Gaurav has around 20 years of experience at established buy-side firms. Each experience was critical in his lifelong learning of how to successfully manage capital from a long-term perspective. Ironically, a lot was ingrained in him by experiencing first-hand “what not to do” if one wants to maximize chances of long-term success. The goal was and will always remain to sustainably compound capital higher than benchmark returns over his lifetime and to provide “real” Indian/EM market exposure to our valued clients globally.
Traits of an ideal investor to optimize his/her long-term (minimum 5+ years) investment return in Metis India Opportunity Fund (MIOF):1. Have a true long-term outlook and clear vision (MCM goal is to deliver 17% annualized USD return till 2030 when Indian economy will near $10t at an annualized return of 12%). Practically this means the desire and ability to hold on through largely unavoidable, temporary rough patches driven chiefly by sentiment.
2. Long-term conviction on India. To gain this conviction in sufficient dose would probably require hours of discussion with your manager (which he welcomes) and hefty comparative country analysis but as a heuristic, especially at frequent times of panic about Indian story, internally as self-motivation your manager asks: Why not India? Why won’t a diverse, fastest growing/youngest population with affinity for technology, aspirational, and democratic country with a low base across industries grow to a middle-income or even developed country in our lifetime? Without having sustained long-term belief (as opposed to near term worries/gripes about multitude of issues, economic or usually non-economic in our experience) the ability to execute #1 optimally is lowered.
3. Being situational focused and not painting with a broad brush. One can have long-term belief in India yet not find enough value in the overall market. Thus, finding value in partnering with a manager who is 100% focused on analyzing individual businesses and their competitive dynamics, leadership, and valuation. Understanding at a gut level that Indian markets, like most others, given its size and low base, there are no paucity of great businesses, run by shareholder friendly management-owners, and selling at least at reasonable value (we buy much cheaper).
4. Appreciate the process more than outcome for simple reason that we have numerous innings left and thus what is most important is the likelihood of future outperformance. We keep improving on our art of understanding and valuing businesses from a ground up approach to ensure 2030 goal is achieved.
5. Desire to give back in their own way and not fundamentally driven by accumulation of money for its own sake. This is more personal but we feel it’s important to mention in order to keep the right perspective as time & markets march on.
Gaurav Aggarwal, CFA, CPA, CIPM
Gaurav is the founder and portfolio manager of Metis India Opportunity Fund (MIOF). Prior to starting Metis in 2011, he was a senior analyst with portfolio management duties over $50 million in fund of fund assets at a leading regional investment bank (Global Investment House) in the Middle East. Prior to this, he was with Bay Harbour Management, a $1.2 billion distressed debt and equity hedge fund in New York City. He has also served as an analyst with Polen Capital Management, a $8 billion+ long-only firm with a very successful long-term track record. He received an M.S. in Accounting (specializing in Finance) and B.S. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has also passed all levels of the CPA exam. In 2017, he publicly committed to create an India charity corpus by initially allocating 10% of his annual share of earnings (net management and incentive fees) from fund management. This has been since raised to 25% from 2018.
+91-9910068991, +1-919-987-5794, +1-919-665-0200
Sudhish Aggarwal
Sudhish is the marketing and risk advisor at Metis Capital Management. He has over 40 years of experience in the financial services industry and is an expert at client communications from acquisition to servicing. He took retirement from Morgan Stanley at end of February 2016 to pursue other interests. His lifetime of experiences and wisdom help guide Metis Capital Management and keep overall portfolio risk within manageable limits. He is actively involved in philanthropic activities and enjoys spending time with his 4 grandchildren and friends.
+1-919-889-2195
Sona Gupta, BCA, MCA
Sona is the Marketing and Business Development Manager at Metis Capital Management. She has over 12 years of experience in IT industry working with various multi-national companies and has extensive experiences in maintaining meaningful relationships with existing and new clients. She has a comprehensive approach in developing understanding of the client requirements and working internally with colleagues to ensure everyone in the team is productively aligned.
She has been actively involved in philanthropic activities and has been awarded for the same.
+91-9560503493, +1-984-318-6653