Michael Porter's Five Forces framework decodes industry structure before stock selection. Rivalry, entry barriers, supplier and buyer power, and substitutes determine whether industries create or destroy capital — the upstream reason moats like switching costs and pricing power even exist.

Switching costs are the silent, stubborn moat that locks Indian customers into quality suppliers — a regulatory, procedural, or behavioural friction that makes leaving a supplier more expensive than staying. Here is the complete 6-type framework, 5-signal checklist, and real-world Indian case files every value investor must master.

Deep-dive case study: Titan Biotech's decade-long depreciation-to-gross-block pattern reveals clean management accounting — the forensic test that separates real earnings from manipulated ones in Indian small-caps.