Exclusive | How Vijay Kedia turned a Rs 250 Neuland Labs bet into nearly 100x returns

When most investors saw a delayed peptide business and a collapsing stock, multibagger hunter Vijay Kedia saw the chance of a lifetime. He bought Neuland Laboratories around Rs 250 per share at the Covid panic bottom in March 2020, adding to an earlier position built in 2019. Six years later, the stock touched an all-time peak of Rs 23,881, turning Kedia’s bet into a near-100x return.

It is the kind of outcome that captures his investment philosophy: back an “out-of-form” company when the market sees a setback, but the underlying story remains intact. “A delay doesn’t mean the story stops,” Kedia told ET Markets in an interview.

The ace investor first bought the pharmaceutical company around September 2019 and added to his position during the Covid-triggered market panic in March 2020, when the stock was trading near Rs 250. Neuland later climbed to a 52-week high of Rs 23,881 on August 18, 2026. That represents a gain of roughly 95 times from the March 2020 purchase price.


The return is based on the stock’s rise from the levels at which he accumulated shares. Kedia said he initially built a holding of around 1.5% to 1.7% in the company at different prices. He later sold around 0.5% to 0.6% at various rates, possibly around Rs 7,500, while retaining the rest.

“In my books, the average cost price is now zero,” Kedia said, explaining the impact of the partial sale on his effective investment cost. At the end of the June quarter, he held 1% stake in Neuland, the value of which is now estimated to be around Rs 295 crore.

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Vijay Kedia’s multibagger thesis

Kedia’s thesis centred on Neuland’s peptide business and the broader future of contract development and manufacturing, or CDMO.

At the time of his investment, the company was developing something new in peptides. The business opportunity was not immediately understood by everyone, but the company’s commentary suggested that a new growth avenue was taking shape.

The story subsequently ran into delays. As the peptide business was pushed back, the stock fell sharply but it did not weaken his conviction. Instead, it fitted into the investment framework he has used for years. Kedia looks for companies that were previously in form but have temporarily stumbled.

“A delay doesn’t mean the story stops,” he said. “The company doesn’t end because of it.”

Kedia compares such businesses to an athlete who has slowed down during a race or a sportsman who has fallen out of form. The market, he said, often writes off a company when its execution is delayed or its stock price falls. His approach is to assess whether the underlying business remains healthy.

“I put my money on the athlete who’s gotten tired mid-race, or the kid who’s fallen a little behind in class,” Kedia said. “When someone falls behind, people write them off, they throw them away. But I believe that someone who has set a record once can set it again.”

He also compared the approach to backing an established performer who has made a comeback after a period of weakness.

Kedia said his conviction in Neuland did not come only from listening to the company’s management. He follows the commentary of several companies across an industry to identify common patterns.

“If I’m looking at Neuland, I don’t want to listen only to Neuland’s management. I want to listen to what all the pharma companies are saying,” he said.

Kedia said investors should watch for consistent signals across companies. If several businesses in an industry are describing the same opportunity, it can indicate that the trend is broader than one company’s sales pitch.

In the case of Neuland, the wider CDMO industry was pointing towards the segment as a future growth area. “Whatever’s happening in CDMO, this is the future. All these companies were saying the same thing,” Kedia said.

He does not believe an investor needs to become a technical expert in every industry before taking a position. “For that, I don’t need to become a pharmacist,” he said. “I don’t even understand the details that deeply myself.”

Kedia’s preference is to focus on the direction of the business rather than getting caught up in every quarterly detail. “Too much analysis leads to paralysis,” he said.

His investment horizon is therefore linked to the company’s story rather than a fixed target or a pre-decided holding period. He asks whether a product will be ready in the cycle and what the market could look like by then.

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Vijay Kedia’s RISE framework

Neuland fits into Kedia’s broader investment philosophy of identifying emerging themes and moving away from sectors that have already matured. “I try to understand what the emerging theme is. We have to get out of the old sectors and get into the emerging theme,” he said.

Kedia said he had not bought cement or steel stocks in the last eight to 10 years, apart from one investment at some point. Instead, after Covid, he focused on infrastructure and telecom before moving out of most of those positions.

He now follows what he calls the RISE framework and does not hold on to a theme once it is no longer emerging. In the RISE framework, R stands for renewables and energy transition, I for Infrastructure, S for security, including defence and cybersecurity and E represents emerging technologies, such as electric vehicles and data centres.

Kedia also cited 3PL (third-party) logistics as a newer theme. He said the business requires relatively little capital and is driven largely by management, technology and execution. He has invested in a logistics company listed on the SME platform that operates in the segment.

The changing composition of his portfolio reflects that approach. Atul Auto and Neuland Laboratories are now close to each other in terms of their weight in his holdings, with Atul Auto possibly remaining the largest position.

Neuland vs Tejas Networks

Neuland is not Kedia’s only major multibagger investment. He said Tejas Networks delivered about 20 to 25 times returns over roughly four years. The position was also meaningful in size, rather than a small portfolio holding.

“Tejas Networks gave me 20-25 times over about four years. That was fast, like a cheetah,” Kedia said.

Neuland, however, has delivered a substantially larger return over a longer period. “If you’re asking about the most recent one, it's Neuland Labs over the last five to seven years,” he said.

Kedia also identified Cera Sanitaryware as one of the strongest investments of his lifetime.

The cost of selling too early

Kedia said a fixed price target could have forced him to exit Neuland much earlier. “If I’d stuck to a price target, I would have sold out completely much earlier.”

That is why he prefers to focus on the story rather than the stock price.

“Chase the story behind the stock, not the money on the table,” Kedia said. “Money will make you rich, but a story will make you wealthy.”

He does not set a fixed holding period because business outcomes can take longer than expected. A company expected to deliver profit growth in three years may need another two years, he said. A rigid time frame can force an investor to exit before the thesis has played out.

Kedia currently holds shares in around 25 to 30 listed companies, in addition to investments in about 25 startups. He does not want to hold 100 stocks in a portfolio.

His approach is to track companies that appear expensive, wait for them to stumble and then assess whether the problem is temporary or permanent.

“When it’s sinking, I look at whether this is a patient who’s just sick, not dead,” Kedia said. “Even if it goes to the ICU, as long as it hasn’t gone into a coma, I look at the balance sheet to see if it’s fundamentally healthy and can recover.”

He said he often finds companies before buying them, keeps them on his radar and waits for a trigger that creates a better entry point.

The approach has also shaped his psychology as an investor. Kedia said he buys with emotion but tries not to fall in love with a position because selling then becomes difficult.

“I buy from the heart,” he said. “When I’m selling, I’m not really doing it willingly. I have to force myself.”

For Kedia, investing involves choosing between two forms of regret. An investor can buy a stock and watch it fall, or avoid buying it and watch it rise.

“There’s no investing in the stock market without regret of some kind,” he said. “Regret is basically a lifestyle disease of investing.”

In Neuland, Kedia chose to live with the risk of buying a company whose story had been delayed. The bet eventually turned a temporary setback in a peptide business into one of his biggest recent multibagger investments.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)