Upbeat on businesses in South India, women-centric brands: Marcellus' Rakshit Ranjan

Rakshit Ranjan believes women are 'big investment drivers'

About five to seven years ago, the average per capita income in South India was about 30 to 35 percent higher than the rest of India. Today, it is over 50 percent higher compared to rest of the country largely because of availability of better quality of skilled labour, said Rakshit Ranjan, co-founder of Marcellus Investment Managers, while talking about why he is upbeat on businesses in South India.

"Dominance of South India is one of the themes that we've been focusing on more recently ... it has a well-established transport infrastructure and companies are offering products and services that cater to the rising affluence of South India more than the rest of India, where capital allocation decisions are more towards expansion. So those are the priorities that we are actually focusing on in our portfolios,"  he said in an interview with CNBCTV18.

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Another theme Ranjan highlighted was about women being the 'big investment driver'. "If you look at the IT sector specifically, bank account balances of women are higher than the bank account balances of men and even in the non-IT sector, the rate of rise of women-oriented aspects of both savings as well as expenditure is phenomenal compared to the wider household," he said.

Ranjan also mentioned volume and quality of literacy being higher among women, which is now leading to an impact on the economy and will accelerate further in the upcoming decade. Talking about stocks, the investor said Nykaa is part of their coverage along with Trent - the Westside and Zudio retailer, which is a 'big player' on women apparel.