3rd March 2009

Manvinder Singh
B.E (IIT, Kanpur), M.E (NUS, Singapore), MBA (Melbourne Business School)
Vice-President, AFG Capital Management,
Singapore.

Ganapathi Subrahmanyam is a person of great ability and initiative and possesses a lot of raw energy. It was with his own initiative that he studied the investment principles of Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch and other great investors. Ganapathi self taught himself the basics of equity research and mastered financial statement analysis, research tools such as DataStream, portfolio theory and investment management concepts such as alpha strategies and leverage.

Ganapathi is so detailed in his research that he is able to see rise in raw shipments and then invest in companies based on the data he processes from the bulk shipment data bases. In one company he made 400% returns and I was told of this research piece 6 months in advance.

Ganapathi is very strong in the use of internet tools to do research and prospers in event driven investing too. Further proof of his ability to exploit opportunities lies in the fact that he scans international tenders and scans asset classes all over the world on a periodic basis. In a nutshell, this person has ability beyond normal to understand and exploit the opportunities in the capital markets.

His additional qualities are listed below:        

Integrity: Ganapathi is all about personal integrity and the strong values which define him. His personal integrity extends further and makes him a very disciplined person in lifestyle choices too: he is a vegetarian who neither smokes nor drinks. Ganapathi never comments on others and is very ethical in all the daily transactions with people around him. The best example of his integrity is that he is transparent to his clients. Ganapathi is upfront in explaining the risks and never over commits results to get business. This quality has enabled him retain his clients all the way. Ganapathi has always stuck with ethical investing and avoids equities which are from un-ethical lines of business such as gambling, alcohol etc.

Potential for success: In terms of Ganapathi's potential for overall success I will rate him in the top 1% of the people whom I have interacted with during my 12 years at corporate and 2 years during the full time MBA program at Melbourne Business School.

Connectedness to higher things: This is very unique to individuals like him who worry about global warming, poverty and globalization. Ganapathi prays regularly and is a total vegetarian and non-smoker. This aspect makes him highly ethical in all dealings and drives him to do things selflessly for the good of society.

12th February 2009

Bharatan Ramanathan
M.E (Madras Institute of Technology)
CEO, Ramji Mahal
Trichy, India

Mr. Ganapathi Subrahmanyam has been my fund manager for the past several years. He took charge of my complete shares portfolio as a consultant when he was just 24 years old. I have known him from the time he was a small kid through his father though he has become much more intimate and valuable to me today as he generates a sufficient chunk of my earnings.
I am a postgraduate from the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT) and worked as an instrumentation engineer for several years in ADMA-OPCO, Abu Dhabi.  I left service to start my own businesses and am the CEO for a group of firms in the hospitality industry. Ganapathi took over from me a portfolio, which was worth about Rs. 1.2 Million in the year 2004.  The money was all lying idle in ‘dead’ shares without appreciating in value except for paltry dividend payments from time to time. 

Despite adverse conditions both in his personal life (like a near fatal sixty feet fall from the roof of a building) and in the financial markets (like a sudden downslide which took the BSE index hundreds of points downwards), he was able to always survive, analyze data, and come to worthy conclusions on where to invest and where not to. He has totally modified my investment portfolio and has grown it to more than Rs. 3 million today in a short span of four years, even after the current market crash. I approach him whenever I begin a new project and his consultations have been very valuable to me in taking business decisions especially given the dynamic market environment in India. He has a very sound knowledge of the various sectors in the Indian industry.

I have seen him grow from a young boy to a financial wizard without any external help.  He is a self-made person with ambitions and goals that he achieves one after another despite whatever hurdles he faces on the way.  His efforts and consultancy have helped not only improve his family’s economic and social condition, but has also helped many a client like me reach “financial freedom” by paying a very reasonable consultancy fee.