India's best fund managers

Some 25 million Indians trust their savings, or a part of it, with mutual funds that manage assets worth more than the GDP of an Algeria or a New Zealand. It is likely that as a Business Today reader, you are one among this 2.5 per cent sliver of India's population. If so, the following question will resonate with you: who are the people managing your money at these funds for you - often growing it by one-fifth or more a year?

This question - carefully tracked by financial advisers who tell you which fund to put your money in - is best answered by carefully measuring the performance of India's top funds and for quant help we turned to Value Research, a New Delhi-based mutual funds tracker. The firm, founded and run by Dhirendra Kumar, has the most extensive database on mutual funds in India and is respected for its independence.

Kumar and BT editors spotted early on that it would be perfect timing for such an exercise given that Indian markets had gone through a boom-andbust cycle in the past three years. How did India's mutual fund aces manage their funds from June 2007 until now? A period in which markets rose to nearly 21,000 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange, crashed to 8,300-odd and are back at 18,000 levels?

Value Research drew up the top three performers by annualised returns over the past three years in 11 categories, ranging from equity funds of different sizes to ultra shortterm debt funds, from tax saving schemes to income plans. Returns alone are not an efficient metric to judge a fund manager. It has to be seen in the context of the bets he makes, the risks taken in trades. The performance was weighted by a risk score benchmarked against a risk-free instrument like the State Bank of India's 45 to 90 days deposit rate.

The result drumroll, please, is the next 11 pages of profiles of 13 investing whizzes from India's mutual funds industry. As much as there are common traits among most of them - a healthy respect for the market, alpha male behaviour, quality time with family and, even, cinema as a hobby - there are different investment strategies and, even, quirks of individual behaviour that stand out. For actionable takeaways from their lives, read on.