Welcome to another Friday, chief!

In today’s edition — Promoters are trimming their holdings, but unlike in the past, nobody’s pressing the panic button or running for the nearest exit, reveals a latest report. The stocks are not tanking because institutions are stepping in. Meanwhile, Google’s AI now wants to design your medicines and cure you of several deadly diseases including cancer. 

Promoters Cash Out, Markets Stay Cool

Vishwas Ved

There was a time when investors used to get suspicious and anxious whenever a promoter sold shares. The fear was quite logical: 

If the person running the company is dumping the shares, maybe he knows something bad is on its way. Maybe the business isn’t doing as expected. Maybe the company is in trouble.

That mindset stuck around for decades. Promoter selling meant loss of confidence, and investors often reacted with fear. But things have changed. 

Today, promoter selling doesn’t raise eyebrows the way it used to. In fact, the latest Ownership Navigator report by Kotak Institutional Equities (June 2025) suggests the market is now looking at promoter moves in a more balanced way. There’s less panic, more perspective.

Let’s understand what’s happening.

Humans, Not Machines

Promoters are, after all, people. After building a business for years, maybe they want to buy another house. Or invest in their kids’ entrepreneurial dreams. Or set up a foundation. Or simply take a break.

Some just want to diversify because having 95% of your wealth in one company isn't exactly great financial planning. And in many cases, the next generation may not even want to run the business. And that’s okay.

Promoter selling isn’t always about escape. Sometimes, it’s just… life.

The Numbers Say the Same

According to the Kotak report, promoter holdings in the BSE-200 index slipped from 49.2% to 48.8% in the March 2025 quarter. Ten years ago, that would’ve caused nervous selloffs. Today? Not so much.

Here are a few examples: 

In AWL Agri Business, the promoter stake came down from 87.9% to 74.4% in order to comply with listing norms. Mutual funds’ holdings, on the other hand, went up from 0% to 8.5%. 

Similarly, the JB Chemicals & Pharma promoters trimmed their stake from 53.7% to 47.8%. But in this case, KKR, which has a majority stake, was booking some profits. 

Even public sector banks, such as UCO Bank, Central Bank of India, and Indian Overseas Bank, saw minor declines, which were mostly part of planned government disinvestment.

Private promoter holding in the BSE-200 Index also declined to 37%, down from 43% in March 2021, reflecting sustained sell-downs by promoters and private equity investors.

In the past, such moves might have triggered sharp falls in the stock price. But now, that’s not necessarily the case, especially when there are strong buyers on the other side.

Institutions Investing Smartly

The reason promoter selling doesn’t shake confidence anymore is because the shares are being bought by serious, long-term investors. 

The report highlights that while foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold $15 billion in the March quarter, domestic institutional investors (DIIs) picked up $22 billion. DII holding in BSE-200 rose to 17.5%, while FPI holdings dipped to 20.2%.

In many cases, these institutions are buying exactly what the promoters are selling. That’s not a red flag; that's smart investing.

Take AWL Agri Business, for example. According to the report, even as the promoter cut their holding by over 13%, mutual funds moved from 0% to 8.5%, and FPIs went from 1.2% to 4.3%. Max Financial Services is another case. Promoters reduced their holding slightly, but mutual fund ownership went up by nearly 5%.

Likewise, in 360 One, FPI ownership jumped from 27.7% to 38.5%, and in CarTrade Tech, from 43.2% to 51.7%. Axis Bank, Crompton, Sona BLW—all saw mutual fund buying while promoters trimmed.

Final Words

Now, just to be clear, not all promoter selling is good news. There are still some warning signs to watch out for: 

If a promoter is selling large amounts in the open market, not through a planned deal, it might signal trouble. If only one of the promoters is selling while others stay put, it could suggest internal disagreements. If no institutional buyers are coming in to pick up the shares, that’s a red flag too.

Fortunately, that doesn’t happen often these days. Most promoters exit in an orderly and transparent way, making sure that the stock prices don’t take a hit.

We’re no longer in a market where some selling by a promoter shakes the whole tree. As long as there are no clear red flags like open market dumping or a lack of explanation, there should be no reason to panic.

AI Wants to Cure You of All That Ails

We keep joking about how AI might eventually take all our jobs. It turns out that the first job it’s eyeing is that of a doctor, especially an oncologist.

Google’s secret cousin, Isomorphic Labs, is preparing to start testing its AI-designed drugs in humans.

Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMind’s chief business officer, told Fortune that the company is collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer. 

Murdoch says human trials are just around the corner, and right now, scientists are sitting in their London office and working with AI to create treatments for various diseases.

For now, the researchers are focusing on cancer and immune-related diseases. If it works, very soon we might be entering a world where AI will be writing Rx on a prescription.

As of today, Isomorphic is working with pharma giants like Novartis and Eli Lilly. They even raised $600 million recently, so clearly someone’s betting big on AI-powered medicine.

The goal is to create a drug design engine that’s faster, cheaper, and doesn’t end in heartbreaking clinical trial failures 90% of the time. 

Murdoch says he wants to harness AlphaFold’s technology to get to a point where researchers have 100% conviction that the drugs they are developing are going to work in human trials. 

“One day we hope to be able to say — well, here’s a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease,” he says.

₹1,78,00,00,00,000

That’s ₹17,800 crore. JioBlackRock Mutual Fund has closed its maiden New Fund Offer (NFO), raising the amount across three short-term debt schemes. The NFO, open from June 30 to July 2, received participation from over 90 institutional investors. The three funds, JioBlackRock Overnight Fund, JioBlackRock Liquid Fund, and JioBlackRock Money Market Fund — mark the company’s formal entry into India’s mutual fundspace.

—Meta poaches Apple’s AI head. In a major win for Meta’s expanding AI ambitions, Apple’s head of AI models, Ruoming Pang, is leaving Cupertino to join Mark Zuckerberg’s newly launched AI division, Superintelligence Labs, Bloomberg reports. At Apple, Pang played a key role in developing foundation models powering Apple Intelligence and the upcoming Siri update. His exit comes amid mounting troubles at Apple over its AI models, which have lagged behind the offerings of OpenAI, Anthropic, and even Meta itself. Meta has been aggressively recruiting top AI talent for its Superintelligence Labs, led by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

—Jack Dorsey’s ‘Bitchat’ messaging app. Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey posted on X that he is working on a new messaging app called Bitchat, which he described as a peer-to-peer chat service that operates entirely over Bluetooth mesh networks. The app, available in beta, doesn’t require the internet, phone numbers, or email addresses to use it. It’s designed for encrypted, ephemeral communication that can persist even when traditional networks are blocked or censored. Each device acts as both a client and a relay, allowing messages to “hop” from device to device, extending the range far beyond standard Bluetooth limits.

—OpenAI’s military-grade lab lockdown. OpenAI has significantly tightened its security measures amid rising concerns over intellectual property theft, following the January release of a rival open-source AI model by DeepSeek, the Financial Times reports. OpenAI’s overhaul includes biometric access controls and a “deny-by-default” internet policy that requires explicit approval for any external connections. Proprietary tech is now isolated on offline systems, and only a tightly vetted group of employees can access or even discuss certain projects. OpenAI claims DeepSeek used “distillation” methods to extract knowledge from its models through structured API queries, breaching usage terms.

—Indian-origin Sabih Khan is Apple's new COO. Sabih Khan, an Indian American techie, has been appointed as the new Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Apple Inc. Mr Khan, who has been associated with the American tech behemoth for three decades, will succeed Jeff Williams as COO later this month. He's currently the vice-president of the company. Apple CEO Tim Cook praised Khan, calling him a brilliant strategist and one of the central architects of Apple's supply chain. “Sabih leads with heart and values, and I know he will make an exceptional chief operating officer. He helped ensure that Apple can be nimble in response to global challenges,” he added.

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