Nalanda Capital

Founder and Managing Partner Pulak Prasad leads the investment team and sets the overall strategy. He shaped the firm's research methodology while at Warburg Pincus and formalized it in his 2021 book on evolutionary investing. Decision-making is centralized, consistent with the fund's concentrated portfolio of fewer than 20 positions.

Nalanda does not rely on broker networks or management roadshows for primary idea generation. The team maintains a self-built database of Indian companies that meet its governance and business-quality filters, conducting deep primary research over months before initiating a position. The firm's public equities universe means every target is already listed and its disclosures publicly available, but Nalanda's distinguishing practice is the depth and duration of its pre-investment diligence.

Nalanda is a long-only public equities manager, but its behavior is atypical. The fund targets 5-to-7-year holding periods and does not short stocks or use leverage. The strategy more closely resembles a permanent capital vehicle than a traditional mutual fund or hedge fund.

None. The firm invests exclusively in publicly listed companies and has not raised a private-equity or venture-capital vehicle. Its differentiation comes from treating public securities with a private-equity temperament, not from blending asset classes.

The firm is named after Nalanda University, an ancient center of learning in present-day Bihar, India, that operated for roughly 800 years. The reference signals the firm's emphasis on deep scholarship, long-term thinking, and institutional resilience — themes that also appear in Pulak Prasad's published investment philosophy.