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New Tech IPOs To Bitcoin Are On Ajay Srivastava’s 2021 Investing List

Tech is the theme for 2021 for Ajay Srivastava.

A man prays to a deity on display, not pictured, at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in Mumbai, India.
(Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)
A man prays to a deity on display, not pictured, at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in Mumbai, India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

Indian investors need to embrace frontline technology firms and add bitcoin to their portfolios as they may miss out on an opportunity to create wealth by just sticking to the old economy bets, according to market veteran Ajay Srivastava.

"We need to get rid of the old economy and embrace the new," Srivastava, founder of Dimension Consulting, said in an interview with BloombergQuint's Niraj Shah. The Indian market will go through a "paradigm shift", he said, and a lot of "firepower will be coming to market" through initial public offerings of front-end technology firms in 2021, "making it to be the most opportune investing period."

Srivastava sees 20-30 such tech IPOs driving the momentum in what he called "the greatest IPO year in the history of India". The wealth generated by investors in 2020 in Indian markets and those sitting on the sidelines so far will also help the record rally continue in the new year, he said.

More so because mutual funds that don't have such new-tech stocks such as InfoEdge India Ltd., which has invested in Zomato and naukri.com, in their portfolios play a catch-up. Srivastava, however, cautioned that exuberance would lead to excesses, and then correction and rerating. But he has no doubt that front-end technology bests will "bring value to the table".

And Srivastava considers Bitcoin a must-have in portfolios. According to him, the digital token is getting legitimacy as institutional investors invest in cryptocurrencies. The supply is not unlimited and even a small spike in demand drives a rally in Bitcoin, he said.

Among a host of cryptocurrencies, he advised sticking with Bitcoin because of its wide supervision. "There will be a need to buy it as a portfolio. Start investing before FOMO panic sets in."

Watch the full conversation here: