A legacy of value: Prashant Jain

Prashant Jain, the torchbearer for value-investing philosophy in Indian markets, has decided to hang up his boots after 31 years at HDFC Mutual Fund. We take a look at the illustrious career of this star fund manager.

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Slow but steady wins the race - while we are all familiar with the phrase, none exemplifies it better than Prashant Jain, India's longest-serving mutual fund manager.

Jain, a proponent of the value-investing model, believes that the underlying value of a stock would eventually win the race, even if there are periods of underperformance. And his unwavering faith in this investment philosophy against all odds has become his trademark.

Inception

Prashant Jain, renowned for beating the indices, started his journey at SBI Mutual Funds. Jain has always invested for the long term: be it his career or the funds he managed. The only job switch he ever made was from SBI Mutual Fund to 20th Century Mutual Fund in 1993. In 1998, 20th Century Mutual Fund was acquired by Zurich India Mutual Fund, which was subsequently acquired by HDFC Mutual Fund in mid-2003. In January 1994, he started managing Centurion Prudence Fund, which was later renamed Zurich India Prudence Fund and then, HDFC Prudence Fund. And the rest, as they say, is history. (Do note that in June 2018 HDFC Prudence Fund was merged with HDFC Growth Fund and the merged fund was named as HDFC Balanced Advantage Fund.)

A slow start