“Ghayal hu isliye ghatak hu,” said Aditya Kondawar, Partner and Vice President at Complete Circle Capital, quoting the Bollywood film Dhurandhar in a conversation with ET Now. Translated: I am injured, and that is why I am lethal. “Days like these basically lay the seeds for a bull market,” he added.
Not your usual dip
What makes this selloff different from past crashes is how isolated India looks on the global map. Since September 2024, the Nikkei, Shanghai Composite, and Nasdaq have each rallied between 20% and 40%. Indian markets, in the same window, are down roughly 15-16%.
Kondawar points to a structural reason for this gap. New-age technology companies — the kind that have powered global indices higher — make up just 3-4% of India’s total market capitalisation. In the US, that number is 20-30%. China, Japan, and South Korea all sit at 10-16%. India simply does not have the same exposure to the sector that has driven global gains.
A perfect storm of pressure
Beyond the tech gap, India is dealing with a set of pressures that have compounded on each other. Rising imports of crude oil, gold, and electronic components have weakened the rupee. A weaker rupee, in turn, accelerates foreign selling — because every rupee that falls against the dollar makes it costlier for FPIs to convert their returns back into USD. The two forces feed each other.
Then came the West Asia war — a black swan event, in Kondawar’s words — that has now introduced a new and serious variable: the Strait of Hormuz. A waterway that once handled 50-100 ships daily is now clearing just 5-10. India, which imports the majority of its oil, is currently negotiating passage with Iranian leadership for some of its cargo and warships.
The knock-on effects are already visible on the ground. Brent crude has risen more than 50-60% since the conflict began. Restaurants are rationing menu items. Tata Motors is operating at 50% capacity. The ceramics hub of Morbi is scrambling to find alternate energy sources.”A lot of things have hit us at once,” Kondawar said. “These are second and third order effects.”
Three numbers to watch
Kondawar flagged two key monitorables for investors navigating this environment: Brent crude prices and the rupee-dollar rate. Both are moving in the wrong direction simultaneously — crude is rising while the rupee weakens, creating a double squeeze on import costs and corporate margins.
A third wildcard sits with the White House. Donald Trump has publicly given Iran a 48-hour ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to strike Iranian power infrastructure — beginning with its largest power plant — if the deadline is not met. Markets are watching closely.
What should investors do?
Kondawar’s advice is pointed: control your emotions before you try to control your portfolio. His firm had been accelerating deployments into small and mid-cap stocks ahead of the West Asia escalation, finding quality companies at attractive valuations after months of correction. That changed when the war began.
“We would advise people to go slow right now,” he said. “Buy the dip is getting more and more deeper.”
The message is not to panic and exit. It is to be patient, deploy capital in small tranches, and resist the urge to call the bottom. For long-term investors with the stomach to hold through the noise, Kondawar believes the current environment — painful as it is — is precisely where the foundation of the next rally gets built.
The injury, as he put it, is also the lethal part.