NAME: Rushabh Sheth (left) and Nikhil Desai AGE: 34 & 35, respectively FIRM: Karma Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd FUND CORPUS: Portfolio Management Services: Rs 25 crore; Offshore fund: $14 million

Meet Rushabh Sheth, 34, and Nikhil Desai, 35. Sheth's a former fund manager with Kotak Asset Management Company, whilst Desai was a portfolio manager with ABN Amro Bank. Until he teamed up with Sheth to start up Karma Capital Advisors which, other than managing high net worth clients, also advises offshore funds. "The reason for setting up Karma Capital is more of a philosophical one," muses Sheth. "The way money is managed these days is driven more by institutional imperatives, which are shorter-term in nature. Rather than running after assets to manage, we wanted to manage money based on our philosophy." That philosophy is pretty straightforward: Manage money and build wealth for clients over a long period of time. Whilst Sheth currently advises a $14-million (Rs 63-crore) offshore fund, the Juilis Baer Multiopportunities-India Millennium Fund, Desai takes care of the portfolios of some 30 high net worth clients. Karma Capital has a portfolio management scheme with a corpus of Rs 25 crore. Ticket size: Rs 1 crore. Fee structure? A mix of fixed and performance-driven.

Sheth and Desai aren't the only ones to chuck up conventional jobs in financial services to take on risk -and, of course, the prospect of fabulous returns-head-on. As the Indian stock markets continue to defy gravity and keep hitting new highs every other day, in the process delivering some of the best returns in the universe of equity-investing, a clutch of brash, young and adventurous self-starters are aiming to make hay by the truckload as the sun keeps shining benevolently on Dalal Street. This breed of managers tends to be in its late 20s or early 30s, as opposed to the 30-ish and early-40s profile of yesterday's dyed-in-the-wool fund manager. And many of them are expats who've realised that if the path to Indian markets is not paved with riches, a goldmine for sure exists at the destination. Most of these managers are overseeing offshore India-dedicated funds, 13 of which were launched since January 2005. As K. Sudarshan, Managing Partner, EMA Partners International, a hr and placement consultant, says: "The fund managers who have set up their advisory shops in India are seeking to maximise their returns and create their own track records. With the market rapidly expanding in the past 12 months and new asset management companies (AMCs) and hedge funds entering India, there is a huge dearth of talent in the area of fund management."

NAME: Rakshit Sethi AGE: 27 FIRM: Fair Value India FUND CORPUS: Offshore fund: $20 million	NAME: Nitin Raheja AGE: 38 FIRM: Dawnay Day A.V. Financial Services FUND CORPUS: PMS: Rs 11 Crore

Clearly, India is the place to be for these new fund managers-and the place to earn their stripes. The ever-increasing tribe of millionaires in the country wants qualified people to handle its money. And there aren't enough of them going around. Sudarshan of EMA observes that if equity analysts and fund mangers are setting up advisory firms in India, "it's no more to make a living, but it's got more to do with making a name". Compensation is higher in advisory, as it is in terms of a percentage share of profits. Adds Desai of Karma Capital: "We have a minimum two-four year perspective when managing clients' money. The real challenge is to drive absolute return across market cycle. The whole idea is when the market goes down, we still continue to deliver positive returns."

What's common to this new breed is the conviction in the long-term India story, revolving around three themes: domestic consumption, infrastructure build-up and growth from outsourcing. "You could make money in the Indian market by riding any one of these broad trends," says Nitin Raheja, senior Vice President & Chief Investment Officer, Dawnay Day A.V. Financial Services. A former fund manager with Sun F&C Mutual Fund, Raheja is now in charge of a portfolio management scheme and is also expected to advise the $75-100 million (Rs 337.5-450 crore) offshore India-dedicated Fulcrum DDAV India Opportunity Fund.

Along with this new crop of money managers comes plenty of new thinking. And innovation too. Consider for instance the multi-manager concept, not unpopular in the West but still alien to India. Until ING recently set up Optimix, a fund that does not rely on the strategy of just one investment manager but on many. As Mugunthan Siva, Chief Investment Officer, Optimix, explains: "India is the second country in the Asia Pacific and third worldwide after Australia where the multi-manager concept is being used by ING. There is great potential in India for such open-architecture, third party fund of funds because there is a huge bandwidth between returns generated by fund managers."

Meantime, many of the old-timers-at least, relatively-are also making the move towards advisory services from investment management. "Managing a large-cap fund can become monotonous. The conviction to do better work and find multi-baggers has been the primary reason for moving from mutual fund to advisory," says U.R. Bhat, a veteran fund manager, now Managing Director, Dalton Capital advisors. Similarly, Vibhav Kapoor, Group Investment Strategist, IL&Fs, is also managing a $16 milion (Rs 72 crore) India-dedicated fund. And Bharat Shah, Managing Partner & Chief Executive officer, ask Raymond James, is advising the Switzerland-based hedge fund Naissance Capital on its Naissance Jaipur Fund.

As the market reaches fair values, the challenge clearly is to fund new ideas. In the short term, patience and caution are the catchwords. As Rakshit Sethi, who runs the offshore Fair Value Risk Arbitrage & Value Fund, points out: "It's not a sin, or at least a much smaller one, to sometimes sit on the fence and wait, rather than go in, when things don't make sense to you and you get out first ball. One needs to sit with a loaded gun and wait for the white elephant patiently. He always comes."