Interviews

Gaurav Jalan, an enterprising and inspiring young value investor shares his invaluable insights and experiences in sensible, long-term investing.

Gaurav has 14 years of experience in management consulting and investment management. He manages investment portfolios for high net worth individuals and companies as Chief Investment Officer at Avant Garde Wealth Management. Previously, he was an Investment Analyst at Fidelity International in Mumbai and also worked as a Senior Associate Consultant at Bain & Co., New York. Gaurav completed his MBA from Columbia Business School, New York in 2006 and his B.A. in Economics and Computer Science from Amherst College, Massachusetts in 2001.

In his interview with Safal Niveshak, Gaurav shares his wide investment experience and how small investors can practice sensible investment decision making.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, how you got interested in value investing?
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With a long experience in the capital market, and in working with few of the doyens of value investing in India, Rajeev Thakkar has come a long way. In this interview, he shares key insights about his investment strategy and the underlying thought process that has helped him keep his head while his fund management peers were losing theirs.

Rajeev Thakkar possesses over 15 years of experience in various segments of the Capital Markets such as investment banking, corporate finance, securities broking and managing clients’ investments in equities. He is currently the Director and Fund Manager at PPFAS Mutual Fund.

Rajeev’s tenure at PPFAS began in 2001. His passion for researching and analysing the fundamentals of companies was evident. from the very beginning and very soon he was heading the Research division at PPFAS. His responsibilities soon expanded as he was appointed the Fund Manager for the flagship scheme of the Portfolio Management Service, titled “Cognito” in 2003.

Rajeev is a strong believer in the school of “value-investing” and is heavily influenced by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s approach. In his interview with Safal Niveshak, Rajeev shares his wide investment experience and how small investors can practice sensible investment decision making.
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Mr. Huzaifa Husain is the Head of Indian Equities at PineBridge Investments based in Mumbai. Since he joined the asset management company in 2004, Mr. Husain has been a key member of the team advising the PineBridge India Equity Fund (a Dublin domiciled India offshore fund). Prior to this, he was an Equity Analyst at Principal Mutual Fund and SBI Mutual Fund. Mr. Husain received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore and a B.Tech from the Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University).

In this interview for the Value Investing Almanack, Mr. Husain shared how he found his calling in value investing, and reveals key insights about his investment strategy and the underlying thought process.

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Ian Cassel, a full time micro-cap investor, shares his investment journey. His insights about what makes micro-cap investing different and challenging are worth a million.

In this issue, I interview Ian Cassel of MicroCapClub.com, which is an exclusive forum for experienced microcap investors focused on microcap companies (sub $300m market cap) trading on the US and Canadian markets.

Ian has been investing in microcaps for 15 years and has been a full time microcap investor since 2008. Ian looks to invest in great management teams running great businesses with a moat. He tries to invest in the best 5-6-7 companies he can find at all times.

Ian founded MicroCapClub in 2011 to be a place for “real” and experienced investors in the microcap space to share ideas and learn from one another. When Ian isn’t researching stocks or administering MicroCapClub, you can find him reading, golfing, or shopping at Costco with his wife.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, how you got interested in investing and also about your wonderful blog microcabclub.com?

Ian Cassel (IC): I’m 34 years old, married, and have a daughter. I live in the United States in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lancaster is a rural community mostly known for our Amish people. I am not Amish  I’m a full time private microcap investor, which is a fancy way of saying I only invest my own capital (no family, friends, or clients) and only in small public companies called microcaps.
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Jayendra Kulkarni, a value investor from Mumbai, shares his 20-year journey in stock market and recounts his discovery of value investing and how it helped him build a framework for finding value.

In this issue, we profile a Mumbai-based value investor, Jayendra Kulkarni. Jayendra has been investing for close to 20 years and invests largely in small and medium sized businesses.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, how you got interested in investing, and how you’ve evolved over time as an investor?

Jayendra Kulkarni (JK): I did my Hotel Management from IHM, Mumbai and then a Business Management Diploma. I don’t have any foundational background of Finance. So I started from ground zero – clueless. Naturally the learning curve was steep. It was not intimidating though; simply because I did not know, what I did not know.

I worked for the stock broking division of Apple Finance in the mid 90’s in Marketing and Dealing and that for me was the embarking point. I’d heard about ‘book value’ and ‘PE ratio’ and would spend days sifting through Capital Market and Dalal Street Journal searching for what I thought were under-priced stocks. When only a few of what I thought were Eureka stocks, worked out, I slowly began realizing that the investing process is not a simple two dimensional graph.
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