Meet the ace fund manager and investor: Samir Arora

The founder of Helios Capital has made it big by capitalizing on enormous experience.

Samir Arora is widely recognized for being the founder and fund manager of Helios Capital. He is an ace investor and fund manager who is a trending personality in the Indian stock market. He completed his undergraduate degree in engineering from IIT Delhi after which he received his MBA with a gold medal from IIM Kolkata. He also holds a master’s degree in finance from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, during which he secured the Dean’s scholarship. He used to work as a research analyst at Alliance Capital in New York.

Samir Arora came to Mumbai in 1993 and headed Alliance Capital’s Indian mutual fund business as chief investment officer till 2003. He also used to manage ACM India Liberalization Fund, an India-dedicated offshore fund, since its inception in 1993. He emerged as a highly decorated fund manager during this journey as he received numerous awards for fund management.

Later in 2005, he founded Helios Capital along with two other members, which currently manages both India focused long/short and long-only funds/mandates and a globally focused long-only fund. The fund utilizes a bottom-up approach for making investment decisions. The average investment horizon for the stocks is one to three years. Its portfolio mix with sufficient diversity has resulted in outperforming consistently across the years, cycles and phases of the market. The funds are driven by the following investment themes:

• Compete with government-owned companies

• Demographic/lifestyle changes

• Factor cost advantage (IT/Pharma/Specialty chemicals)

In a recent interview with CNBC-TV18, he expressed to stay bullish on the Indian markets. Samir Arora is regarded as one of the highly experienced fund managers in India with a track record of more than 26 years of experience on the long side and over 15 years of experience on the short side. No wonder he is invited to so many interviews and TV shows to share his thoughts.