Wealthy Investors Queue Up For This India Portfolio Manager Amid Volatility

Assets of India’s largest portfolio manager jumped the most among peers so far this year even as the equity market remained volatile because of an economic slowdown and geopolitical tensions.

ASK Investment Managers Pvt. Ltd. added Rs 5,309 crore to its assets in the first eight months of 2019, taking the total to Rs 17,920 crore as of August, according to data compiled by BloombergQuint from disclosures made to the market regulator. It gained 3 percent last month and 1 percent so far this year.

“We are seeing more than Rs 500 crore of gross inflows and over Rs 300 crore on a net basis,” Prateek Agarwal, business head and chief investment officer at ASK Investment Managers, told BloombergQuint. “In the first quarter of this calendar year, we on-boarded a big sovereign investor who invested Rs 3,000 crore in the market through our portfolio management services.”

Of the gross money that is flowing in, the portfolio manager said 26 percent is from existing high net worth investors and 74 percent are new investors. “Our average ticket size, excluding sovereign investors, comes to Rs 70 lakh.”

Portfolio management firms manage money of high net worth individuals with a minimum ticket size of Rs 25 lakh.

ASK Investment Managers defied uncertainty as the markets remained volatile since September last year after shock defaults by IL&FS Group. The U.S.-China trade war, general elections in India and the consumption slowdown hurt stocks. Lack of stimulus in the budget and a tax on foreign investors spooked markets further, and rollback of the levy didn’t help. Benchmark indices and the boarder market lost money in the last 12 months as well so far this year.

The 50 largest portfolio management firms—that collectively manage Rs 1.10 lakh crore of investor money—lost 0.4 percent on an average in August, the data showed. That came after the worst losses since the IL&FS crisis in July.

The benchmark BSE S&P Sensex and the NSE Nifty 50 Index fell 0.4 percent and 0.85 percent, respectively, in August. The broader market represented by the Nifty Midcap 100 Index and Nifty 500 Index declined 1.69 percent and 0.75 percent, respectively.

In the last 20 months, the top 50 portfolio managers have underperformed the Sensex 11 times.

Twenty of the top 50 portfolio managers tracked by BloombergQuint managed to beat the benchmark Sensex in August. Ambit Capital was the best performer, returning 6.38 percent gains.

Here’s how India’s top 50 portfolio managers fared in August.