Armchair Critics: When Noise Overpowers Nuance

I got a couple of interesting questions recently, one on Sansera and another on Solara. For Sansera, someone pointed out that both the MDs are in their 70s with no next-gen involvement, and asked if that’s a succession risk. On Solara, after chatting with a “big” buy-side fund, the views were pretty blunt: they just said Arun’s company isn’t worth buying, and with Poorvank Purohit stepping away, the noise has only gotten louder. But honestly, I ignored that bit, because I know the Arun Kumar playbook well, just like I dug into the promoter backgrounds at Laurus and Neuland when the chatter there was also overwhelmingly negative.

Picture Arun Kumar, Strides’ head honcho, started out in Mumbai’s hot, sticky underbelly (Dharavi, not exactly the Ritz) and hustled from there to build a pharma empire. This guy didn’t roll in with a fat inheritance; it was more of a 'streetwise Ooty lad arrives in Mumbai, survives on grit, and outsmarts the system' kind of vibe. Early gig: Bombay Drug House; probably clocked more hours dodging sweat and chaos than most fund managers do in a lifetime.

Fast forward. Arun dreams big, launches Strides in 1990, goes full export mode, finds niches regulators actually love, and lines up sterile injectables like there’s no tomorrow. Classic: quietly builds, then sells Agila (the high-value injectables arm) to Mylan for a mouth-watering USD 1.7 billion. When the cash actually lands, he does what most promoters talk about but never deliver—forks out a monster INR 500 per share dividend, sending shareholders into champagne mode. Not your usual ‘we’ll reinvest it all and wait for fifty years’ spiel, but the kind where majority of the jackpot actually gets handed out. Compare that with Panacea Biotech’s branded India business sale to Mankind Pharma and shareholders’ returns. Nothing. Phew!

Strides wasn’t just pharma. It was always Arun’s DIY masterclass in turning the tables. Bootstrap from Dharavi, cash out, repeat, and sprinkle in a bit of E&Y and 'best CEO' applause for flavour. And if anyone’s keeping score, that Agila cheque is still one for the highlight reel on capital allocation in India.

It's almost comical how a few months after COVID, we had Shyam Sekhar from (unthoughtful) iThought firing off the “ekam Satyam” zinger, conflating Dr Satya at Laurus Labs with none other than Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers. That kind of wordplay might be clicky for Twitter/X, but honestly, painting managements with the same brush based on an armchair analogy is as lazy as it gets. This isn't isolated either; he and a few others have constantly thrown shade at Neuland Labs’ promoters too, as if assigning motive from a distance is a substitute for real diligence.

This whole approach, tweeting snappy critiques and assuming the worst without ground-up understanding or on-the-ground checks, doesn’t just miss nuance; it can actively mislead investors. It’s easy to get caught up in clever comparisons and “fraud-spotting” from afar, but when it comes to building conviction or flagging risk in pharma businesses, there’s simply no substitute for having your ear to the ground. Armchair alarmism might win retweets, but it’s a poor stand-in for actual research and context.

Social media and the stock market really remind me of a wild zoo, full of all kinds of animals running around, making all sorts of noises just trying to get attention or show off. It’s easy to get caught up in the chaos, but the trick is to stay cool, do your homework, and step back to rethink and reframe everything you hear. For me, that’s straight out of Nassim Taleb’s playbook: stay convex. Basically, look for those bets where the downside is small but the upside could be huge. Play it smart, use the noise to your advantage, and let the chaos work for you.

Lastly, it’s funny how people who’ve never built or scaled anything significant and never shouldered the responsibility of thousands of employees and their families find it so convenient to sit on the sidelines and pass judgement on entrepreneurs who’ve not only created and shared wealth with shareholders but also turned out to be genuinely decent human beings.

“Sajal, I love meeting customers, and I meet them as often as needed. Since we are globally spread, it naturally means a lot of travel. How do I manage that? I board the plane and go to sleep straightaway. The upside is that I wake up fresh and ready to listen to them,” said Saharsh Rao of Neuland Labs when I met him earlier this year.

The picture above relates to what I discussed earlier in my book Framing Business Uncertainty (a relevant extract is shared below for reference).

When I sit down with these guys, I never ask them for guidance or ‘number kaisa aayega.’ That’s not their job—it’s mine as an investor. Management’s primary responsibility is to build a culture where people can speak openly and to ensure that capital gets allocated wisely. Their role is not to handhold lazy analysts or spoon-feed numbers. Most of these analyst reports read as lazy to me—just EPS puppetry, nothing more.

Behind every stock, there’s a business. And businesses don’t stand still—they pivot, they evolve. The real edge often lies in knowing the people driving that transformation. If you understand the industry, it becomes much easier to judge the authenticity and character of those people. Behind every successful company are many leaders, not all of whom appear on earnings calls or in glossy annual reports. Value is often created quietly. Especially in fields like nanoparticle precision engineering—this is no easy game. Those who know, know!