Prashant Khemka, founder and managing director of WhiteOak Capital Management reveals why the pain in small-cap stocks will end and shares the two massive, long-term trends set to create enormous wealth in India for the next 10-20 years. Watch!
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Questions asked in this interview
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1:39Let me take the next question: would you be happy with 2026 in terms of what you're expecting, or is it going to be the other way around?
7:58You don't reckon that India is a very big loser of the AI trade that some countries have gotten on top of very early, right?
9:37... infrastructure push, how are you assessing the quality of the new companies which are emerging in the industrials and manufacturing sector as well, and how do you reckon they become a part of one's portfolio if you have to talk about 2026?
We have a very special guest with us, Prashant Khemka, founder of White Oak Capital Management, joining us right now to talk about his thoughts on the year that has gone by and the year that will be. Prashant, great having you as always. Thank you so much for taking the time out, and I hope all is well.
Thank you so much. And Prashant, I wonder if 2025, which has been, from an India investor's perspective, a year to forget when you look at the relative terms of what the emerging markets have done, teaches us some vital lessons about investing in life.
Obviously, India had outperformed quite massively in the prior several years, so it's not possible to, it's not reasonable to expect any market to outperform every year out of year after year every other market or any other index like a global index or something. So India has done quite respectably, as the numbers are showing here on your screen, at about double digit, you know, 11% Nifty return. It's in line with the longer term return, so it's been an average year, and we should look at it that way, that we've delivered double digit return, so it's pretty good. I'm quite happy with '25. Obviously, it's equity market, so it's going to be volatile.
Yeah, and we still are outperforming over longer time period. The emerging markets, many of those bounced up from fairly beaten up levels, including most particularly China, which is the largest of the bucket.
Right, Prashant, good morning on this side. You've been happy with 2025. Let me take the next question: would you be happy with 2026 in terms of what you're expecting, or is it going to be the other way around?
So I think '26, if it's a similar year as '25, that would be a normal year at the headline index level, which is Nifty or Sensex. However, BSE 500 this year has done a tad worse. Not a whole lot. It's still up high single digit, but particularly obviously small caps were down, I think, mid single digits or something. And that's why it feels more painful than, you know, a 10% year should feel because the breadth has been quite negative. The number of names that are down are quite large, as the screen is showing. So hopefully next year we would see a normal year across board.
So it wasn't a normal year, average year for small caps. It was one of the worst year, one of the worst, not the very worst or anything. Small caps have been down 50% as well.
But yeah, after five, four, five years since COVID or since 2020, so 2021, 2023, 24, after five years we've had a negative year, I believe, in small caps. Next year can be a... prior five years were abnormally strong, and this year is weak for '25. So '26 would be ideal if we can have a normal year for large caps, midcap, small cap, all up about double digits, and the market about double digits. That would be, you know, a good outcome for '26.
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Khemka, P. (2025, November 30). Prashant Khemka Top Bet In Indian Stock Market Has Played Out Well In America, China But Its Not AI [Interview transcript]. NDTV Profit. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3038787/
MLA
Prashant Khemka. "Prashant Khemka Top Bet In Indian Stock Market Has Played Out Well In America, China But Its Not AI." NDTV Profit, 30 Nov. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3038787/.
BibTeX
@misc{khemka2025_3038787,
author = {Prashant Khemka},
title = {Prashant Khemka Top Bet In Indian Stock Market Has Played Out Well In America, China But Its Not AI},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, NDTV Profit. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {nov},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3038787/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
