White Oak Capital (AIF)

Funds managed

Fund nameAsset ClassLicense
White Oak – India Equity Fund I
White Oak – India Equity Fund II
White Oak – India Equity Fund III
White Oak – India Equity Fund IV White Oak – India Select Equity Fund
Equity-Long only
Equity-Long only
Equity-Long only
Equity-Long only
Equity-Long only
SEBI AIF CAT III 
SEBI AIF CAT III 
SEBI AIF CAT III 
SEBI AIF CAT III 
SEBI AIF CAT III 

About

  • White Oak is a Mumbai-based boutique investment management and investment advisory firm founded by Prashant Khemka, former CIO and Lead Portfolio Manager of India Equity and Global Emerging Markets Equity at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
  •  It was established in 2017 with the philosophy of building a performance-centric organization with a strong investment culture. 
  • They launched their offices simultaneously in Singapore, India, and Mauritius. Over the years, they have Geographically expanded to establish offices in UK and Switzerland as well..
  • Their clientele includes institutions such as sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, and endowments as well as individuals and family offices from around the world.

Key staff 

  • Prashant Khemka, CFA (Founder) –  Prashant founded White Oak Capital Management in June 2017. He is the former CIO and leads portfolio manager of GS India Equity at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) from March 2007 to March 2017, and also for the Global Emerging Markets (GEM) Equity from June 2013 to March 2017. As lead PM, he managed all mutual funds and separate accounts under these strategies.

Prashant began his professional investing career in 1998 at SSGA in Boston as senior portfolio officer of Enhanced International equity in the quant group. He joined GSAM in 2000 as a research analyst in US Growth Equity, and by 2004 he rose to become Senior Portfolio Manager and Co-Chair of the Investment Committee. Prashant returned to Mumbai in 2006 to start GSAM India business and served as the CIO and CEO/Co-CEO of their domestic Asset Management Company. In 2013, in addition to India, he was also made the CIO and lead PM of GEM equity. He won several accolades as the CIO and Lead PM of GS India Equity. He and his fund won several awards including an AAA rating from Citywire and an Elite rating from Fund caliber among others.

  • Aashish P. Somaiyaa (Chief Executive Officer) – Aashish is responsible for strategizing, growing, and managing the operations. Prior to joining White Oak Capital, Aashish served for nearly 8 years as Managing Director and CEO of Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company, one of the highly regarded and differentiated boutique equity managers in India backed by an excellent performance track record and well documented investing philosophy. Starting with about ₹1,300 CRS ($150 mn) in 2013, Motilal Oswal AMC grew to >₹42,000 CRS ($5.6 bn) of equity assets across portfolio management services, alternative investment funds, offshore funds, and domestic Mutual Funds. Motilal Oswal was awarded Brand of the Year at the CNBC India Business Leadership Awards in 2018.

Prior to Motilal Oswal AMC, Aashish was heading sales and distribution of ICICI Prudential AMC for their MF, PMS, and Real Estate offerings through multiple distribution channels across India and the Middle East. He has led new product development, product management, communication, and distribution channel delivery over a number of years.

Aashish has over 20 years of experience in business strategy and management, process-driven sales and distribution, product development, and marketing of investment offerings. He has been engaged with India’s private sector asset management industry for pretty much its entire growth trajectory post-1998.

  • Prateek Pant (Executive Director – Chief Business Officer): Prateek is responsible for driving the overall business objectives through multiple distribution channels, innovative marketing strategies including digital and effective product architecture.

For more information about the staff: https://www.whiteoakindia.com/team.php

Investment Philosophy (for the firm)

  • They believe outsized returns are earned over time by investing in great businesses at attractive values. They define an investment-worthy business “that is well managed, has a scalable long-term opportunity and generates superior returns on incremental capital along with a strong track record of execution and governance.” 
  • Assessing valuation is a critical element of their research. they perform in-depth valuation analysis to identify companies that are trading at a substantial discount to their intrinsic value. They look for companies where their estimate of cash flow or earnings, and hence intrinsic value, is significantly different from what the market has priced into the stock. they tend to focus on economic free cash flows instead of accounting cash flows and ascribe terminal value based on the greatness of business.
  • They have a balanced portfolio of select companies agnostic to the benchmark. their focus is on ensuring that alpha generation is purely a function of stock selection. They aim to consciously avoid market timing or sector rotation or other such top-down bets.
  • They generally look to avoid businesses with weaker characteristics such as poor corporate governance, weak incremental returns on capital, and those that face obsolescence risk arising out of technological developments.

Portfolio Performance: White Oak India Equity Fund

Source: https://www.whiteoakindia.com/pdf/downloads/Overview-White-Oak-Capital-Management-Jan-2021.pdf

Media

Title: Mr. Prashant Khemka -White Oak Capital-Talks on Investment Philosophy & his view on Market & Economy

Source:  PMS Bazaar 

Date: May 29, 2020

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwNcvXk6qvo

Summary: 

Prashant Khemka in this interview talks about the valuation discipline White Oak Capital adopts when it comes to their PMS and AIF portfolios as explained in the picture below 

Then, he also talks about the Disciplined fundamental research Proprietary OpcoFinco  analytical framework that honed over two decades

Analyst questions

  1. How do you approach as a CEO in White Oak capital with 8 years of experience in Motilal Oswal, do you bring a set of values and practices from the previous organizations or do you handwoven your approach to the new organization? 
  1. How is ‘India equity fund’ different than ‘India select equity’ knowing both of the funds invest in multi-cap companies?

Prepared by – Shantanu Dasgupta, Sep 2021

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