ASK Select

Investment Strategy

ASK India Select is a concentrated equity portfolio designed to provide exposure to ASK’s highest-conviction value-creation opportunities identified across its broader investment platform. The strategy seeks to balance the size of the opportunity, earnings growth potential, business quality, and valuation discipline, resulting in a focused portfolio of high-quality businesses.

Core Investment Attributes

• Size of Opportunity: Evaluation of the relative size of the opportunity versus the company’s scale, including market dominance, resilience, and liquidity.
• Business Quality: Preference for high-quality businesses with superior ROCE, strong and durable competitive moats, and long-term sustainability.
• Earnings Growth: Focus on the quantum, consistency, durability, and compounding potential of earnings growth, with emphasis on early-stage compounding.
• Valuation Discipline: Investments made with a favourable price–value gap and an adequate margin of safety.
• Management Quality: Strong management integrity, execution capability, and capital allocation discipline treated as a non-negotiable requirement.

Investment Philosophy

The strategy follows a GARP (Growth at the Right Price) philosophy with a strong emphasis on business and management quality. While the framework itself is well-established, ASK India Select is differentiated by its consistent and disciplined execution across market cycles.

Investment Process

• Initial Universe: Start with the top 500 companies by market capitalisation.
• Profitability Screen: Narrow to ~410 companies with profit before tax exceeding ₹75 crore over the trailing four quarters.
• Management Quality Filter: Subjective assessment of management integrity, vision, execution, capital allocation, and capital distribution reduces the universe to ~206 companies.
• Quality and Growth Filters: Further screening to ~92 companies with minimum ROCE of 20% and at least 15% annual earnings growth visibility over the next 3–5 years.
• Final Portfolio: Construction of a concentrated portfolio of ~20 businesses, offering an optimal blend of quality, growth, diversification, and a minimum margin of safety of 15%.

PMS Background

ASK is one of the oldest and largest PMS houses in India, having commenced operations in 1983 under the leadership of Asit Koticha. The firm has a singular focus on discretionary listed Indian equity mandates and places strong emphasis on mindset and philosophy alignment with clients. Over the years, ASK has built a reputation for disciplined execution, supported by a stable, in-house research team and a clearly defined investment process. Fund managers are typically groomed internally, ensuring continuity and consistency in philosophy and decision-making.

Investment Philosophy

The investment philosophy is anchored in a FOCUS-driven framework designed to identify high-quality businesses capable of generating sustainable long-term wealth across market cycles. The approach combines fundamental analysis, assessment of structural growth opportunities, cycle awareness, competitive strength, and valuation discipline to deliver consistent, risk-adjusted outcomes while protecting capital.

• Fundamentals: Emphasis on strong balance sheets, healthy cash flows, and consistent profitability. Focus on business quality, resilience across cycles, and disciplined capital allocation, with priority given to sustainability of returns rather than short-term earnings volatility.
• Opportunity Size & Scalability: Preference for businesses operating in large and expanding opportunity sets, supported by structural growth tailwinds and favourable industry dynamics. Focus on scalability and long-term demand visibility without excessive reliance on leverage.
• Cycles & Capital Allocation: Recognition that both markets and businesses move through cycles. Active evaluation of cycle positioning, with emphasis on management prudence during upcycles and discipline during downturns. Willingness to invest in cyclical recoveries or structural improvements where risk–reward is favourable.
• Unmatched Moats: Focus on companies with durable competitive advantages such as brand leadership, economies of scale, network effects, technology edge, or regulatory protection. Strong moats support pricing power, margin stability, and resilience to competitive disruption.
• Margin of Safety & Stewardship: Embedded risk management through valuation discipline and governance standards. Investments are made at reasonable valuations relative to intrinsic value, with strong emphasis on ethical leadership, shareholder alignment, and long-term stewardship to preserve capital while retaining upside.

In essence, the FOCUS framework integrates quality, growth, cycle awareness, competitive strength, and valuation discipline into a cohesive investment approach. By remaining anchored to business fundamentals and long-term value creation, the philosophy seeks to deliver consistent wealth creation while minimising the risk of permanent capital impairment.

Suitable For

Investors seeking exposure to high-quality businesses with an emphasis on consistency, capital protection, and long-term compounding rather than aggressive return maximisation.