Vantage: First Water, exploring Indian equities with a value manager

This week Vantage explores the Indian equities market, talking to Arun Chulani, COO of First Water, a fund whose returns in 2021 caught our attention. Arun provides an overview of the Indian equities market, dominated by corporate maharajas such as Tata Consultancy Services (BSE:532540) and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (NSE: RELIANCE). He suggests now is the time to look at India as it becomes more competitive against China and highlights the number of great value opportunities in the Indian market. Arun walks us through his journey to becoming an fund manager, the approach First Water takes to identify value plays, including how they triangulate on key data points, and illustrates the approach by talking about flexible packaging companies UFLEX (BSE:500148) and Polyplex (BSE: 524051). His advice to those who want to learn how to invest, unsurprisingly for a value driven manager, is to read Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor and to make sure India is part of their portfolio.