'Besides banking, we have a positive outlook on pharma and healthcare'

With over a decade of experience under his belt, Ankit Jain is a skilled hand at investment analysis and fund management. Though he started off his career in tech, Jain switched to the financial services sector shortly thereafter. After a brief stint at Equirus Securities as a research analyst, Jain has been associated with Mirae Asset Investment Managers since 2015. Presently, Jain oversees four schemes at the fund house - Mirae Asset Great Consumer, Mirae Asset Large & Midcap, Mirae Asset Midcap and Mirae Asset Multicap - which have a collective AUM (assets under management) of Rs 64,500 crore. In this exclusive conversation, Jain delves into the factors affecting the mid-cap fund's returns and the steps he's taking to improve its performance, the sectors that could outperform the broader markets in the long run and his views on new-age companies. Below is an edited transcript of the interview. What's driving the current market rally? Is it more about investor sentiment, or are we seeing strong fundamentals at play? Earnings growth has panned out really well, not only in the last one year but over the last four to five-year period. There's a stark change in the earnings growth trajectory. To give some data points, if we look before the Covid-19 period of around 10 years (2009-2019), the earnings growth in the large-cap segment of the markets was around 6 per cent CAGR (compound annual growth rate), while for the mid-cap segment, it was approximately 8-9 per cent CAGR. However, in the last five years, the trajectory has improved to approximately 20 per cent CAGR across both buckets, largely due to the robust performance of the economy. There has been significant improvement in fundamentals across different sectors, led by government policy changes, regulations, tighter compliance, and more digitalisation. That said, the large-cap segment might have performed in line with the earnings growth, so to that extent, valuation rerating has not been that sharp compared to the mid and the small caps. The mid and large caps have generated a significant portion of their returns