India Inc promoters holding declines to 8-year low of 40.6% in Q1: Report

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Promoters' ownership in private listed companies declined to an eight-year low of 40.58 per cent as of June 30, 2025, following a net share sale worth ₹54,732 crore during the quarter, according to data from primeinfobase.com, an initiative of PRIME Database Group.

While promoter buying is always a positive sign, promoter selling can be due to a wide variety of reasons such as promoters taking advantage of bullish markets to take money off the table, strategic reasons like debt reduction, legacy planning, philanthropy, investment in other ventures and meeting Minimum Public Shareholding (MPS) requirement as also for personal expenses, Pranav Haldea, Managing Director, PRIME Database Group, said.

"Relatively lower promoter holding in some of the recent IPO companies and overall institutionalisation of the market are some of the other reasons behind this fall," he added.

In comparison, private promoters held a 40.81 per cent stake in the quarter ended March 2025. The last time holdings were this low was in the quarter ended September 30, 2017, when private promoter shareholding stood at 40.19 per cent.

This trend has been consistent over the past three years. Over the last 13 quarters alone, promoters' share has fallen sharply by 455 basis points from 45.13 per cent on March 31, 2022, to 40.58 per cent as of June 30, 2025.

According to Haldea, as long as promoters continue to hold a sizable stake after the sale, with the sale not happening at a huge discount to market price and there being no significant change in the fundamentals of the company, there is no reason to worry.

This analysis is based on the shareholding data filed by 2,086 out of the 2,131 companies listed on the main board of the NSE for the quarter ended June 30, 2025. As of July 25, 45 companies had yet to submit their shareholding disclosures.

Meanwhile, government holdings as promoters saw a slight increase during the quarter, rising from 9.27 per cent to 9.39 per cent.

The share of Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs) continued to climb, reaching an all-time high of 17.82 per cent as of June 30, 2025, up from 17.62 per cent in the previous quarter. This increase followed a net investment of Rs 1.68 lakh crore during the quarter.

Mutual funds, buoyed by sustained retail inflows through systematic investment plans (SIPs), played a major role in this surge. Their net investment of Rs 1.17 lakh crore pushed mutual funds' share in NSE-listed companies to a new peak of 10.56 per cent, up from 10.35 per cent in March 2025.

In contrast, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) saw their stake dip further to a 13-year low of 17.04 per cent from 17.22 per cent, despite a net inflow of Rs 38,674 crore during the quarter.

DIIs increased their exposure most notably to the Consumer Discretionary sector while cutting back on Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). On the other hand, FIIs raised their allocation to Financial Services but also trimmed their investment in FMCG.

India's largest institutional investor, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), saw a marginal decline in its equity holdings. Across 284 companies where it holds over 1 per cent, LIC's stake dropped to 3.68 per cent as of June 30, 2025, from 3.72 per cent at the end of March 2025, even though it recorded a net purchase of Rs 9,914 crore during the quarter.

LIC continues to account for a dominant 69 per cent share, amounting to Rs 16.76 lakh crore of all insurance equity investments.