Star portfolio fund manager Siddhartha Bhaiya passes away

The Indian investment community lost a star fund manager with the sudden demise of Siddhartha Bhaiya, founder and chief investment officer of Aequitas Investments, who passed away on 31 December 2025, following a sudden cardiac arrest while on a family vacation in New Zealand. The 47-year-old was widely regarded as one of the most respected portfolio managers within the PMS industry.

Founded in 2012, the Mumbai-based fund house emerged as a differentiated force in Indian wealth management under Bhaiya’s leadership. The journey, which began with assets under management of Rs 10 crore in 2013, currently stands at over Rs 7,700 crore, built organically without any distributorship and empanelment, purely through word of mouth.

High-net-worth individuals, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, single and multiple family offices, and other sophisticated investors have been clients of Aequitas. Since inception, this strategy has generated a 33% CAGR for investors, translating an investment of Rs 10 lakh made in 2013 into approximately Rs 3.83 crore as of November 2025.

Prior to founding Aequitas, Siddhartha Bhaiya spent over a decade in the asset management company industry. During this time, he grew increasingly disillusioned with what he saw as an excessive focus on asset gathering through distributor-driven models, often at the expense of investor outcomes. This conviction led him to establish Aequitas as a firm built on intellectual honesty, rigorous research, disciplined capital allocation, and long-term thinking.

While Aequitas’s investment philosophy was primarily based around delivering outsized returns by investing in small caps, undiscovered companies, around a year back Bhaiya had moved completely into gold. In early 2025, Aequitas went close to 80% in cash in client portfolios and also took large (60%+) exposure to Gold ETFs, thus generating super normal returns for investors.

In a statement, Aequitas said that while the loss of its founder is deeply felt, the firm remains united and fully aligned with the philosophy he established. The investment and leadership teams will continue to operate collectively, staying focused on serving investors in the manner Bhaiya envisaged, added the statement.