India like cleanest among dirty shirts: Cartica Capital

Likening India to the "cleanest among the dirty shirts" left with a person towards the end of a business visit, a foreign fund house said the country presents enormous growth potential despite the "kind of mess" it has been in for many years.

Teresa Barger, CEO of Cartica Capital, also said that India is certainly the cleanest among BRICS nations, as also in comparison to many other emerging markets.

She said Indian companies have got world-class management teams in place, although the dominance of promoter-driven companies still remain a concern.

US-based Cartica Capital manages over $2 billion worth assets under management, with its investment focus being emerging markets, and is widely known as an activist hedge fund. India accounts for nearly 20 per cent of its total portfolio.

"We choose a country first and then we decide on the companies where we want to invest. Nearly 50 per cent of our portfolio investments are in just two countries – Philippines and India -- while India alone accounts for 20 per cent," Barger said at the India Investment Forum, organised by Institutional Investor Forums ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's five-day visit to the US.

Barger said despite a significant exposure of her fund to India, she feels that India is in a "mess" given its poor rankings on various parameters of doing business and concerns like corruption.

"People ask me, then why do we love India. The first reason is that there are many low hanging fruits in India and the new government led by Modi has already started talking about those in first few months in office.

"He has promised to remove red tape and hopefully the reform process will start after state elections, not at the central level alone, but also in states including those not ruled by the BJP," she said.

"The second reason for me is that India is perhaps the cleanest dirty shirt. We all go travel and it happens at times that towards the end of the trip we start looking for a clean shirt only to find everything having been worn and gotten dirty. At that time, we settle for the cleanest among the dirty shirts," she said.

Cartica CEO also praised India in terms of robust regulations for capital markets, but said the dominance of promoters was still a matter of concern.