Current Research
Understanding industries from the inside out.
These are live lines of enquiry rather than finished positions. Each one is a sector I am working through. What it is physically made of, what governs it, and where the economics actually bind. The questions below are the ones currently driving that work.
01
Fuels & Energy
Energy Economics · Ethanol · Refining · Distribution
India's fuel mix is shifting faster than the infrastructure that has to carry it. I am working through the economics of that gap. How blending targets turn into physical supply chains, what they cost along the way, and which part of the system quietly absorbs that cost.
Questions I am working through
- What does the ethanol blending programme really cost across feedstock, distillation, logistics and retail, and who ends up paying it?
- Where do refining and evacuation limits cap the pace of change, no matter what the policy says?
- How do fuel taxes and subsidies shape industrial demand, not just what households buy?
02
Steel
Specialty Steel · Industrial Capacity · Trade Remedies
Steel is where industrial policy, trade and very heavy capital meet. I am looking at specialty grades in particular. What downstream demand genuinely justifies domestic capacity, and what decides whether a producer is competitive once you strip the trade measures away.
Questions I am working through
- Which downstream applications actually justify specialty steel capacity in India, and at what scale?
- How do duties and trade remedies change investment decisions, and what happens to those decisions when the measures lapse?
- What does decarbonisation cost a producer per tonne, and who is in a position to pay it?
03
Electronics & Semiconductors
Assembly · Components · Supply Chains · Industrial Policy
India's electronics ecosystem is being built in public, which makes it unusually good to study. The question I keep coming back to is where value actually lands, as opposed to where output gets recorded.
Questions I am working through
- In an assembly led electronics base, where does value actually accrue, and how much of it stays in the country?
- What has to exist locally, and in what order, before fabrication makes economic sense rather than only strategic sense?
- How much does component level import dependence constrain the strategy, and which components matter most?
04
Atomic Energy
Civil Nuclear · Supply Chain · Liability · Financing
Nuclear gets treated as a technical subject. Most of what decides its trajectory is industrial and institutional instead. Who can build the components, who carries the liability, and who is willing to finance an asset that pays back over thirty years.
Questions I am working through
- What does the domestic industrial supply chain around civil nuclear actually consist of right now?
- How do liability, regulation and financing shape the room for private participation?
- Do small modular reactors change the underlying economics, or mostly the deployment profile?
05
International Trade
Trade Policy · Market Access · India Entry
Trade policy, industrial capability and business strategy usually get studied by three different sets of people. They are one problem seen from three positions, and most entry failures happen in the gaps between them.
Questions I am working through
- How does a trade agreement translate into real market access for a specific sector, rather than on paper?
- Where do standards, certification and other non tariff measures matter more than the tariff itself?
- What separates an India entry strategy that survives contact with the sector from one that only works in a spreadsheet?
Notes from this work
Longer pieces come out of this work as it goes. Steel and fuels have produced full write ups so far, from India's CRGO import gap to the real economics of E20. Electronics, nuclear and trade follow.