CIO-Equity of India's fourth largest fund house explains the turnaround in his large-cap fund

Sailesh Raj Bhan is the chief investment officer (CIO) of equity investments at Nippon India Mutual Fund, India's fourth largest fund house with assets of around Rs 3.77 lakh crore. He oversees assets worth Rs 54,000 crore across three prominent schemes - large-cap fund, multi-cap fund, and pharma fund. In this latest interview, Bhan reflects on his journey, investment philosophy, and lessons learned. Here is the edited transcript of the conversation. Your journey in the financial markets is quite impressive. How did you first get involved in this field? I have been in the equity markets for close to 29 years. I graduated in genetics and later did my master's in business administration (MBA). The early 90s were the start of the equity research culture, and I got an opportunity to work with an equity research organisation in Hyderabad. Later, I moved to Mumbai and continued to research, covering sectors like pharmaceuticals, IT services, and Consumers. Around 21 years ago, I joined the Nippon India Mutual Fund, and since then, I have been managing money with the launch of the Nippon Pharma Fund, which completes 20 years in May 2024. To give a little background, I liked research as the industry was very young. In research, one gets to learn a lot of things fairly quickly and get exposure to many sectors. That's the advantage of being in this role, and I never felt bored with what I was doing. Every day had to be different; we had to be on top of what's happening around us. Before joining Nippon India Mutual Fund, you worked as an analyst with brokerage houses. Could you reflect on some key lessons you learned during that time? In the initial phase of learning research, it was not a very established field. So, one had to create a difference from others by reading balance sheets, meeting companies, understanding the competition better, and looking at the scale of the opportunity. I feel there is a lot of noise in the markets due to the various narratives. But the focus should always remain on the long-term picture. Even though I used to cover the pharma and IT sectors as an analyst, those experiences also helped me analyse other sectors. For example, in 2001 and 2002, engineering and manufacturing companies were trading at distressed valuations, and there were several large companies in those sectors. However, all these sectors were ignored due