Anand has transitioned from a highly successful stint leading an equity franchise to a new business leadership role as CEO of Sundaram Mutual.
He intends strengthening the firm’s equity franchise to deliver consistently good performance. Step 1 in this direction will be to demonstrate this in the fund house’s traditionally strong segments – mid and small caps, then take this forward into broader products that can effectively leverage this competence and meanwhile strengthen competence across other disciplines like large caps.
Other priorities include strengthening investment communication and enhancing the fund house’s tech platform for distributors and investors.
He is keen that the fund house rediscover its willingness to take calibrated risks based on sound groundwork. A step in this direction isa new fund launch – Sundaram Business Cycles Fund.
This new fund will not adopt a sector rotation strategy that some other funds in this category are doing. It will rather focus on identifying 4-5 mega trends at any point in time and participate meaningfully in these trends without any sectoral considerations. This will be a true go-anywhere fund from a benchmark perspective, but with a sharp sense of focusing on key trends.
Expect this fund’s portfolio to look very different from most others. Anand promises a high active share and a focus on playing themes with smarter stock picks rather than sticking with the usual suspects. The fund will not hesitate to take high conviction bets in promising mid and small caps, if they represent smarter ways to harness key themes.
Anand has 2 key messages for MFDs: (1) He is committed to delivering strong and consistent performance across the AMC’s product suite, and (2) this new fund will embody Anand’s style very effectively as it is a whole new portfolio that will be managed in alignment with his vision from day 1.