The SIP fan

Value Research reader Hemant Jai breaks quite a few stereotypes. He began his career as a software engineer in Infosys. Discussion on stock markets may have been an integral part of his dinner table conversations at home, but episodes like Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh scams kept him away from the markets. Hemant is self-admittedly extremely conservative in his outlook. But life has a way of taking people to places where they are meant to be. As an investment banker living in Singapore, 40-year-old Hemant is a self-confessed fan of systematic investment plans (SIPs). He started investing in them in 2011. The credit for pushing him towards mutual funds solely goes to his wife (Reena) and that breaks a stereotype since it's the other way round most of the time. Read on to know more about his enthralling story. Tech that Hemant was born and brought up in a middle-class Gujarati family in Mumbai. Both his parents are retired employees of public sector banks. After completing his school from Mumbai, Hemant moved to Pune, where he graduated as an engineer in computer science in 1998. He worked as a software engineer in Mangalore and Pune but he did not enjoy his stint there. So, he decided to study further by pursuing an MBA from IIM Calcutta. Giving advice Post MBA, in 2002, Hemant joined Tata Strategic Management Group as a management consultant. By this time, he had already witnessed the first boom-bust cycle of his adult life - the dot-com bubble. Here, he learnt a lot about various industries such as media, telecom, dairy, chemicals, technology, manufacturing, etc. 'At a very young age, I got exposure of working with the top management. On the negative side, I found the business of giving advice phony at some level,' quips Hemant. He wanted to get into an area where his work would have a more meaningful and tangible impact on people. This is when he decided to join investment banking. 'I joined the corporate-finance team at DSPML in Mumbai in early 2004. I finally found

This article was originally published on November 29, 2021.