Mumbai's Mr Fixit delivers passage to India

Sanjoy Bhattacharyya fell in love with the art of investment after blindly following stockpicking advice from a friend working at an Indian company selling paint.

The Mumbai-based equity specialist, a Mr Fixit for fund companies keen to build a presence in India, reveals his rude introduction to stockpicking over orange juice in a leafy courtyard at the Lansdowne Club in Mayfair.

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"I bought 200 shares in Asian Paints in 1983, not knowing anything about investing," he admits. "As I watched that investment grow over the next five years, I realised that there was something absolutely fascinating about the evolution of that company, and I wanted to do that again and again," he says.

Mr Bhattacharyya had just begun his career in sales and marketing for ITC, the Indian conglomerate with products ranging from cigarettes to hotels. His career is a twisting saga that took him from credit rating analysis to brokerage and eventually asset management, but Mr Bhattacharyya sees those early days selling consumer goods as some of his most valuable.

"I think that was very good preparation for understanding consumer behaviour and what companies can do to be in sync with the products they sell," he says. "I didn't realise it at the time, but when I think back to those days, I recognise what good training that was."

A recurrent theme throughout Mr Bhattacharyya's career is his involvement with international companies interested in establishing a foothold in India. Perhaps this reflects a family tendency to break new ground: Mr Bhattacharyya's father became the first Asian - not Indian - professor at Harvard Business School in 1969.

After leaving an offshoot of Standard & Poor's in 1994 to set up an office for SG Warburg (later UBS Warburg) in India, he helped Standard Life establish a joint asset management venture with HDFC, the Indian financial services group, in 2000 as its chief investment officer.

He is blunt about his lack of experience at the time. "I'd never invested a rupee in a professional context in my life, and I started as CIO," he says. Nonetheless, the company grew rapidly. From USD 150m of assets under management at launch, it has become India's largest fund management business today, with more than $17bn.

In 2004 the stock picker once again found himself the first India-based employee for a foreign company, this time New Vernon Advisory, a US-based hedge fund investing in publicly listed Indian, Thai and Indonesian equities. By 2008 the fund had swollen from USD 240m of assets to $3bn, having attracted investors including the Harvard University endowment fund.

"This idea of getting into the front door and being there early seems to work for me," he says.

Having developed his investment skills at New Vernon, the Ahmadabad native decided to set up his own hedge fund with a friend in 2008, at what he later accepted was "the worst possible time in history" to attempt to raise assets. Although the fund delivered positive performance in rocky conditions, it closed after 18 months.

However, Mr Bhattacharyya remains philosophical about what he learnt. "More than anything else, I found there is no holy grail in investing," he says. "What works for me needn't work for the next guy, and in that sense it's a bit like religion. Different things work well in Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, and investing is just like that."

Mr Bhattacharyya now believes star asset managers, whether quant gods, passive pin-ups or stockpicking gurus, are united by their adherence to a disciplined investment philosophy. "The truly fine investors continue and persist with what is a high-quality process, even when the outcomes aren't favourable. That's the acid test," he says.

Mr Bhattacharyya is convinced the current investment case for India is compelling. "There is no doubt in my mind about the opportunity in India for a long-term investor focused on buying growth at a very attractive multiple," he says.

He is keen to point out India's strong record in producing top-flight executives. Several of the world's largest international companies are headed by chief executives of India-origin, including drinks company Diageo's recently appointed Ivan Menezes, Pepsi's Indra Nooyi, Deutsche Bank's Anshu Jain and MasterCard's Ajay Banga.

He believes their success in the international corporate arena is indicative of a tendency in India to "combine entrepreneurial instinct with discipline to create enduring franchises". This has enabled companies such as Infosys and TCS, the information technology businesses, or Sun Pharma, the pharmaceutical company, to flourish.

In his latest venture as principal adviser to Ocean Dial Asset Management, a UK and Mumbai-based fund company, Mr Bhattacharyya wants to market that growth story to international investors via the recently launched Gateway to India Ucits fund.

He joined Ocean Dial in April, ahead of a part management buyout of the business led by senior staff and Raju Shukla, former head of Barclays Capital India, from its parent company, Caledonia Investments, the UK investment trust.

Mr Bhattacharyya is not oblivious to the sorry list of difficulties hampering foreign investment in India: corruption, uncertain government policies, a weakening currency and a large current-account deficit.

Foreign investors are particularly afraid of what a move away from quantitative easing in the US will mean for emerging economies. "People are right to be concerned about how this plays out," he says.

Yet Mr Bhattacharyya believes India is better placed to cope with these challenges than its emerging-market peers, given the breadth of its economy.

He is also confident in the political will in India to enact structural reforms that will liberalise foreign investment and improve the country's infrastructure, regardless of which party takes power after India's general election next year.

As a result he is wary of sectors such as IT, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods, which he believes are heading towards a "bizarre bubble" created by investors' "maniacal desire" to find safety.

Mr Bhattacharyya sees opportunities in infrastructure-related companies and India's financial services industry, particularly banking, which has been "battered disproportionately" by the reserve bank's decision to raise interest rates last month.

"If you are able to ride it out and buy companies that have a strong business, minimal leverage, good cash flows and honest management available now at really attractive prices, there is an opportunity to make significant long-term returns," he says.

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Curriculum vitae

Sanjoy Bhattacharyya

Born 1960

Education

1980 University of Madras, BSc Statistics

1982 Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, MBA

Career

1995 Head of research, UBS Warburg Securities, India

2000 Chief investment officer, HDFC Asset Management

2004 Partner, New Vernon Advisory Services

2008 Managing partner, Fortuna Capital

2013: Principal adviser, Ocean Dial Asset Management

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Ocean Dial Asset Management

Established 2005

Assets under management $77.5m, as of 31 July

Number of employees 10

Offices London, Singapore, Mumbai

Ownership Management owned