UltraTech Ultravolt Launch Splits Friday Stocks to Watch

UltraTech Cement launched Ultravolt with 1,098,000 km of house-wire capacity, putting Polycab and KEI on Friday’s stocks to watch list. GIFT Nifty futures pointed to a 56-point higher Nifty 50 open on September 4.

The rest of the tape split around a cement-funded raid on cables, a SEBI rewrite of expiry settlement, and a Kenyan order that told Tata Chemicals to leave Lake Magadi.

UltraTech’s New Wire Plant Is Already No. 2

The Jhagadia plant in Bharuch, Gujarat, began commercial production on September 1, about three months before the December 2026 date UltraTech set when its board cleared the Rs 1,800 crore cables plan from February 2025 ($190.5 million). A company letter to the exchanges listed 1,098,000 km of house-wire capacity and light-duty cables. Two days later the Aditya Birla Group put a brand on that line: Ultravolt.

UltraTech said the new unit starts as the second-largest player in the wires segment by capacity and aims to be among the top two in the category within five years. The group called it its fourth new business in three years, after Birla Opus paints, Indriya jewellery retail and Birla Pivot, the B2B commerce platform.

Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, said wires and cables sit at the intersection of urbanisation, electrification and digitisation, and he pointed to more than 100 million new homes over the next decade plus data-centre buildout as demand. Dilip Gaur, director of Ultravolt, refused a regional test launch.

We are venturing at pan-India scale rather than testing the market region by region.

Dilip Gaur, Director, Ultravolt, at the September 3 launch

Sriram Rangarajan, chief executive of Ultravolt, said the first range is home wires, flexible wires and cables for residential, commercial, industrial and infrastructure work. Higher-voltage products and electrical accessories are later.

ULTRAVOLT’S OPENING FOOTPRINT

• Geography: More than 500 districts and 6,000 pin codes at launch, fed by more than 20 warehouses.
• Channel: A target of more than 100,000 retailers, including availability through more than 5,000 UltraTech Building Solutions outlets.
• Money: Rs 1,800 crore of group capital, funded with internal accruals and borrowings, originally over two years from the February 2025 board meeting that ran from 3.00 p.m. to 4.45 p.m.
• Claim: Second-largest wires capacity on day one, with a five-year brief to reach the top two.

Birla has already used that pattern in paints. Opus took double-digit share within two years, he said, while Indriya reached 90 stores in 54 cities and Birla Pivot’s annualised run rate hit Rs 10,000 crore in three years. Cables get the same treatment: scale first, then climb the product ladder.

Polycab and KEI Take the House-Wire Hit

The organised wires and cables market is no longer a cottage trade. Motilal Oswal’s June 17, 2026 sector note put industry revenue at Rs 1.0 trillion in FY26 after a 12.5% compound pace from FY22, with organised players near 80 percent of the market, up from about 67% in FY22. The same note looks for 13-14% compound growth through FY30.

Polycab is the name in the way. The company said its organised wires and cables share reached 30-31% in FY26 after a 3-4 percentage-point gain, with the segment’s revenue at Rs 252 billion, up 33%, and group revenue past Rs 285 billion, up 29%. KEI Industries, Havells India, RR Kabel and Finolex Cables sit behind that lead and now share a new neighbour with cement cash and 5,000 building-material outlets.

The market did not wait for a five-year plan. On September 1, after UltraTech said the Gujarat plant was live, KEI fell 6% to Rs 5,398.5 and Polycab fell 4.7% to Rs 9,000. On September 4, after the Ultravolt brand launch, cable stocks were down 4-7%. Nuvama’s equity research desk warned of a near-term de-rating for Polycab, KEI and peers on that aggression.

Anil Gupta, who leads KEI, struck a calmer note on television. He said there is room on the demand side to absorb new supply, and that a new private-market brand may still need at least two to three years to get established and take share. KEI’s own Sanand plant is still ramping, with Gupta guiding Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 2,000 crore of revenue this year at about 25% utilisation, then about 60% the following year.

The first overlap is narrower than a sector-wide panic. Ultravolt’s disclosed products are house wires and light-duty cables. Extra-high-voltage, OEM and transmission specialists share less of that shelf until the new plant moves up the voltage stack. Polycab still has to defend the building-wire counter where UltraTech already knows the contractor, the individual home builder and the dealer.

Why SEBI Reopened the Expiry Close

BSE Ltd, Nuvama Wealth Management, Angel One and Groww (Billionbrains Garage Ventures) are on the same list for a different reason. A month after the Closing Auction Session went live, SEBI said it may change how derivative contracts are settled on expiry, and that a consultation paper is due in about a week from September 3.

CAS itself is not being pulled. SEBI’s January 16 circular put Closing Auction Session rules from 3 August in the cash segment for stocks that have derivative contracts, and those auction closes also feed expiry settlement. After the first month, the regulator said a large share of the feedback was about that settlement link, not the auction as a price-discovery tool.

The September 3 BSE expiry showed why brokers care. Sensex dropped from about 76,510 at 3:17 p.m. to about 74,373 at 3:20 p.m., a 2,137-point slide in three minutes inside the auction window, before a partial recovery. The 76,600 put jumped from Rs 102 to Rs 446. The 76,400 put jumped from Rs 45 to Rs 246. Exchanges have already said stock and index futures reference prices will use the volume-weighted average of trades from 3:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. The pre-open auction is due to be aligned on September 7.

CAS TO SETTLEMENT REVIEW

1. January 16, 2026: SEBI issues the circular that replaces last-half-hour VWAP closes with a timed auction for cash stocks that have futures and options.
2. August 3, 2026: CAS starts in the equity cash segment; derivative settlement on expiry uses the auction-derived close.
3. September 3, 2026: On a BSE expiry, Sensex prints a 2,137-point three-minute swing in the auction, and SEBI says a consultation paper on expiry settlement is due in about a week.

For BSE the fight is structural. Sensex weekly expiries now settle through an auction that can gap. Brokers, prop desks and the listed intermediaries on Friday’s focus list have to warehouse that gap until SEBI’s paper lands.

Kenya Tells Tata Chemicals to Leave Magadi

Tata Chemicals is the other loser, and the loss is a country. President William Ruto, speaking in Kajiado on September 3, said he had ordered Tata Chemicals Magadi to pack up, accusing the company of taking soda ash out of Lake Magadi for a century without building factories or hiring enough locals.

“Are we slaves to other people?” Ruto said, adding that a new operator would have to put a glass plant and a chemical plant in Kajiado. Kenya’s mining ministry had already suspended the Magadi operations on July 29 over compliance, royalties, export reporting and community agreements. The company later said it had filed the papers needed for a review and that the shutdown threatened about 500 jobs.

The mineral is not a rounding error. Kenya exported 254,779.6 tonnes of soda ash worth Sh7.36 billion in 2025. A High Court date on November 18 still sits over the possible restart, so the presidential order and the licence fight are not the same document. For the Mumbai-listed parent, the September 4 tape still has to price a century-old asset that Nairobi now wants in someone else’s name.

Cipla Joins a 13-Player Keytruda Queue

Cipla’s wholly owned US unit, Invagen Pharmaceuticals, took an exclusive US licence for QL2107, Qilu Pharmaceutical’s biosimilar of Merck’s pembrolizumab, sold as Keytruda. Qilu will handle development, registration and supply. Cipla USA will sell it. Deal terms were not disclosed.

This partnership reflects Cipla’s confidence in the long-term potential of biosimilars and supports our strategy to build a strong oncology-focused portfolio.

Achin Gupta, Managing Director and Global Chief Executive Officer, Cipla, September 3 press release

Marc Falkin, chief executive of Cipla North America, said the launch is still subject to regulatory approval. Hanchang Zhang, general manager of Qilu, said the Chinese firm wants an affordable pembrolizumab copy in US clinics. Keytruda generated $31.7 billion of global sales last year and Merck’s US patent protection runs to 2028. At least 13 pembrolizumab biosimilars are already in trials, including a Qilu Phase 3 study with an estimated primary completion in December 2026.

Qilu is not a small supplier. The company lists 11 domestic plants, more than 38,000 staff, 58 US FDA ANDA approvals and a pipeline of more than 50 biosimilars. Cipla, for its part, said it is the third-largest pharma company in India on IQVIA data to June 2026, with 48 plants and more than 70 markets. The US Keytruda copy still has to clear a crowded queue before it pays for the headline.

Power Grid, IEX and Ceigall Collect the Contracts

The other names on the September 4 list are collecting work, volume or a mining lease. They are the other side of the same scoreboard.

THE SEPTEMBER 4 SCOREBOARD

Indian Energy Exchange reported its highest monthly electricity volume in August, and the print is large enough to stand on its own.

IEX AUGUST PRINT

• Traded power: 13,938 million units, up 20.2% from a year earlier, as India used 169.01 billion units, up 12.85%.
• Day-ahead: Buy bids up 61.7%, clearing at Rs 4.88 a unit, up 22%, on 5,517 million units versus 4,797 a year earlier.
• Real-time: 5,565 million units, up 10.6%, at Rs 4.41 a unit, up 30.4%.
• Term-ahead: 1,765 million units, up 111.3% from 835, while green markets did 1,091 million units, up 17.3%, and REC trades fell 86.6% to 2.91 lakh certificates.

Power Grid Corporation of India said on September 3 it was the successful bidder for a Rs 1,152.49 crore interstate line to fold 7,500 MW of renewable power from the Lakadia REZ in Gujarat into the grid on a build, own, operate and transfer basis, and that it had the letter of intent the same day. Ceigall India received a Rs 5,300 crore letter of intent from REC Power Development and Consultancy for a separate Gujarat evacuation job.

Hindustan Zinc, the Vedanta group miner, was named preferred bidder for the Gundlupet rare-earth and yttrium block, 314.21 hectares in Chamrajnagar district, Karnataka, and the state issued a letter of intent. Sterlite Technologies’ board approved an expansion of about 50% of installed optical-fibre capacity, about Rs 3,000 crore by the end of FY29, with utilisation now around 70%. GE Aerospace shipped three more F404-IN20 engines to Hindustan Aeronautics for the Tejas Mk1A, taking programme deliveries to 10, while the fighter remains more than two years behind its original Indian Air Force schedule.

Kalyani Strategic Systems, a Bharat Forge unit, signed a memorandum of understanding with FN Herstal of the FN Browning Group for local manufacturing of small arms. Tata Motors said TML CV Holdings B.V. has Consob approval for a voluntary offer at €14.10 a share for Iveco Group, with acceptances from September 7 to October 26 unless extended. United Breweries, Heineken’s Indian unit, told investors India is set to be the Dutch brewer’s largest volume-growth contributor among focus markets from 2026 to 2030, with a plan to lift EBITDA margins from high single digits to the low-to-mid teens. Cohance Lifesciences, formerly Suven Pharmaceuticals, committed $18 million, including $13 million to lift its NJ Bio stake from 56% to 67.3% and $5 million for 65% of Aruka Bio, both from internal accruals.

The Iveco window opens on September 7. SEBI’s settlement paper is due about a week after September 3. Cable dealers will know before either date whether Ultravolt’s first coils are a sample or a price war.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis for information only and is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security named above. It does not constitute investment, tax or trading advice, and the companies, contracts and regulatory reviews described can change on further filings. Readers should consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser or other qualified financial professional before acting on any stock, derivative or corporate action. Figures and statuses reflect company filings, regulator papers and exchange data as published on the dates cited and may be revised.