Value Investor Interview: Kuntal Shah

Note: This interview was originally published in the November 2016 issue of our premium newsletter – Value Investing Almanack (VIA). To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

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Kuntal Shah is the founder of Oaklane Capital Management LLP and has an opportunistic inclination towards a value-oriented and risk-controlled approach to investments. He has been an extremely successful investor over the past two decades and his success has come from exploiting the inefficiencies inherent in the markets.

Kuntal has an in-depth understanding of value investing with a focus on risk identification and mitigation, emerging trends, and opportunities in key growth sectors in India, taxation and accounting. He also loves to teach on these subjects and in the past has lectured at UTI Institute of Capital Markets, IIM (Ahmedabad), IIT (Mumbai), Symbiosis, FLAME and Chartered Accountants Institute. Kuntal is an Electronics Engineer from Pune University.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, and how you got interested in value investing?

Kuntal Shah (KS): I was brought up in a middle-class family in Mumbai. I am an engineer by qualification. Early life was a constant struggle to make ends meet for our family of five siblings given our father’s limited earnings. I was lucky to be brought up in an environment where there was no compromise on education and was fortunate to be inculcated with middle class working ethos, frugality and conservatism of living within one’s means without recourse to borrowing to prepone consumption.