India’s relative attractiveness against Indonesia?
Is India’s inflation trajectory actually better than the EM peer set’s?
Does rupee risk offset India’s stronger equity-growth profile?
Is India’s valuation premium justified relative to Brazil?
If China risk recedes, does India’s relative allocation case weaken?
Does Vietnam offer better manufacturing exposure for this China+1 thesis?
Is India truly the natural beneficiary of EM ex-China allocations?
Where does India rank on current-account resilience, real rates, credit depth?
The comparison runs both ways. Where India wins it, the note says so with the evidence attached. Where it does not — where Vietnam takes the manufacturing metric or Brazil is cheaper for the growth — the note says that first.
India, never read in isolation
A working exhibit from the desk
A growth rate is not a story. The same 7 per cent means one thing coming out of a contraction and something else at the end of a long expansion.
2008 is the cleanest test. India kept growing through the global financial crisis, at 3.1 per cent, and the number that mattered was not the level but what it was measured against. 2020 took the series negative for the first time in four decades, to −5.8 per cent; the 9.7 per cent that followed is arithmetic on a collapsed base, not an acceleration.
Which is why the desk never presents India on its own. Set against the global anchors the same line reads differently — and against the emerging markets it competes with, differently again. That comparison is where every note starts.
India: real GDP growth
Annual %, 1998–2025
Source: World Bank Open Data, series NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG, retrieved 5 September 2026. Reported annual values, not estimates. Latest available observation 2025.
The engagement, stated plainly
No tiers, no cards, no packages
Bespoke by design
No off-the-shelf subscription. Each India Desk engagement, whether a specific assignment or a retained relationship, is designed around the organisation’s actual India and emerging-markets research requirements. The modules above are the vocabulary, not the menu.
Scoped in writing
Like every engagement here: the coverage, 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 goes one way rather than the other.
Organisations weighing India inside a wider set often pair the desk with the Emerging Markets Desk: the firm’s deepest specialist capability on India, and the comparative frame across the markets it competes with.
Discuss a project with the desk.
Describe your India exposure, the questions that keep arriving, and who currently answers them. We will get back to you as soon as possible, with a straight view on whether the desk fits.