Does this Indian company really have a moat?
Search 507 listed companies. See the MoatSCORE, the filing evidence behind it, the competitive risks — and what would change the verdict.
Latest research
All articles →Q2 Bank Results: What the Dollar Deposits Cost
ICICI, Axis and Yes Bank grew fast in Q2, but partly on FCNR(B) dollar deposits. Strip them out and growth slows; CASA ratios and margins fell.
E2E Networks' EBITDA and Its Profit Tell Two Stories. Five Quarters Show the Margins Converging
At E2E Networks, a GPU cloud, the machine is paid up front and reaches profit only as depreciation. Five quarters show the two margins drawing closer.
ICICI Lombard Lost ₹318 Crore on Insurance and Still Earned ₹946 Crore. Here Is How
Jul-Sep 2026: ICICI Lombard's insurance lost ₹318 crore, yet profit after tax was ₹946 crore. Its own chart shows the industry losing on insurance…
Where to start
Every company we have researched
Grouped by sector: deep dives and articles first, then the first-pass screener notes.
Coverage indexLong-form articles
The bigger arguments: what the filings show across a whole sector or theme.
Deep readsThe Moat Screener
All 507 companies scored across seven moat dimensions, in one table. No signup.
507 scoredSector guides
All companies →Banks
26 listed banks scored. ICICI leads at 6.05 and none clears the wide-moat bar.
26 banksFMCG
28 companies, and why a famous brand on its own does not score as a moat.
28 companiesPharma
The largest sector we cover, and one of the lowest-scoring: scale rarely becomes durability.
48 companiesPaints
Asian Paints, Berger, JSW and Birla Opus: a moat being tested by a live price war.
8 companiesExchanges & depositories
NSE, BSE, CDSL, MCX and IEX. The highest raw score on the site, still classified narrow.
8 companiesDeep dives
All deep dives →- IEX: The Market That Became Too Successful
- Does Berger Paints Have a Moat? The Filings Answer
- Does Asian Paints Have a Moat? The Filings Answer
- IndusInd Bank: A Modest Moat, Overshadowed
- State Bank of India: The Deepest Franchise, Still Narrow
- HDFC Bank: The Biggest Franchise, Quietly Eroding
- ICICI Bank: A Deposit Moat, Capped by UPI
- ITC: A Fortress Around a Shrinking Category
- Hindustan Unilever: The Limits of a Brand Moat
- IEX: A Monopoly the Regulator Can Dissolve
- Astral: A Cost Moat Wearing a Brand's Clothes
- Kotak Mahindra Bank: Anatomy of a Bank Moat
- The Paint Wars: Six Companies, Not One Wide Moat
MoatSCORE 6.0
Seven scored mechanisms, hard gates, and a rule that outcomes can never prove a moat — only mechanisms that survive a downturn count.
- Dual-mode price discretion — raise prices, or hold them down and still out-earn
- Barrier gate takes the worse of replicate vs. bypass
- Same evidence reproduces the same score
The disruptor is the most exposed, not the least
Birla Opus scores last in the paint sector at 4.99 — and the reason is the most instructive finding in the series.
What it built in roughly two years is genuinely extraordinary: a pan-India dealer network across 11,500 towns, 50,000 dealers, service levels matching the benchmark the incumbent's moat was famous for — near four-hour delivery in depot towns.
The framework scores barriers, not achievements. Its replication barrier is the weakest in the sector precisely because it just proved this position can be assembled in twenty-four months with a chequebook. Nobody has attacked it yet — it is the one attacking — so its durability is untested by construction.
Moats. Margins. Mastery.
Get the next filing-backed company analysis, with the evidence and what could change the verdict. One email every Sunday: the week's filings that matter, plus any new deep dive. Free.
Subscribe free