Sameer: 25, the founder
Used to be a delivery rider. Now he runs the stall, and one day the company. He asks the questions everyone else is too shy to ask.
“Investors keep asking for our EBITDA. What do I tell them?”
Sameer pours cutting chai at his street-corner stall while Riya chats beside the counter. The Plainomics sign is painted on the stall's wall, and a board hanging below it lists cutting chai ₹15, masala chai ₹20 and bun maska ₹30.
Money and company words in plain words, told through one story: Sameer's chai stall on a Mumbai street corner, and how it grows into a listed company. Every word gets one plain line, a two-minute scene, the grown-up version, and where it hides in a real Indian annual report.
Meet the two of them
Riya: 25, the new hire
Was a social-media intern. Now she's in the finance team, reading the fine print so Sameer doesn't have to, and explaining it so you don't have to either.
“Nobody reads it front to back. Give me 30 minutes and I'll give you a route.”
The story so far
One business, the same numbers everywhere. Each word on this site picks up the story at the stage where it matters.
Year 1
One stall
Cutting chai at ₹15. On a normal day, 300 cutting chai, 100 masala chai and 60 bun maska: ₹8,300 of sales, ₹24.90 lakh a year. After milk, cups, rent and Riya's salary, ₹10.50 lakh is left.
Year 4
Twelve stalls
Sameer Chai Pvt Ltd now runs 12 stalls across the city, with ₹3.6 crore of sales. Same kettle, same board, a lot more stools.
FY24
The IPO
The company sells 1.5 crore new shares to the public at ₹40 each and raises ₹60 crore.
IPO · DRHP · Face value
FY26
Sameer Chai Ltd
₹120 crore of chai sold, ₹9 crore of profit, and the market values the company at ₹270 crore. Now there's an annual report to read.
Made-up stall, real maths. Every example from a real company comes from its own annual report, with the page number.
Find a word
- AGM:The AGM is the once-a-year meeting where a company's shareholders approve the accounts, declare the dividend and vote on who runs the company.
- Amortisation:Amortisation is the cost of something you can't touch, like software or a licence, spread across the years it is useful.
- Annual report:An annual report is the yearly book a company sends its shareholders: what happened, the full accounts, and what the people running it think comes next.
- Auditor's report:The auditor's report is the auditor's signed verdict, in the annual report, on whether a company's accounts give a true and fair picture.
- Balance sheet:A balance sheet is a snapshot of one day: what a company owns, what it owes, and what is left for its owners.
- Board's report:The Board's report is the directors' yearly report to shareholders, attached to the accounts, covering how the year went and a legal checklist of disclosures.
- Bonus shares:Bonus shares are extra shares a company gives its shareholders for free. You get more shares, but the company, and your slice of it, stays the same size.
- Book value:Book value is the owners' share of the company as the accounts record it, net worth, and book value per share is that amount divided by the number of shares.
- BRSR:BRSR is a yearly report in which India's largest listed companies disclose how they treat the planet, their workers and society, in a fixed format set by SEBI.
- Buyback:A buyback means a company uses its cash to buy some of its own shares back from shareholders, and then cancels them.
- Capex:Capex (capital expenditure) is money a company spends on things that will serve it for years, like new kiosks, vans or machines.
- CARO:CARO is a government order that makes a company's auditor answer a fixed list of extra questions, such as unpaid taxes and cash losses, in an annexure to the audit report.
- Cash flow statement:A cash flow statement shows where a company's cash came from and where it went during the year, split into everyday business, investing and financing.
- Consolidated vs standalone:Consolidated vs standalone means the two sets of accounts a parent company publishes: standalone for the company alone, consolidated for the whole group with its subsidiaries.
- Contingent liability:A contingent liability is a possible bill that a company may or may not have to pay, depending on how a dispute or other uncertain event turns out.
- Credit rating:A credit rating is an agency's opinion, shown as a grade like AAA or A–, of how likely a company is to repay a loan or bond in full and on time.
- CSR:CSR is the Indian rule that makes bigger or profitable companies spend at least 2% of their average profit on social causes, such as education or health.
- Current ratio:The current ratio is a company's current assets divided by its current liabilities: how many rupees it has coming in within a year for every rupee it must pay out.
- Debt-to-equity ratio:The debt-to-equity ratio is a company's borrowings divided by its owners' money (net worth): how many rupees of loans sit on each rupee of equity.
- Depreciation:Depreciation is the cost of something a business uses for years, like a kettle or a kiosk, spread across those years instead of counted all at once.
- Dividend:A dividend is the part of its profit that a company hands back to its shareholders in cash, so much per share.
- Dividend yield:Dividend yield is the yearly dividend per share as a percentage of today's share price: the cash return you'd get on the price, if the dividend stays the same.
- DRHP:A DRHP (draft red herring prospectus) is the first draft of the document a company files with SEBI before an IPO, setting out its business, its numbers and its risks.
- EBITDA:EBITDA is what a business earns from its everyday work before paying interest and tax, and before counting the wear and tear on its equipment.
- EPS:EPS, or earnings per share, is the company's profit for the year divided by its number of shares: how much profit each share earned.
- ESG:ESG means judging a company on three things beyond profit: its effect on the environment, how it treats people, and how honestly it is run.
- Face value:Face value is the fixed, on-paper amount of one share, set in the company's charter, such as ₹10; it has nothing to do with what the share trades for.
- Free float:Free float means the part of a company's shares held by the public rather than its promoters, the shares that can actually change hands on the market.
- Going concern:Going concern means the accounts assume the company will keep running for the foreseeable future, at least the next year, rather than shutting down or selling up.
- Goodwill:Goodwill is the extra a company pays, over and above the value of the assets it gets, when it buys another business.
- Holding company:A holding company is a company that controls another company, its subsidiary, usually by holding more than half of its votes or by choosing most of its board.
- Ind AS:Ind AS are India's accounting standards, close to the global IFRS rules, that tell listed and large companies exactly how to count and show their numbers.
- Independent director:An independent director is a board member with no business, family or job ties to the company or its owners, there to give an outside view and protect smaller shareholders.
- Interim dividend:An interim dividend is a dividend the board declares during the financial year, before the year's accounts are final, instead of waiting for the AGM.
- IPO:An IPO (initial public offering) is the first time a company sells its shares to the public, so that anyone can then buy and sell them on a stock exchange.
- Joint venture:A joint venture is a business that two or more partners run together under joint control, so no big decision can be taken unless all of them agree.
- KMP:KMP, or key managerial personnel, are the handful of top officers the law holds responsible for running a company, such as the CEO, the CFO and the company secretary.
- LODR:LODR is SEBI's rulebook for listed companies: what they must tell the stock exchanges, how fast, and how their boards must be run.
- Market cap:Market cap is what the stock market says a whole company is worth today: the share price multiplied by the number of shares.
- MD&A:MD&A is the section of a listed company's annual report where management explains, in words, how the business did, why, and what lies ahead.
- Net profit:Net profit is what a company keeps from its revenue after paying every cost, including interest and tax.
- Net worth:Net worth is the shareholders' share of a company: what it owns minus everything it owes, which equals its share capital plus reserves.
- Offer for sale (OFS):An offer for sale (OFS) is when existing shareholders sell their own shares to the public, so the money goes to them, not to the company.
- Operating profit (EBIT):Operating profit (EBIT) is what a company's main business earns after its running costs and the wear and tear on its equipment, before interest and tax.
- P/E ratio:The P/E ratio is the share price divided by the profit per share: how many rupees buyers pay today for each rupee the company earns in a year.
- Payout ratio:The payout ratio is the part of a year's profit that a company pays out to shareholders as dividends, shown as a percentage; the rest is kept in the business.
- Pledged shares:Pledged shares are shares an owner, often the promoter, has handed to a lender as security for a loan; if the loan goes bad, the lender can sell them.
- Profit and loss statement:The profit and loss statement shows what a company sold in a year, what it spent to do that, and what was left over at the end.
- Promoter:A promoter is the person or group that started or controls a company, usually its biggest shareholder, and is named as the promoter in its official filings.
- QIP:A QIP (qualified institutions placement) is a quick way for a listed company to raise money by selling new shares only to big institutional investors, such as mutual funds and insurers.
- Quarterly results:Quarterly results are the sales and profit figures a listed company must publish every three months, within 45 days of each quarter's end.
- Record date:The record date is the cut-off day: if your name is on the company's list of shareholders that day, you get the dividend or bonus.
- Related party transactions:Related party transactions are deals between a company and people close to it, such as its directors, top officers, their families or firms they control.
- Reserves and surplus:Reserves and surplus are the part of the shareholders' money that isn't share capital: mainly profits the company has kept, and premiums paid above face value for its shares.
- Revenue:Revenue is the money a company earns from selling its goods and services in a period, before taking off any costs.
- Rights issue:A rights issue is when a company raises money by offering new shares to its existing shareholders first, in proportion to what they already hold, usually at a discount.
- ROE:ROE, or return on equity, is the year's profit as a percentage of the owners' money in the business: how hard the shareholders' rupees are working.
- Secretarial audit:A secretarial audit is a yearly check by an outside company secretary of whether a company has followed company law, SEBI rules and other laws, rather than its numbers.
- Segment reporting:Segment reporting is a company breaking its revenue and profit into its main lines of business, so you can see which parts earn what.
- Share capital:Share capital is the face value of all the shares a company has issued: the number of shares multiplied by the face value of each.
- Shareholding pattern:A shareholding pattern is the table a listed company files every quarter showing who owns its shares: promoters, mutual funds, foreign investors, individuals and others.
- Statutory audit:A statutory audit is the yearly check of a company's accounts by an outside chartered accountant, which the law requires, to say whether the numbers are fair.
- Stock split:A stock split means a company cuts each share into smaller shares with a lower face value, so you hold more shares but own exactly the same slice of the company.
- Turnover:Turnover is the total money a company earns from selling its goods and services in a year, before any costs are taken off.
- Unclaimed dividend:An unclaimed dividend is a dividend a company has declared that a shareholder hasn't received or cashed, often because of old bank details or a changed address.
- Value creation model:A value creation model is the diagram in an integrated report that shows what a company puts in, what it does with it, and what comes out for its owners and everyone else.
- Working capital:Working capital is what a company has in short-term assets, like stock, customer dues and cash, minus the bills it must pay within a year.
- XBRL:XBRL is a computer-readable format for financial reports, where every number carries a standard tag, such as 'Revenue', so software can read and compare it.
- YoY (year-on-year):YoY (year-on-year) means comparing a number with the same number for the same period a year earlier, usually as a percentage change.
- ZCZP (zero coupon zero principal):A ZCZP (zero coupon zero principal) instrument is a security issued by a registered non-profit on a Social Stock Exchange that pays no interest and returns no principal: the money funds a social project.