From Volatility To Vision: Inside The Moneycontrol Presents Dezerv Wealth Summit 2025

From Volatility To Vision: Inside The Moneycontrol Presents Dezerv Wealth Summit 2025

The summit featured prominent voices from the space of finance and investment, including Sandeep Jethwani, Co-founder, Dezerv; Vaibhav Porwal, Co-founder, Dezerv; Aparna Karnik, QIA Head, DSP Mutual Fund; Siddhartha Bhaiya, MD & CIO, Asquitas; Chirag Setalvad, Head of Equities, HDFC Mutual Fund; and Kalpen Parekh, MD & CEO, DSP Mutual Fund. Together, they united to cut through market noise and explore how to build portfolios that can endure volatility, deliver real returns, and align with the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047.

In the first session, Sandeep Jethwani, Co-founder, Dezerv, set the tone by talking about how volatility is the cost of compounding and emphasising the value of long-term investing to offset market volatility. He also cautioned against investing based on emotional extremes, as it often leads to poor judgment, such as overinvesting in euphoria or exiting in despair. His advice: stay invested, diversify across equities, fixed income, with a balanced allocation to gold, while relying on wealth managers through low-return phases.

On diversification, Aparna Karnik, QIA Head, DSP Mutual Fund, anchored to long-term averages, highlighting that Indian equities have been strong performers over five- and ten-year horizons. Siddhartha Bhaiya, MD & CIO, Asquitas, urged investors not to mistake momentum for sustainable expansion, pointing out signs of overvaluation and labelling areas of the market as a possible bubble. Saurabh Mukherjea, Founder & CIO, Marcellus Investment Managers, advocated for global diversification, citing low India-US correlations and bond spreads as a sign of caution.

The conversation then shifted to alpha generation, with Chirag Setalvad, Head of Equities, HDFC Mutual Fund, Ashish Gupta, CIO, Axis Mutual Fund, and Niket Shah, CIO, Motilal Oswal Asset Management, discussing the increasing scarcity of alpha. They also stressed selectivity over narratives and highlighted long-short SIFs as a way to bridge arbitrage and hybrids for low-volatility, tax-efficient returns.

Offering a behavioural perspective, Vaibhav Porwal, Co-founder, Dezerv, encouraged investors to view portfolios as long-term systems rather than collections of individual securities. He outlined this through a core-satellite framework, where the core anchors long-term goals and the satellite enables tactical shifts. He emphasised valuation discipline and probabilistic thinking to manage risks that escalate faster than returns.

Reflecting on the evolution of mutual funds, Kalpen Parekh, MD & CEO, DSP Mutual Fund, Sid Swaminathan, MD & CEO, Jio BlackRock Mutual Fund, and Swarup Mohanty, Vice Chairman & CEO, Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India), observed that mutual funds have become

India’s preferred savings vehicle. They called for more balanced, personalised allocation strategies where prudence peaks during market highs, not lows. As Kalpen Parekh reflected, “Investing is about cycles, and wise investors use volatility as their edge.”

Looking ahead, Sandeep Tandon, Founder, Quant Group, Gaurav Mehta, Head- SIF (Equity), SBI Mutual Fund, and Bhavesh Jain, Co‑Head- Factor Investing, Edelweiss Asset Management, provided a glimpse into the future of long-short and specialised investment funds (SIFs), a new frontier for conservative investors seeking stability in uncertain markets.

Across sessions, the unifying thread was prioritising discipline for Viksit Bharat 2047. The path to enduring wealth, the leaders agreed, lies not in predicting the next surge but in preparing resilient portfolios. For more insights and full discussions, visit: https://www.moneycontrol.com/msite/dezerv-wealth-summit