Interviews

Swanand Kelkar, a professional money manager talks about his journey into the world of investing and shares his insights about picking great businesses.

Swanand Kelkar is Executive Director at Morgan Stanley and portfolio advisor for Indian equities. He joined Morgan Stanley in 2007 and has 10 years of investment experience. Prior to joining the firm, he worked in the equity investment department at HSBC Asset Management. Swanand received his Bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Mumbai and an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He is also an associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. Swanand writes a regular column for the Mint newspaper on investing and markets.

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?

Swanand Kelkar (SK): I was born and brought up here in Mumbai and my parents were teachers. I am a Chartered Accountant and then went on to do my MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.

Ever since I was a kid, I had this fascination about seeing money grow. Most of my friends used to spend their pocket money but I used to save as much as I could and lend it within my family at usurious rates of interest. My family would playfully indulge me and this bug of seeing a hundred rupees become hundred and ten bit me for life.

My career choices, as you can see, have been related to this. I personally started investing in the equity markets as a twenty year old at the peak of the TMT bubble. Like a classic novice investor, I got sucked in at the top, invested based on hearsay and lost my shirt (two months’ worth of articleship stipend, which seemed like a fortune then). It was baptism by fire really.

It was during my MBA days that I began to figure out the method behind the madness and started understanding the difference between investing and speculation. My tiny portfolio started doing well (it was 2003) and I gained some confidence. I wanted to get into something related to equities after MBA which would convert my passion into my day job. Luckily, I got into the buy side and have now been a professional investor for over ten years, of which eight years were at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
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Prabhakar Kudva, an engineer by education and an investor by choice, chronicles his serendipitous journey in to the world of value investing and shares some useful insights on portfolio construction

Amit Arora is one of the founders and Chief Investment Officer of Eleven Dimension Funds. After two short stints in India he had the privilege to serve United Nations, based out of Europe from 2000 through 2007.

Since 2007 he has been rendering professional consulting services to a number of New Zealand Government organisations such as Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, Ministry of Social Development, Inland Revenue Department, Regional Health Boards as an Independent Consultant.

Amit started and managed an investment partnership registered in India under Indian Partnership Act 1932 with a selective total of nine partners out of one hundred and fifteen plus who evinced interest in joining, with a successful track record from 2012-2014.

He is passionate about spirituality, investments, technology and a need for well rounded and balanced life to realise human potential.

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?

Amit Arora (AA): I chose Commerce in 11th standard and did MBA in Finance. I landed a below-mediocre first job with Peerless General Finance and Investment Company which felt like 10 years, though it lasted only for 10 months. In 1999, I saw IT folks earning more money, much more than me. So, I was working for money, not passion, I chose to go into software development. I trained in C, Java and got sacked along with rest of the team in 2000. I then stayed at home for 4 months. Then, thanks to luck, I got a few months consulting job in United Nations in Italy in 2001 after a brief unemployment period. This contract kept extending every 3-6 months from 2001 until I got bored by 2006.

I was 30 years old in 2006, no social circle, I preferred being alone by nature, I was twice as old as a teenager, so my hormones started to kick in by now, no girlfriend ever by this time, so I decided to get married in arranged marriage manner in India through our parents, and then thought of moving to an English speaking country like the New Zealand, US, England, Australia or Canada. I wanted to try consulting for Indian companies like Wipro of Infosys for some time, but my better half did not, so we moved to New Zealand in 2007.
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Prabhakar Kudva, an engineer by education and an investor by choice, chronicles his serendipitous journey in to the world of value investing and shares some useful insights on portfolio construction.

Prabhakar is the co-founder and executive director at Samvitti Capital Pvt. Ltd. which manages the SEBI approved category III alternative investment funds. He has been involved with the equity markets for about ten years now. His focus has been investing in growth businesses that have the potential to scale up over the next several years. He blogs here.

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?

Prabhakar Kudva (PK): If I have to sum up my life up till now in one word, that word like Prof Bakshi says, would be serendipity.

I was extremely fortunate to be born to a set of parents who imbibed very early into my thought process the value of good education and prudent behaviour. I am eternally grateful to them for encouraging me to read and buying me all the books I ever wanted to buy. I am originally from a place called Mulki, which is a small town in Mangalore district in Karnataka. My father was a banker and I spent most of my transformative years in Delhi. We used to visit our home town once every year during my summer vacations and that’s where my stock market journey began. My maternal uncle is an avid stock market participant and probably one of the early practitioners of technical analysis in India. I was 15-16 years old and when I visited him during vacations he used to make me sit through tens of charts as we analysed them together. I was intrigued at first and subsequently taken – like fish to water.
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This is maybe the first time I am introducing someone here not on my own, but through a testimonial, and that too from a legend himself.

Here’s how Prof. Sanjay Bakshi describes the investor I am profiling today, Arpit Ranka –

Arpit is one of the finest human beings I have ever met. He is trustworthy, ethical, humble, spiritual, and diligent. Many years ago when he approached me through his wonderful brother Arpan (who was my student at MDI), I allowed him to sit in my class. He was the best student in my class. Later he worked with me for many years.

Arpit is a very successful value investor who loves his craft. Anyone who associates with him should consider himself or herself lucky. I am lucky to have him in my life.

Now for a more formal introduction. Arpit is a value investor based out of Mumbai. He is an avid reader and considers himself fortunate to have found his passion in value investing. He has worked with two of the leading value investors in India, Prof. Sanjay Bakshi and Late Mr. Parag Parikh before starting out on his own. Apart from investing, his interests include movies, music, Buddhism, and travelling.

For whatever little I’ve known Arpit for the past few years, I count him amongst the finest thinkers among the younger lot of value investors in India. That he breathes value investing would be an understatement.

For this interview, Arpit has been generous in letting his thoughts flow freely. And as you would realize by the end of the interview, there are great lessons that we can draw from his invaluable experience.

Let’s now dive straight into the interview.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background and how you got interested in investing?

Arpit Ranka (AR): It’s been a roller-coaster ride — growing up in a small town in Tamil Nadu called Tirukoilur, to dropping out of engineering within the first couple of weeks, to spending an year learning the pharmaceutical wholesale business at my maternal uncle’s shop in Jodhpur, to working for a month or two as an operator at a BOLT in Jodhpur, to get to work with two of the leading value investors in the country, to eventually becoming a full time investor and starting out on my own, twice over.

I will not bore you with the details except for highlighting two important developments along the way, which led me to value investing.

Firstly, in hindsight, dropping out of the engineering college is one of the best decisions I have taken as yet. While I had no clue what I would be doing with my life when I made that decision (I had not even heard of value investing then) but I became a voracious reader the very day I dropped out. I was scared to death that I might end up a failure and introducing myself to books seemed like my best bet to avoid that fate. After dropping out, I read like a maniac for a few years.
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Jae Jun is the founder of Old School Value, a deep fundamental analysis tool that helps value investors make speeds up the analysis process and make better investment decisions.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, and also about your wonderful blog Old School Value?

Jae Jun (JJ): I believe my path to investing is very similar to most people. I met a life insurance salesman who convinced me that I needed life insurance that also acted as an “investment” account. A 2-in-1 deal which I blindly agreed to without doing any homework.

The reason for my poor decision was because I saw friends and colleagues making money in stocks and I wanted to do the same. I also believed that anyone in the financial industry knew a lot more than I ever would. After I started Old School Value, I realized it was the opposite. Most people in the finance industry don’t know a thing about finance.

After several months, I would check my shiny new “investment” account, but things didn’t look right. The market was up 10%, but my account was doing nothing and a lot of the insurance premium were deducted as fees. After some digging around, the veil fell from my eyes and I saw the sucker I was. I immediately cancelled the life insurance, forfeited all the money and locked in my first 100% investment loss.

I figured that, if I wanted to lose money, I could do it myself and at least have some fun doing it. That’s when I started digging into articles, magazines and books and documented my learning through Old School Value.

I thoroughly enjoy sharing and educating people and the blog is an outlet for me so that I don’t have to bore my wife or friends to death about balance sheet analysis and how to value stocks.

Coming from a telecommunications engineering background, I grew up with tunnel vision. I never considered the possibility that I would enjoy business or finance. So my entire schooling years was dedicated to math, physics and other engineering courses. I never took a course in accounting, business or economics. Investing and starting Old School Value really opened my eyes to a new world.

SN: What got you interested in investing, and how you’ve evolved over time as an investor?

JJ: My dad is a trader and I witnessed the emotional highs and lows he experienced from making and losing a huge amount of money. At an early age, I concluded that investing in the stock market was equivalent to gambling.

After having lost everything that I put into the life insurance investment account, the initial anger was a huge motivator for me to put aside my biases about the stock market and to really learn how it worked.

My wife (girlfriend at the time) had a book called “The Intelligent Investor” which was recommended to her because she too wanted to become a life insurance saleswoman.
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