The Joy of Being a Shareholder
Most people see the prices on a daily basis. But I find joy in the difference my companies — of which I am a small shareholder — are bringing to the world.
I wake up and step outside and mount a silent electric scooter — mine, built by a company that bet India’s roads could go quiet. Passing a glass-fronted tower under construction, I notice the aluminium curtain walls catching the light — made by a company I hold shares in.
A truck rumbles past, and I think about the steering column doing its invisible work — engineered by a company I own that keeps India’s heavy vehicles on the road. Down the street, I walk into a retail store and the shelves, racks, display units, even the mannequins — all designed, manufactured and installed by a company in my portfolio.
The chips packet in my bag is wrapped in a polymer film made by a company I own. The TMT bars rising at the construction site across the road came from a steel manufacturer in my demat. The copper wires inside that building’s electrical conduits were recycled and redrawn by a company I’m a part-owner of.
I look at India’s solar panels along the highway and o top of my own house and think of two companies I hold: one that manufactures the modules, and another that actually installs them. Then I think of the power cables carrying that electricity across the countryside. Made by yet another company in my portfolio. And the precision turbine components inside the power plants generating that electricity — machined to micron tolerances by a company I own shares in.
At lunch I tap an app, and food arrives in minutes — a platform I’m a shareholder in that has restructured how an entire country eats. A song plays while I wait — from a catalogue owned by a music label I hold shares in, one whose songs have played at a billion Indian weddings.
At offices, engineering drawings are being done on software built by a design-services firm I own. The motors humming in factories were made by a power and industrial systems giant in my portfolio. The heavy boilers in the refinery, in which I hold shares.
Evening. My mother applies an Ayurvedic cream from a brand that disrupted FMCG — I own part of that disruption. The cooking oil on the stove was pressed by a company in my portfolio that also produces the ethanol now blended into our fuel.
At the petrol pump, ethanol-blended fuel — my distillery company’s contribution to India’s energy transition.
As I imagine a naval dockyard — ships being built by a defence shipbuilder I partly own. And somewhere in a defence lab, battlefield electronics and unmanned systems being developed by a small but critical aerospace and defence firm I hold shares in. And the CNC machines that cut the precision parts for all of it? Made by a manufacturer I own equity in.
At the cinema in the evening — a multiplex chain I’m a shareholder in — the lights dimmed, and for two hours, a full house cheers its breath together.
Throughout the day, I don’t get a feeling to check a single price.
I didn’t need to. I see my portfolio everywhere I look — in the roads, the walls, the wires, the food, the music, the machines, the ships, and the light in a village that used to know only darkness.
That is the joy of being a shareholder.
Ayush