Content Series
Company Autopsy Series
Forensic case studies of historical Indian corporate failures. For each company, we examine what the annual reports and financial filings recorded in the years before the crisis — the metrics a structured reader could have observed.
The IL&FS Crisis
What the Balance Sheet Said Two Years Before the Collapse
Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd
Rated AAA until August 2018, IL&FS defaulted on ₹450 crore of commercial paper in September 2018. The financial filings from FY2015–2018 recorded a clear, measurable deterioration — rising debt-to-equity, falling interest coverage, and a fundamental asset-liability mismatch. A structured reading of the annual reports shows what was visible to a careful analyst.
The DHFL Collapse
How a Housing Finance Company Unravelled
Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd
DHFL's story combines an ALM crisis with governance failure. The forensic audit commissioned by the lenders later detailed fund diversion at scale. The annual reports from FY2016–2018, read carefully, showed margin compression, slowing collection efficiency, and promoter pledging patterns that warranted deeper scrutiny.
Jet Airways: The Grounding
How a Flagship Carrier's Finances Signalled Distress
Jet Airways (India) Ltd
Jet Airways ceased operations in April 2019. Its FY2016–2019 annual reports recorded fuel cost sensitivity, rising lease obligations, declining yields, and a dependence on short-term working capital lines that ultimately broke the chain. A study in operational leverage and fixed-cost risk.
Yes Bank: The Asset Quality Trap
What the NPA Disclosures Actually Revealed
Yes Bank Ltd
Yes Bank was placed under moratorium in March 2020. Its loan book had been growing at 30%+ annually for years — the FY2015–2019 filings recorded divergences between reported and RBI-assessed gross NPAs, high single-borrower concentrations, and declining PCR. The numbers told the story before the RBI's public action.
Why study corporate failures?
Reading financial statements is a skill built on pattern recognition. The most durable patterns come from studying what goes wrong, not just what goes right. Each autopsy in this series highlights specific ratios, footnote disclosures, and structural features that — in hindsight — encoded the risk clearly.
The goal is not to find fault with companies or management. It is to build the reader's ability to ask the right questions when reading any annual report. The concepts in each case study link directly to the fundamentals covered in Fundamental Analysis and the glossary.
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