New Delhi, Sept. 23 -- The rulebook for classifying Indian equities has not changed in years. The formula adopted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India and the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) is simple: the top 100 companies by market capitalization are largecaps, the next 150 are midcaps and those ranked 251 onwards are smallcaps.

What has changed, quietly but dramatically, is the rupee value attached to each rank and with it, the character of the smallcap universe itself.

The threshold that defines the smallcap universe is the 250th-ranked company. In June 2023, that cut-off was roughly Rs.17,400 crore; three years later, AMFI's June 2026 categorization puts it at about Rs.33,500 crore, almost double. The largecap ...