Prashant Jain is the biggest and the best fund manager in the country. For the ninth year running, the fund he manages is top of the charts
Prashant Jain reminds you of the Energizer bunny. Sure, he looks nothing like the lovable character straight out of the long-running television commercial. But his nine-year winning streak at HDFC Mutual Fund is the talk of the mutual fund industry. And why not? With a corpus of Rs. 86,600 crore, it is the 800-pound gorilla of the business. Which is why, every move its 42-year old executive director and chief investment manager makes is followed actively by investors, analysts, the media and even those in his peer group.
Two of his funds, HDFC Equity and HDFC Top 200 have delivered returns of 28 percent over the last decade and are, without doubt, the best-run funds in the India. He has followed his convictions even if it meant underperforming in the short-term — like he did in 2007. Be that as it may, he has consistently emerged tops. Little wonder then, he is often voted as the one of the best CIOs by research houses like Morning Star, Mercer and several media publications. And if all that isn’t enough, the gold standard in the business, Lipper — a mutual fund research and rating firm — reckons HDFC Equity, has for each of the last five years , been the star performer in the 10-year category.
Now, Jain is the kind of man who doesn’t dwell on these facts. But fact is the sizes of these funds are increasing geometrically to its returns. HDFC Equity fund has a total corpus of Rs. 6,734 crore; the Top 200 fund is now over Rs. 8,020 crore. The latter, just moved ahead of Reliance Growth Fund, until then the biggest scheme in the country with total assets under management at Rs. 7,681 crore.
The Moorings
Jain says he has no investing heroes. From time to time, he does get compared to Peter Lynch or Bill Miller though. He admits he has read up on Warren Buffet and John Bogle and that he has a lot to learn from them, but doesn’t follow anybody in particular. For all practical purposes, he prefers on-the-ground research: Meet companies and look for disparities. Once he spots them, move for the kill.
(This story appears in the 13 August, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)