Valuations To Improve From FY26, Good Time For Stock Picking, Says Dinshaw Irani

Valuations are likely to improve in financial year 2026, according to Helios Capital Management Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, Dinshaw Irani.

Looking ahead by one year, the large-cap space in India has started improving. Markets are somewhere near bottom, and now is the the time to nibble whatever cash investors raised in the past, according to him.

There's a lot of value lying in certain mid cap companies. There are also small caps which are looking fairly attractive, according to him. Irani recommended screening through the counters in mid and small cap spaces and identifying those which remained strong, instead of running to the safety of large caps.

Hospitals, domestic capex, discretionary space and financials such as NBFC spaces have done fairly well, excluding automobiles. This is a time when stock-pickers can really thrive, Irani said.

When DeepSeek was introduced in December-end, both India and China were underweight in global indices. Hence, it's not the case that money is moving out of India to China. The main case is that money is going back to the US, according to the CIO.

Quite a few factors were playing out for India, including depreciation in the Rupee, and outflows from foreign institutional investors. Fundamentals were not looking good either. Valuations were looking stretched in small caps and pockets of midcaps. At that time, the US had done well, Irani pointed out.

In India's case, when the US starts weakening, money will flow back to India, he said.