A senior executive at Hatsun Agro Product Ltd. inadvertently posted the dairy company’s draft quarterly financial results to their personal WhatsApp Status, exposing sensitive data to a small circle of contacts before the official filing.
The “unintentional” disclosure occurred at 5:00 pm on 4 January when a Key Managerial Personnel (KMP) uploaded the unaudited figures for the quarter ended 31 December 2025, while attempting to share them internally with the accounts department.
The status update was visible for approximately one hour and was viewed by 19 people, including company insiders, before being deleted.
Hatsun Agro, which is India’s largest private dairy company, formally notified the BSE and NSE of the incident on Monday, stating it has initiated an internal inquiry under SEBI’s insider trading regulations. The company is also updating its Structured Digital Database to include the names of all 19 individuals who viewed the draft figures.
Hatsun Agro financials
To be sure, the accidental leak comes at a time when Hatsun Agro has been reporting robust growth on a quarterly basis.
Net profit of the Chennai-based dairy company rose 70% year-on-year to ₹109.54 crore on revenue that increased 17% to ₹2,427 crore, as the company benefited from improved margins and operational efficiencies. The growth was driven by strong demand for its Arun Icecreams and Arokya Milk brands.
A history of ‘fat finger’ leaks
While Hatsun Agro’s “WhatsApp Status” slip-up is unique in its method, it joins a long list of corporate “fat finger” errors.
- ASML Holding NV (2024): The Netherlands-based chip-gear giant accidentally published its financial results a day early due to a technical error, triggering a global selloff in semiconductor stocks.
- Google (2012): In one of the most famous incidents, filing agent R.R. Donnelley released Google’s earnings prematurely, including the placeholder text “PENDING LARRY QUOTE” instead of a statement from CEO Larry Page.
- India’s WhatsApp Leaks (2017): The incident also echoes the widespread 2017 controversy where earnings for dozen of Indian companies, including Bata India Ltd. and Wipro Ltd., were circulated in private WhatsApp groups days before official announcements. That scandal prompted a massive crackdown by the regulator SEBI on “market chatter”.