What we do

Banyan Tree Advisors is a Portfolio Management company, setup in 2004, and based in Bangalore and Mumbai, India. We are registered with the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI), and are subject to its rules and regulations regarding capital requirements, disclosure and auditing norms.

Banyan Tree Advisors was founded by Sandeep Talwar and Ravishankar, who were later joined by Shyam Prabhu and Jigar Shah. Read about the team here. In our careers we have seen three stock market cycles – the bull runs that drove the markets to irrational highs, and the subsequent bear markets that inevitably followed, and pulled stocks down to despondent lows. The insights we gained from these guide us to this day:

  1. Capital preservation, : As a wise man said there are only two rules of investing. ‘Rule No1 – Don’t lose money. Rule No 2 – when in doubt refer to Rule No 1’. Read about this in ‘Safety First’.
  2. It is possible to grow your wealth in the stock market if you understand that when you buy a stock, what you are really doing is buying a small piece of the underlying business. Finding the right business to invest in has become the most important part of our work. Read about this in ‘Buying the Business’.
  3. The price of purchase is very important. Our experience has taught us that being patient and waiting for the right price to purchase a quality business is as important as the identification of the right business – it is important to have a margin of safety in your purchase. Read about this in ‘How we invest your money’.

While pursuing full time careers with institutional investors, we applied our insights first to our own money, and then for our friends and relatives. Some of these friends and relatives became clients when we started Banyan Tree. Some of our customers had modest portfolios and modest goals – securing for a child’s college education, or ensuring a financially secure retirement. Others had much larger amounts, and were concerned about beating inflation and growing their wealth in a safe manner. In all cases, we applied the principles we used for managing our own wealth. We like to say that Banyan Tree is like “a restaurant where the owner eats at the restaurant”. Today more than 80% of our own financial wealth is invested in the same strategies we employ for our clients.

Over time, Banyan Tree has grown largely by word of mouth, and very little marketing. Client referred other clients. As of December 2023, we manage Rs. 5,234.34 crores ($628.8 m) of investments, and our client base has grown to 1,931. Our original investor base of friends and relatives is still with us, and informally, are our most vocal sales people. You can see our track record on Page 8 of our disclosure document which is attached here.

If you would like to invest with Banyan Tree Advisors, please read about how we manage your account. While we decide which stocks to buy for you and handle the transactional details, your accounts are managed by a SEBI registered custodian (HDFC Bank), and settlements are done directly with the stock exchanges. Get to know our fee structure, which is structured so that we get paid only when we have made money for you. Read about our account opening process. If you have any questions, please contact us by using the contact form, or by calling us. And when you are ready to join, please come and meet us. We would like to meet you, and get to know you too. As one of the investors we admire very much, Seth Klarman, said, “Having great clients is the real key to investment success.” Just as you would like a portfolio manager who really understands your objectives, we would like to have clients who are likely to understand what we do, and why we do the things we do.