How BSE’s Saatvik 100 and NSE’s Ahimsa ended up with missile makers and coal miners

- The rules behind Saatvik and Ahimsa are more nuanced than their names suggest, allowing companies as varied as L&T, Bharat Forge, and Coal India to make the cut - Even after those screens, India’s concentrated stock market keeps pulling the indices back towards familiar giants like HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, and Infosys - A nearly two-decade-old Shariah index shows that values-based investing has found a loyal niche in India, but never a mass audience - For BSE, NSE and fund houses, the bigger opportunity may lie in launching new investing narratives rather than radically different portfolios Enter your email address to receive a daily summary of all our stories. Saatvik, or pure. Ahimsa, or non-violence. You can now invest in both On 19 June, the BSE launched the Saatvik 100, an index that excludes companies involved in businesses such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling, meat and poultry, leather and pesticides. Three weeks later, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) responded with the Nifty500 Ahimsa Index, built with the Ahimsagain Foundation to track companies that, according to its methodology, do not harm animals. The launches come just as the thematic fund boom is losing steam. After raising a record Rs 73,600 crore in FY25 (roughly three times the previous year’s haul) thematic and sectoral mutual fund NFOs brought in less than Rs 30,000 crore in FY26 as Sebi tightened rules on overlapping portfolios and distributors reported growing “thematic fatigue”. Every new fund needs a benchmark, and every benchmark needs a story. These distinctly Indian stories are familiar, though. The Saatvik 100’s largest holdings are HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Reliance Industries. Financial companies alone account for 37.5% of the index. The Ahimsa index includes 326 of the Nifty 500’s companies, among them Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Steel, Coal India, and NTPC. That is because these indices are not really trying to reinvent investing, just repackage it. As passive investing explodes, exchanges have to keep creating new benchmarks and fund houses need new products to launch. BSE Index Services alone introduced nearly a dozen new benchmarks in FY26, spanning themes, sectors and strategies. Most themes, whether they revolve around manufacturing, innovation, defence or now philosophy, are drawn from the same investable universe of large, liquid companies. The narrative changes more easily than the constituents. Saatvik and Ahimsa simply extend that logic into culture and values, joining a broader corporate trend exemplified by founders like Bhavish Aggarwal, who have increasingly Despite borrowing a term rooted in Hindu philosophy, BSE, in its response to The Ken, said the index was developed entirely in-house and was “not based on guidance from any philosophical or religious institution”. Credits How BSE’s Saatvik 100 and NSE’s Ahimsa ended up with missile makers and coal miners Know someone who'd appreciate this read? Share this story with them.