Interview: Yogesh Patil CIO (Equity) LIC Mutual Fund Asset Management Limited

Consumption and investment are the two drivers of the India growth story

With the recent market surge, how is your investment strategy adapting to this optimism? Can you share some specific examples of how you have adjusted the portfolio composition in response to this rise?

De-globalisation, reduction in fiscal deficit, Indian demography, digitalisation, defence and manufacturing are the five themes that make for the India growth story. There is also a need to create capacities to cater to the rising demand. The demand for better infrastructure for the movement of goods and incremental power to run the plants can also create more investment opportunities. In the last one year, our focus has been to identify companies that may benefit from these themes.

Taking into account the investment mandates of the schemes, fund managers have realigned the portfolios. We have increased our allocation to stocks in sectors such as defence, power and logistics. Since the identified themes offer a diverse universe of stocks, our investment strategy may help us generate healthy risk-adjusted returns on our equity portfolios over the medium term. Our schemes’ portfolios have allocations to stocks of companies that are expected to benefit from such themes. These businesses may show sustainable growth in the medium term.

What are the core investment principles that guide your decision-making process? How do you identify and evaluate undervalued opportunities in the current market landscape?