InvestorInsights: Jayendra Kulkarni

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.

Want to Read More? This content is exclusive for members of Value Investing Almanack. Login to read if you are a member. Else, click here to subscribe.