Small in size, big in ambition

Summary: These aren’t flashy sectors. But the companies ruling them know their turf, boast strong moats and are now stepping beyond their core. This piece explores how niche leaders can sometimes script the most sustainable growth stories. Multibaggers are often hunted in hot, high-growth sectors. But sometimes the most rewarding investments come from quieter corners of the market; companies that dominate a small, specialised segment with few competitors and high entry barriers. As a result, these niche leaders often enjoy steady cash flows, pricing power and customer stickiness. And sometimes, they use that position to outgrow the niche entirely. Think of Page Industries, which built a premium innerwear empire; Astral, which began with plumbing pipes before moving into adhesives and other adjacencies; or Cera Sanitaryware, which transformed a focused ceramics business into a trusted consumer brand. Our search for such businesses brought three such small-cap leaders to our notice, each ruling a small but important market. We take a look at these businesses and their growth opportunities. Control Print Control Print makes industrial printers: the machines that stamp expiry dates, batch codes and barcodes on products in FMCG, pharma, agri-inputs and packaging industries. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s indispensable to modern manufacturing. Over the years, the company has evolved from selling machines to offering complete coding-and-marking solutions. Today, over 60 per cent of revenue is recurring, coming from inks, spares and servicing. That gives it a stable income stream, less tied to volatile capex cycles. India’s coding-and-marking industry is small, worth about Rs 2,000 to 2,200 crore, but growing at roughly 9 per cent a year. It’s also tightly held: just four players control nearly 80 per cent of the market. With a 19