'No opportunities to invest': Here's why fund manager Siddhartha Bhaiya was sitting on 80% cash in late 2024

Siddhartha Bhaiya

• Siddhartha Bhaiya, MD of Aequitas, passed away at 47 due to cardiac arrest
• He warned of expensive valuations and predicted market corrections in 2024-25
• Bhaiya led Aequitas to Rs 7,700 crore AUM, focusing on small and midcap stocks

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Siddhartha Bhaiya, popular market expert and managing director of Aequitas, has on December 31 passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest at the age of 47. He was known for his successful investments in broader markets, and often bearish bets that played off well.

During an interview with NDTV Profit in November 2024, Bhaiya had said that Aequitas is sitting on a cash holding of more than 80 percent. This was a time when markets had began consolidating after hitting fresh all-time highs in September 2024.

After hitting the then all-time high of 26,277 on September 27, 2024, Nifty fell around 17 percent to drop below the 22,000-mark in March-April, 2025. This came despite global markets recording gains during the same period. The benchmark index slowly recovered later, hitting a fresh all-time high of 26,340 today (January 2).

"We just don’t find any opportunities to invest. The valuations are expensive, now the growth has come off. So there is absolutely no reason for us to own stocks," he said during the November 2024 interview, hinting at more downside risks.

What he hinted at did indeed come true as a strong correction followed in Indian markets, before Sensex and Nifty were able to cross the previous highs in November 2025.

Bhaiya had explained that investors should sell equities at higher levels and buy at lower levels. "When the market is down, you put in a lot of money, and as the market goes up, you reduce the exposure. That is the first check I want to give," he added.

'Small, mid-cap investor through and through':

Bhaiya said he is a "small and midcap investor through and through". But investors should have bought these stock back in 2020 when markets were down, but they instead started buying them when markets were at all-time highs.

He added that Aequitas had raised a lot of money as far as the East Asia fund is concerned, and it has been researching global markets and the valuations seem to be at a fraction of that of India.

'Multi-baggers are made when there is blood on the Street'

When asked what will be a key trigger for him to begin investing money again, he said, “I want to see blood on the Street. You make multi baggers when you buy or hold multi-baggers during a period like March 2020. We are called 'Doomsday Prophets'. We made a lot of money in small and midcaps from March 2020 onwards, and a lot of money in the last 11 years. We will evaluate growth, turnaround in the economy to change our stance,” he said, adding that valuations then were not sustainable and growth was a challenge.

"I am very bullish on India,” Bhaiya said for the long term, while adding that he sees corrections to persist in the short-term. “When there is blood on the street we will be the ones buying stocks," he added.

Bhaiya's sharp warning on Indian equities: 

In December 2025, Bhaiya attended Moneycontrol Deserv Wealth Summit in Mumbai. He had sounded a sharp warning on Indian equities, calling the current market a “bubble of epic proportions” rather than a healthy bull phase.

He said that headline valuation comfort around the Nifty trading near 20 times earnings is misleading and hides far richer valuations beneath the surface. He argued that a large part of the Nifty’s low multiple is driven by heavyweight public sector stocks such as SBI, ONGC, NTPC, Coal India and Power Grid, names that most retail portfolios barely own. "Exclude these, and the effective PE multiple of what people actually hold is well above 40," he said. In midcaps and smallcaps, he noted that multiples have climbed beyond 50.

"What I am seeing is not a healthy bull market, it is not a healthy capital market. We have been peddling this story of India growth story for the last 18 months, everybody cribs about last one year returns because maximum money came in the last 18 months," he said.

Before joining Aequitas in 2012, he worked as one of the youngest fund managers at the PMS division of Nippon India Mutual Find till 2011.

A Chartered Accountant with over 25 years of experience in equity research and fund management, Bhaiya had founded Aequitas in 2013 and grew it into a boutique asset management firm catering to ultra-high-net-worth individuals (ultra-HNIs). Under his leadership, the firm adopted a multibagger approach, focusing on bottom-up stock selection, small-cap undiscovered companies, and investments across market capitalizations to generate outsized returns. As of Jan, 2026, Aequitas Investment Consultancy has assets under management (AUM) worth approximately Rs 7,700 crore.