Marcellus Rising Giants
Marcellus PMS | Equity | | PMSIME's View on Marcellus Rising Giants
Strategy
Investment Fund
Marcellus Rising Giants is currently closed for subscriptions. We would anyways wait for performance to improve prior to recommedning this scheme.
Fund's Strategy View
It is a concentrated (20-30 stocks) mid-cap strategy, making it a high-risk-reward strategy, but also one that is clearly differentiated. Marcellus's strong focus on clean accounting, corporate governance, capital allocation, and barriers to entry help mitigate many of the normal risks while investing in mid-caps, which makes this an interesting investment option for investors willing to take on a higher level of risk.
Fund Performance
We refrain from evaluating the fund since it is yet to mature (less than 5 years).
IME's View on Marcellus PMS
View on AMC
Marcellus offers strong investment options for those interested in high quality companies, but their lack of flexibility in investment approach hinders performance across market conditions. Recent weak performance and limited portfolio repositioning capabilities contribute to lower ratings for the seasoned investment team.
AMC's Pedigree
Marcellus, a respected PMS house, was founded by the core team behind Ambit's investment business. They have a strong focus on investing in high-quality franchises. While Marcellus got off to a very strong start, their very aggressive focus on their investment philosophy on high-quality franchises (even willing to ignore valuations) has limited their ability to reposition portfolios as the market cycle turned leading to very sharp underperformance which has adversely impacted their reputation in recent times.
AMC Team
Marcellus has a strong investment management team led by highly experienced professionals Saurabh and Rakshit, who possess strong track records and research credentials. The team's longevity and leadership as founders ensure stability in their philosophy and practices.
Investment Philosophy
Marcellus prioritizes investing in top-quality businesses with strong management and transparent accounting practices, following this philosophy consistently across all their strategies. While the philosophy has very clear merit, the issue can be that this is followed very rigorously, which does reduce the flexibility that the fund manager has to reposition the portfolio during economic upcycles & strong bull markets - where many sectors & companies with lower quality scores may be driving performance.
Investment Philosophy
Marcellus ‘Rising Giants’ is a mid-cap–focused, concentrated strategy. Mid-cap companies are defined as those with market capitalisation typically below INR 7,500 crore, with most investments falling in the INR 700–7,500 crore range.
Key Tenets of the Philosophy
- Clean Accounting: Preference for businesses with transparent financials and strong governance standards.
- Superior Capital Allocation: Focus on companies with a demonstrated track record of efficient and shareholder-friendly capital deployment.
- High Barriers to Entry: Within the filtered universe, emphasis on businesses with durable moats and structural competitive advantages.
Investment Process
The strategy follows a rigorous, multi-stage filtering process to narrow a large universe into a high-conviction portfolio of 12–15 companies.
- Forensic Accounting: Elimination of companies with weak governance or accounting red flags. Approximately 40% of the initial 500-company universe is filtered out at this stage.
- Sustainability Parameters: Application of defined thresholds for revenue growth and ROCE to identify cash-generating, growing franchises. Around 50% of the remaining universe is eliminated at this step.
- Bottom-Up Research: Deep-dive research on roughly 10% of the original universe, including secondary research, channel checks, independent assessments, and management interactions.
Sell Framework
Sell decisions are driven by deterioration in free cash flow growth and concerns around the long-term longevity of the business franchise.
- Free Cash Flow Growth: Slower-than-expected growth due to weakening competitive positioning.
- Moat Strength: Evidence of erosion in franchise strength, including reduced pricing power.
- Longevity & Succession Risks: Concerns around business continuity, lethargy in execution, or succession planning.
Marcellus, led by Saurabh Mukherjea and the investment team, is known for its unequivocal focus on business quality. This philosophy, successfully executed in the flagship ‘Consistent Compounders’ strategy, is applied with the same discipline in ‘Rising Giants’, resulting in a tightly constructed portfolio of high-quality mid-cap businesses that meet stringent standards of accounting integrity, management quality, and sustainable competitive advantage.
AMC Background
Marcellus Investment Managers was founded in 2018 by a highly successful investment team comprising Saurabh Mukerjea, Pramod Gubbi, and Rakshit Ranjan—who were key drivers of Ambit Investment Management’s growth prior to setting up Marcellus. At Ambit, the team delivered multiple years of strong outperformance by investing in high-quality business franchises with the highest standards of corporate governance.
Backed by this strong founding pedigree, Marcellus has scaled rapidly in a short period to become one of the largest and most respected PMS providers in India, ranking among the top PMS houses by assets.
Investment Philosophy
Marcellus follows a clearly articulated investment philosophy focused on making long-term investments in high-quality business franchises. The philosophy is built around three core pillars:
- Clean Accounts: Extensive use of forensic accounting and capital allocation analysis to identify companies with clean, transparent financials. This acts as a primary filter for narrowing the investible universe.
- Capital Allocation: Preference for companies with a proven track record of prudent and efficient capital allocation that enhances long-term shareholder value.
- Competitive Advantage: Focus on businesses with durable competitive moats that can sustain superior returns over long periods, even if it requires paying premium valuations for top-quality franchises.
Portfolio Construction & Style
Marcellus applies this philosophy consistently across its strategies by investing in a concentrated portfolio of high-conviction ideas. The emphasis remains on business quality, governance, and longevity of earnings rather than short-term valuation comfort. This approach represents a continuation of the same quality-focused strategy that the team successfully executed during its tenure at Ambit.
Suitable For
Investors seeking exposure to the very highest quality businesses, with a long-term compounding mindset and an understanding that such strategies may underperform during strong momentum-driven bull markets.
Trailing Performance
| 1yr | 3yr | 5yr | Since Inception | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marcellus Rising Giants | 0.45 | 6.23 | 0.04 | |
| S&P BSE 500 | 4.9 | 14.6 | 14.36 | |
| Alpha over Broad Mkt BM | -4.5 | -8.4 | -14.3 | |
| Nifty Midcap 150 | 7.5 | 23 | ||
| Alpha over Category BM | -7.1 | -16.8 |
Performance as of: 30-Nov-25 | Inception Date: 27-Dec-21 | Performance are post-fees, pre-taxes. Global funds denominated in USD or fund currency.
Investment team
Rakshit Ranjan | 4-star rated FM
Fund Manager | 22 yrs Experience | 7 yrs at current firm
Past Experience: Ambit Capital (FM), Lloyds Banking (Director Research), Noble & Co (Analyst)
Rakshit has a strong investment management track record, having launched Ambit's Coffee-Can PMS in Mar-17, which he ran till Dec-18. The Coffee-Can PMS was one of the best-performing PMS schemes in 2018. Prior to setting up the Coffee-Can PMS, Rakshit was the lead consumer analyst at Ambit. His earlier experience was in UK equities at the Lloyds & Noble groups.
Saurabh Mukherjea | 5-star rated FM
Founder & CIO | 28 yrs Experience | 7 yrs at current firm
Past Experience: Ambit Capital (CEO), Noble (Head of India Equities), Accenture (Consultant), London Economics (Consultant)
Saurabh comes with a very strong investments background, having helped build Ambit's broking, wealth & investment management businesses as CEO. He was also responsible for building Execution Nobles India broking business (which was sold to Ambit) and having set up and sold Clear Capital (a UK based small cap research fund). Saurabh is a strong believer in investing in the long-term in very high quality clean businesses and has written a number of books including Gurus of Chaos, The Unusual Billionaires and Coffee Can Investing.
Ashvin Shetty | 3-star rated FM
Portfolio Manager | 22 yrs Experience | 7 yrs at current firm
Past Experience: Analyst (Ambit), Analyst (Execution Noble), Statutory Auditor (KPMG)
Ashvin Shetty has more than a decade of experience in equity research. Previously, at Ambit, he led the coverage on automobile sector from 2010 to 2017. Ashvin was recognised multiple times for his stock picking abilities. He was ranked in Starmine Analyst Awards 2013 and 2016 as a lead auto analyst. He later moved onto become a senior analyst for Ambit's Mid and Small cap PMS funds till November 2018. Prior to joining Ambit, he worked with Execution Noble as an analyst covering consumer and media space. He has also worked with KPMG's and Deloitte's statutory audit departments from 2004 to 2007 gaining extensive experience across Indian accounting standards and financial statement analysis. Ashvin is a BCom graduate from Narsee Monjee College (Mumbai). He is a qualified Chartered Accountant (ICAI India) and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA Institute, USA).
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