Kotak's focus on high-integrity research helped it build a market-leading offering: Saurabh Mukherjea

Saurabh Mukherjea, CEO, institutional equities, Ambit Capital

Claim to fame

A top analyst and stock picker on Dalal Street, Mukherjea is also the author of Gurus of Chaos: Modern India's Money Masters

The lesson

Saurabh Mukherjea says the two companies in Indian institutional broking that he has tried to learn from are CLSA among the foreign brokerages and Kotak Institutional Equities among the domestic ones.

"In the domestic broking industry where the general trend is to focus on cost rather than the quality of service, Kotak has shown that if you focus on high-integrity research and provide a world-class offering over a long period of time, you can build a market-leading offering." He adds that the fact Kotak tops the tables in institutional equities shows that the perception multinational brokerages have an advantage over their domestic counterparts is not true.

Talking of CLSA, he says it is impressive that within 10 years of its founding in 1986, the Hong Kong-based independent brokerage built a dominant presence across Asia without the balance sheet support of a big bank. "That period when it was an independentlyowned brokerage producing iconoclastic research and, with superb sales people, it was an exciting 25 years. It's episodes like that you draw inspiration from when you're trying to doing something similar."

(As told to G Seetharaman)