Vallum PMS
Our view on their team, the pedigree, the funds & investment philosophy followed.
IME's Review of Vallum PMS
| AMC Rating | Pedigree Rating | Team Rating | Philosophy Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
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AMC View
Vallum Capital is a boutique, research-driven investment firm. While the PMS strategy under the Vallum India Discovery banner was only formally launched in 2020, the firm has been operating since 2010 in an advisory avatar. Given its relatively recent PMS track record, investors should evaluate the strategy over a full cycle before committing significant allocations.
AMC Pedigree
Founded in 2010 by Manish Bhandari as an advisory firm, Vallum Capital launched its PMS offerings in 2020. Since then, it has scaled to over ₹1,500 crore in AUM, with a consistent emphasis on proprietary research.
Team Pedigree
The investment team is led by Manish Bhandari, who brings over 20 years of experience in Indian equity markets. Vallum’s team comprises 11 members, including a 6-member research desk. The senior leadership team has a combined experience of 55+ years across institutions such as ING and Standard Chartered, blending institutional rigor with entrepreneurial flexibility.
Investment Philosophy
Vallum follows a GARP (Growth at Reasonable Price) strategy rooted in deep bottom-up research and contrarian thinking. The firm uses a proprietary three-level filtering and scoring process to identify businesses with strong leadership, earnings potential, and structural tailwinds, while maintaining valuation discipline. The portfolio is concentrated, low-churn, and sector-agnostic, aiming to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns over 3–5 year cycles.
AMC Background
Vallum Capital Advisors is a research-led PMS firm. Their investment organisation comprises a team of approximately 11 professionals with over 90 years of combined experience, including a dedicated research team with more than 60 years of cumulative investing experience and senior members with backgrounds at global institutions such as ING and Standard Chartered. .
Investment Philosophy
Vallum’s investment philosophy is anchored in a Growth at a Reasonable Price (GARP) framework, with the objective of generating long-term, risk-adjusted returns by identifying businesses with strong leadership or durable competitive moats available at sensible valuations.
The philosophy reflects a pragmatic blend of growth and value disciplines. Vallum seeks companies benefiting from identifiable earnings cycles, innovation-led market share gains, capacity underutilisation, product upgrades, or operational turnarounds. Rather than extrapolating linear growth assumptions, the firm emphasises adaptability across market cycles, recognising that different phases reward different sectors and styles.
Proprietary Filters
Vallum follows a strictly bottom-up, research-intensive investment process applied to an indicative universe of over 600 companies. This universe is filtered through more than 200 proprietary quantitative and qualitative screens, narrowing potential ideas to a focused opportunity set. Stock selection progresses through a multi-layered elimination framework that includes proprietary scoring models, industry sustainability assessments, forensic accounting checks, and detailed business evaluation using annual reports, conference call transcripts, and channel checks. Market capitalisation is analysed in conjunction with underlying business fundamentals to identify mispricings rather than relying on size-based heuristics.
Portfolio Construction
Portfolio construction is designed to balance conviction with risk control. Portfolios typically hold 22–27 stocks, remain sector-agnostic, and maintain low churn, with individual stock weights capped at approximately 7%. Vallum employs what it refers to as “3V – Three Vallum Verification Points” before portfolio inclusion, ensuring multiple layers of validation. The firm places particular emphasis on close monitoring and active reassessment as market conditions and business fundamentals evolve.
Capital deployment follows a staggered, drawdown-oriented approach, especially in mid- and small-cap strategies, recognising the cyclical nature of these segments. Risk management is embedded through diversification, valuation discipline, and an explicit awareness of sectoral bubbles, with the firm having historically highlighted overvaluation risks across multiple market cycles in its stakeholder communications.
Investment team
Manish Bhandari | 3-star rated FM
Founder | 27 yrs Experience | 16 yrs at current firm
Past Experience: HDFC Securities (Research Analyst), ING Investment Management (Portfolio Manager)
Manish Bhandari is the Founder of Vallum PMS. He has more than 25 years of experience in the Indian equity market. Prior to this, he had worked with ING Investment Management (VP & PM), HDFC Securities (Equity Research Analyst) & Tower Capital (Research Analyst).
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