'Earnings At Domestic Businesses Should Grow Faster Than At Export- Oriented Businesses In FY17'

Harsha Upadhyaya is Chief Investment Officer – Equities, at Kotak Mahindra AMC. He also heads the Kotak Select Focus Fund. He speaks to the Finapolis about the stock market, the outlook for the future, the India story, and the strategy his fund has used to successfully beat the benchmark and the category average across time frames and emerge an outperformer. We also get him to list the books he would recommend to investors.

The last couple of months have seen markets scaling highs, but investors remaining edgy about the possible fallouts of Brexit, a Fed rate hike and other external factors. How well insulated is the India story from global headwinds?

India has a large domestic market, which is quite robust compared to the global scenario. The Indian economy has been growing at the fastest pace amongst all comparable economies in the world today. Indian macroeconomic fundamentals have been at their best at this point of time. While any global shock will impact Indian financial markets, the India story is likely to remain intact to a large extent. Indian equities will also possibly experience volatility whenever there is a negative global event, however, they are likely to perform much better than other comparables once the dust settles down.

Kotak Select Focus has been an outperformer, beating the benchmark as well as the category average across timeframes. Tell us about your investment philosophy and stock selection process. Do you follow a top-down or a bottom-up approach?