In his annual year-end article, HDFC Asset Management Company’s Managing Director and CEO Navneet Munot frames 2025 as a year shaped less by individuals and more by sweeping forces reshaping geopolitics, economics and technology. Munot casts his lens on the structural shifts redefining global power, calling it a year where “tension and transformation” coexisted in equal measure.

Regarding the Indian markets, Munot stated that the indices were resilient throughout 2025, as they continued to end on a positive note for a decade. “Indian equities played maiden overs, yet 10th consecutive inning (year) of positive score. Tail-enders (small caps) underperformed. Relative valuations, competitive rupee, steady macro and earnings revival set a better pitch now,” he said.

Highlighting the IPO frenzy, he said, in a clever manner, how companies like Groww, Leskart, Physicswallah, Delhivery and Urban Company, among others, went public. "Investors apply Eternal Growwth Lens for Kart lane of new-age companies. Many CollegeWallahs chase seed money rather than corporate seats. Modi quoted best: ‘From job seekers to job creators’. A nation producing an Urban Company of Delivery boys along with Delhivery entrepreneurs. Rich heirs trade productive plants for family funds (offices).” 

He also mentioned how the market regulator cracked down on finfluencers. “SEBI tames tainted trainers,” he said, continuing that investors have been able to create better futures with SIPs. “Atmanirbhar Capital market has been a dream come true.”

Regarding policy, Munot said that the middle class benefited from the new GST reforms. “Middle-class gets higher attention with lower taxes. Motown buzzing. India’s Inflation at lower band when anger simmering on ‘affordability’ globally.” He also said that bond traders aren’t budging much but credit counters cruising better. “Foreigners bidding a biteful of Indian lenders.”

For Munot, “A new age of Energy” was the person of the year, while shedding light on how energy shifted from a volatile commodity to a tech-driven utility. “Exactly two centuries after 1825’s steam locomotive gave the world a rhythmic pulse of coal and iron, 2025 rhymed with the commercialisation of solid-state storage and perovskite cells. In a year, when India’s SHANTI nuclear bill sparked a private sector atomic dawn and global labs finally sighted the ‘First Light’ of commercial fusion, we are transitioning from burning the past to harvesting the future. In a historic first, power generated from renewable sources surpassed generation from coal.”

“From floating wind farms in our deepest seas to orbital data centres cooling in the vacuum of space, from autonomous robots like Grabowski drilling deep for geothermal fire to green hydrogen scaling to industrial production - if 1825 taught us how to move with carbon and heat, this year taught us how to move with the rhythm of the planet. With grids getting smarter, next-gen batteries reliable, compact and cheaper, energy storage is nearing a renaissance,” he noted. For him, renewable energy can become the backbone, not an add-on.