The Toll Booth Nobody Priced as a Toll Booth
A depository is not a financial-services business. It is regulated infrastructure with a per-transaction levy and near-zero incremental cost — and the market keeps valuing it against brokers.
Most analysts file depositories under "financial services" and value them against brokers. That framing is wrong in a way that matters.
A broker's revenue is a function of market activity and competitive intensity, both of which mean-revert. A depository's revenue is a function of the number of accounts in existence and the number of transactions passing through them — and neither has a competitor bidding the price down, because the price is set by regulation.
What you own, in effect, is a toll booth on a road the state has decided everyone must use.
Between FY11 and FY26 the number of demat accounts grew roughly fifteenfold. Over the same period gross block grew by less than three times. That divergence is the entire thesis.
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