Sitting Pretty

If you thought fund managers were stodgy, obsessed with number crunching and poring through balance sheets, think again! Sunaina da Cunha, the 28-year-old fund manager with Birla Mutual Fund, packs in a lot more in her daily routine - listening to music, playing the piano, reading and watching movies.

Ditto for her co-fund manager Prasad Dhonde, 38, who enjoys his weekend excursions out of Mumbai. And before we forget, they are also ace fund managers. The duo has emerged joint winners in the Business Today study in the ultra short-term debt category. Dhonde recalls the teething troubles - the size of the fund was small and availability of floating rate instruments was limited with poor returns.

At the same time Birla Sun Life is a conservative fund house with emphasis on high quality. "Risk needed to be closely monitored while striving for higher returns," says Sunaina. The duo then invested in high quality corporate deposits and commercial paper to take advantage of the term spreads. The average maturity of the scheme was also brought down to reduce volatility. "The idea was to offer the benefit of the steep yield curve of money market instruments to investors," says Dhonde.

The strategy has paid rich dividends. The scheme has delivered returns of almost 7.22 per cent in the last one year, which is much superior to 3.28 per cent offered by the benchmark CRISIL Liquid Fund Index. The duo is confident they'll continue to set benchmarks for the industry. Can they walk the talk? We'll wait and see but they have the right credentials.

• WINNERS: Sunaina da Cunha and Prasad Dhonde
• FUND: Birla Sun Life Floating Rate Long Term
• FUND TYPE: Hybrid: Debt - Ultra Short Term
• 3-YEAR ANNUALISED RETURNS: 8.22%
• INVESTING PHILOSOPHY: Portfolios should withstand market upheavals
• GURU: No one special
• RUNNER-UP 1 : Amandeep Singh Chopra and Manish Joshi, UTI Floating Rate Short Term
• RUNNER-UP 2: Abhishek Bisen and Deepak Agrawal, Kotak Floater Long Term