Value investing requires a great deal of research, discipline, and patience. Mr. Murugan M and his MBA classmate Mr. Arish Qureshi knew the challenges ahead when they conceptualized the idea of Vinidhan. Mr. Paras Mehrotra, the fund manager, remembers all the initial analysis of Security Analysis classes, plotting and planning for all the possible market outcomes. Prof. Amiya Sahu, the faculty advisor of Vinidhan, says “the team research companies and decide which stocks to buy and sell, using a chunk of cash that usually comes from GIM students and alumni. The idea is to let students experience first-hand what it’s like to play the market and learn from their mistakes”.
The latest quarterly report by the Vinidhan team claims that the fund has outperformed the benchmarks, namely the Nifty 50 index and Sensex 30. As per its latest quarterly report released dated 30/09/2016, the fund performed +12.49% while the Nifty and the Sensex benchmark performed +1.08% and +0.63%. “The beauty about this activity is that students really feel the pleasure and pain of running money,” said Prof. Manas Mayur, faculty in the Finance area of Goa Institute of Management.
The Student-run Investment Fund “Vinidhan” was established to provide students with an educational experience in an institutional setting. The Fund provides students hands-on-training in equity valuation and portfolio management with guidance from industry experts and supervision by finance faculty. “One of the key learning from VINIDHAN is patience” says Paras. “Value investing is really not meant for people who don’t have patience” says Prof. Manas Mayur.
Mr. Paras and his team believes in investing in a diverse portfolio for which the investment decisions are made through thorough research in the form of fundamental analysis and relative valuations among others. The discussions and the process of decision-making makes for a stimulating experience for the members. “Our institute is equipped with all the latest databases and software. Our research has been considerably improved with the introduction of the finance lab with Thomson Reuters terminals” says Mr. Gaurav Nolakha and Sunil Khale, the fundamental and technical head of the fund.
The fund currently is a value-based investment fund primarily in large and mid-cap stocks. In future the fund will be looking to grow into more asset classes, in particular debt and derivatives so as to support the theoretical learning that happen in the classrooms. Going forward the members of the fund are committed to making the vision of ‘making Vinidhan a successful and well-managed fund’ a reality through hard work, peer learning and ethical trading practices.
The Team:
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Amiya Sahu Fund Manager: Paras Mehrotra
Fundamental Team: Anuj Agarwal, Onkar Parab, Bejoy Seth , Bhavna Singh, Garima Singh, Sana Jamal, Anurag Daga, Shreya Biyani, Varun Khanuja.
Technical Team: Gopal Agarwal, Rushil Saraf, Joshua De Souza, Narendra Mhalsekar, Varsha Sodhani.