About Ashva Capital
Ankur Shah, Chief Investment Officer
BA Economics Pomona College, MBA Harvard Business School
I launched Ashva Capital in 2017 to fulfill a long-term goal of becoming an independent fund manager. After spending a number of years as a full-time investor in the Indian equity market and making mistakes with my own capital, I felt that I had honed my investment process and methodology to such a degree that it warranted launching a fund vehicle for outside investors.
My sole goal is to compound your capital at a rate of return that is significantly better than the broader Indian market. The strategy that I use to achieve this goal is to make focused investments in high-quality businesses, with durable competitive advantages that are conservatively capitalized and trading at reasonable valuation levels. I’m looking for businesses that are compounding machines.
I also believe in transparency in terms of my investment strategy. Although I employ quantitative tools for my initial screening process, all investment decisions are based on fundamental analysis and developing a comprehensive understanding of the unique competitive advantages of each company in the portfolio. I believe that by clearly explaining my strategy to my investors, it holds me accountable to them and provides them with the confidence to remain invested even through bouts of underperformance, however, infrequent they may be.
In addition, my investment strategy focuses solely on publicly traded securities. As an investor you’ll have the comfort of knowing that the fund is open-ended, after an initial lock-up period. We don’t invest in esoteric investments or private companies. Even in the case of a severe market dislocation you will still be able to exit the fund, if you choose to do so.
After years of experience, I’ve formed the opinion that investment decisions are best made by an individual and not by a committee. I spend the majority of my time on research and analysis as opposed to marketing. My goals is not to accumulate assets, rather I’m solely focused on building a wonderful track record over the course of decades and in the process truly making a difference in the lives of individual investors and the missions of family offices and endowments.
Becoming a Stock Investor
My Dad, who was an MD, introduced me to stocks at an early age. I think at times he was more interested in his portfolio than his practice. His enthusiasm for the market eventually rubbed off on me. I also grew up during the 80s, the golden era of Wall Street. Long before everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur and launch the next big start-up, my generation wanted to be “Masters of the Universe”.
I began my career in finance in earnest after graduating from Harvard Business School and joined a bulge bracket investment bank covering the technology sector. Although I enjoyed the work, I quickly got tired of the fire drills, bake-offs and face time.
I wanted to be an investor. I wanted more upside and thought I had the skill and talent to be successful.
Ever since my first stock purchase back in high school, I’ve been hooked on investing. In case you’re curious the first stock I ever bought was Tsingtao Brewery. Why did I buy it and did I make money? You’ll get the answers to both questions in a follow-up email. It’s a long story but it’s definitely entertaining and contains a powerful lesson on the power of compounding.
I was born in New York but grew up in Los Angeles. I graduated with a degree in Economics from Pomona College (1999) and completed my MBA at Harvard Business School (2004). I currently split my time between Los Angeles and Dubai.
From Investment Banking to the Buy-side and Beyond
In 2005, I joined a start-up asset management firm with a global equity mandate in San Francisco, California. By the end of my tenure, we were managing USD 800 million and I was a Senior Analyst actively managing a global equity sub-portfolio of Asian equities, including Indian stocks.
I left the firm in 2010 and joined an emerging markets investment bank in Dubai as a Director of Equity Research and was tasked with building out an equity research team to cover the financial sector in the MENA (Middle East / North Africa) region. I was managing a team of 6 analysts and had active coverage on a variety of financial institutions across the Middle East.
In 2012, I became a full-time private investor in the Indian equity market. I concurrently launched the Value Investing India Report, a blog site, where I discuss my thoughts on not only value investing but also broader macroeconomic and global trends. Writing helps me to clarify my ideas and investment analysis. There is no better way, in my opinion, to become a more rational and clearheaded thinker than through writing.
Being an Emerging Manager
After honing my investment process and accumulating enough capital, I decided to launch Ashva Capital. As a start-up manager, I’ve built my business to be sustainable on a very low AUM base. I’m not interested in the fancy accoutrements of the typical fund manager. I’m solely concerned with preserving and growing the capital of my investors. I will manage your capital as I would my own, with the expectation of outperforming the major Indian market benchmarks. I take the long-view when identifying new investments and I’m looking to partner with investors who have a similar approach and philosophy.
