Fund manager, overseeing Rs 78,700 crore, defends Kotak Flexicap Fund's performance

Harsha Upadhyaya, Chief Investment Officer - Equity at Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company, currently manages seven schemes with total assets of around Rs 78,704 crore. Among the various schemes he manages, Kotak Flexicap Fund has assets of over Rs 44,500 crore, the third highest in the flexi-cap category. In this latest interview, he discusses his journey, investment philosophy, and the recent changes at the fund house. Here is the edited transcript of the conversation. How did you get started at UTI? Well, my basic academic background is in engineering. Then, I did my MBA at IIM Lucknow. So, somewhere during that journey of completing engineering and starting out with a fresh MBA, I thought that I should make a career in capital markets. What helped me was also my summer internship, which was in equity research. That gave me insights into what happens in equity research and how that helps construct a portfolio by selecting stocks. It was my basic knowledge about investments at that point in time. Obviously, I was curious to know more and get into the investment field. And it so happened that I managed to get into UTI for equity research. At that point in time, there were very few companies offering equity research roles. And I managed to get through, and then the journey started. So, I spent about half of my career in equity research before starting as a fund manager. Even my second stint as a fund manager started at UTI MF. So that's how the whole journey has been. In a recent interview with Value Research, Samir Arora mentioned that in the mid-90s, getting a bhaav (trading summary) copy from the broker was research. Can you paint us a picture of those times? How did it work as an equity analyst at UTI in 1996? And how different is it today? You're trying to remind me of my age (laughs). It was a very nascent stage of the industry. I would say that we were probably one of the few teams formally doing research at that time. We were all allocated different sectors, and we covered different sectors depending on the complexity of the sector. And these were the days when we didn't have Google or any of the other digital platforms. All our research was done through reading, media interviews and annual reports. Basically, we read whatever was available about the industry and t