The invisible infrastructure

There’s something counterintuitive about how wealth gets created in the stock market. Companies that capture our imagination—those building electric cars, designing smartphones or launching rockets—often deliver mediocre returns. Meanwhile, the businesses that make the unglamorous components enabling these marvels quietly compound wealth for decades. It’s a pattern that is playing out right now in one of India’s most overlooked sectors. EV makers get the headlines, whilst lithium miners and battery chemical manufacturers remain in the shadows. Apple commands attention, but the speciality chemical firms producing adhesives, solvents and protective coatings for iPhones operate in obscurity. Solar panel makers dominate the sustainability narrative, while fluoropolymer producers creating backsheets that protect those panels go unnoticed. This bias towards the spectacular creates opportu