These three names come from completely different backgrounds, different eras, and different markets. One grew up in Omaha and bought his first stock at age 11. One started with ₹5,000 in the 1980s and built one of India’s most celebrated investing careers. One ran a small trading business before quietly becoming one of the sharpest stock pickers in Indian markets.
Different styles. Different portfolios. Different personalities.
And yet — if you study them carefully — they are all doing the exact same thing. Not in terms of what they buy, but in terms of how they think.
Let’s Look at Each One Briefly
Warren Buffett
Omaha, USA · Berkshire Hathaway
Buffett has said, repeatedly, that he does not buy stocks — he buys businesses. When he invested in Coca-Cola in the 1980s, he spent months understanding why people in 200 countries would continue to choose that drink. He was not looking at charts. He was asking: is this a business I would want to own for 20 years? He has held some of his investments for over three decades
Rakesh Jhunjhunwala
Mumbai, India · Rare Enterprises
Jhunjhunwala’s bet on Titan is now legendary. But what made that bet possible was not a tip — it was years of watching the company, understanding its brand moat, trusting its management, and having the conviction to hold through difficult periods. He once said that he bought Titan when nobody wanted it and held it when everyone doubted it. That conviction came from understanding the business — not the price.
Vijay Kedia
Mumbai, India · Kedia Securities
Kedia’s investment philosophy is built on a simple framework he calls SMILE — Small in size, Medium in experience, Large in aspiration, and Extra-large in market potential. He looks for businesses where the opportunity is large, the management is hungry, and the market has not yet noticed. He holds concentrated positions for years. Not months. Years.
So What Is the Common Thread?
When you strip away the geography, the era, the portfolio size, and the individual style — you are left with one thing.
The One Thing They All Do
Every single one of them studies the business — not the price. They want to understand what the company sells, who buys it, why customers keep coming back, whether the management can be trusted, and whether the business will be stronger five years from now than it is today.
None of them acts on tips. None of them trades in and out based on quarterly earnings beats. None of them checks the stock price every morning and makes a decision based on it. They let the business do the work — and they give it time.
This approach has a name — value investing — though the word has been so overused that it has started to lose meaning. At its core, it simply means this: understand what something is worth, then buy it when the market is offering it at less than that.
And you do not need a finance degree to do it. You need curiosity, patience, and a process.
The Part No One Talks About
Here is something worth sitting with: Buffett, Jhunjhunwala, and Kedia are not smarter than the average investor in some biological sense. They are not born with a superpower.
What they have is a mental model — a way of seeing a stock not as a ticker symbol but as a piece of a real business. And that changes everything. When the market falls 20%, they do not panic — because they are not reacting to a price move. They are asking: has the business changed? If the answer is no, they either hold or they buy more.
“When the market falls, they do not ask ‘should I sell?’ They ask ‘has the business changed?’ That one shift in the question changes everything.”
Most Indian retail investors have never been taught to think this way. The culture around investing in India — at least at the retail level — is dominated by tips, predictions, and short-term price action. Nobody tells you to read an annual report. Nobody explains what return on equity means in plain language. Nobody shows you how to tell a genuinely growing business from one that just looks good on a screen.
That gap is not your fault. It is simply an education problem. And education problems have solutions.
What This Means for You, Practically
You do not need to become Buffett. You do not need to manage a ₹10,000 crore portfolio or spend 12 hours a day reading annual reports.
But you do need a starting point — a way of looking at a company that is grounded in its actual business, not its recent price movement. Once you have that lens, investing starts to feel less like gambling and more like making informed decisions about real businesses.
That is the shift. And it is very much learnable.
The framework exists. It has been used by the best investors in the world, including the ones who grew up a few kilometres from where you are sitting right now. The only question is whether you are ready to learn it.
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Disclaimer: This blog is purely educational. It does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All investor names and examples are referenced for educational context only. Please consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. SEBI Registration: INH000014128.