Learning from the Gurus of Chaos

As the post-launch marketing blitz around my book "Gurus of Chaos: Modern India's Money Masters" settles down with the first print run of the book being sold out, I sat down on a Sunday morning to reflect on what exactly have I learnt from the "gurus" featured in the book. The gurus featured in the book - great fund managers whose wisdom I have benefited from immensely - are Sanjoy Bhattacharya, the founding CIO of HDFC Asset Management; Alroy Lobo of Kotak Asset Management; Akash Prakash of Amansa; Sankaran Naren of ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund; Sashi Reddy of First State; BN Manjunath, the former advisor to Ward Ferry; and the unnamed former CIO of an iconic investment management house. What leapt out as I revisited the interviews and narrative featured in the book is the ability of the gurus to think differently and to take an independent view of companies regardless of what the rest of the market is saying about that company. At its core, this is the essence of successful investment management. The problem, as we all know, is that it is so hard to do - when the whole market is selling a stock, our natural instinct

This article was originally published on December 31, 2014.