Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are staging a structural overhaul of their Indian equity portfolios by aggressively slashing their exposure to the country's multi-billion-dollar bluechip heavyweight stocks. Shareholding pattern data reveals that the top 10 stocks held by FIIs in March 2022, which once commanded a massive 40.9% of their entire India portfolio, saw that allocation nearly halved to just 21.3% by March 2026.
The damage is spread across every name on that list, but the biggest casualties are the ones that once anchored most India portfolios of foreigners. HDFC and HDFC Bank together, the combined entity that was the single largest FII holding, saw their contribution collapse from 11.6% to 6.9%, a drop of 4.7 percentage points, shows data from ICICI Securities.
In the last 4 years, FII holding in Reliance Industries (RIL) has fallen from 9.1% to 5.3%. Infosys shed 3.7 percentage points, dropping from 5.8% to a thin 2.1%. TCS went from 4.2% to 1.3%.
Further down the list, the declines are smaller in absolute terms but no less telling. Asian Paints, once a consensus consumer bet, is now at just 0.4% of FII portfolios. Tech Mahindra sits at the same 0.4%. Hindustan Unilever (HUL), long considered defensive, has been cut to 0.8%.
