Gautam Chhaochharia

UBS

First-place appearances: 2 Total appearances: 3 Analyst debut: 2011

Gautam Chhaochharia, 38, repeats in the top spot. The UBS researcher is “one of the few experienced small- and midcap analysts, and it helps that he has been on the buy side,” professes one fan. The sector underperformed the S&P BSE Sensex Index by 15.2 percentage points over the two years through mid-October, rising just 5.1 percent, thanks to local retail and institutional investors selling off during the economic downturn, and this trend may well continue, Chhaochharia believes. However, he is optimistic about the long term because India is “a fast-growing economy with a dynamic and broad base of private sector entrepreneurs, a recipe for small- and midcap stocks to do well.” In this environment he employs a bottom-up approach to identifying companies that possess “robust, sustainable business models, with growth visibility and valuations implying attractive risk rewards.” His top picks are Calcutta’s Exide Industries, an automotive battery maker, and Secunderabad-based Coromandel International, which manufactures fertilizers and pesticides. Both stocks are attractively valued, he reasons, and the market is ignoring their prospective near-term recoveries. He also favors New Delhi–based tile maker Kajaria Ceramics as “a great way to invest in secular household construction and urbanization in India.” Before Chhaochharia joined UBS in 2010, he managed money at Singapore-based hedge fund Karakoram Asset Management and worked on a multiasset trading desk at Deutsche Bank. He previously spent several years as a sell-side analyst at J.P. Morgan and Citi, covering such sectors as autos, industrials and real estate. Chhaochharia holds a postgraduate degree in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. “He has the best breadth of coverage,” according to another loyalist. — Carolyn Koo