Motilal Oswal Founders Portfolio: Betting on Businesses Where the Founder's Own Money Is on the Line
Behind almost every great business, at some point, sits a founder who believed in it before anyone else did - who put their own capital, reputation and years of their working life behind an idea. The Motilal Oswal Founders Portfolio is a portfolio management service built on a simple but well-evidenced conviction: that companies where the founder's own capital is meaningfully at stake alongside investors' money tend to compound wealth faster, and more durably, than companies where ownership sits with a distant multinational head office or a government mandate.
Launched in March 2023, the strategy is a relatively newer addition to Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company's (MOAMC) PMS suite, but it draws on decades of the house's research into what it calls India's entrepreneurial edge.
Behind almost every great business, at some point, sits a founder who believed in it before anyone else did - who put their own capital, reputation and years of their working life behind an idea. The Motilal Oswal Founders Portfolio is a portfolio management service built on a simple but well-evidenced conviction: that companies where the founder's own capital is meaningfully at stake alongside investors' money tend to compound wealth faster, and more durably, than companies where ownership sits with a distant multinational head office or a government mandate. Launched in March 2023, the strategy is a relatively newer addition to Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company's (MOAMC) PMS suite, but it draws on decades of the house's research into what it calls India's entrepreneurial edge. Portfolio Manager Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company Ltd. (SEBI Reg. No. INP000000670) Category PMS - Equity, founder/promoter-led businesses across market caps Strategy inception 16th March 2023 Benchmark BSE 500 TRI Investment approach The 'Founders Thesis' + QGLP-based investment framework Suggested horizon 5 years and above Fund managers Vaibhav Agrawal, Dhaval Mehta, Abhishek Anand Three Kinds of Owners MOAMC's framework starts by recognising that not all listed companies are owned, or run, the same way. Broadly, it separates the universe into three archetypes: Promoter-driven companies: primary ownership sits with an individual founder or a family, and the business is run with a focus on growth, value addition and capital formation. Multinational corporations: primary ownership sits with a foreign parent, and the India business is typically run with a focus on maintaining presence and expanding operations within a global strategy set elsewhere. Public sector undertakings: primary ownership sits with the national government, and strategy is generally oriented around alignment with broader economic and policy objectives. The Founders Portfolio is built almost entirely around the first category. The Founders Thesis The house's argument - what it calls the Founders Thesis - is that aligned incentives compound returns. When a founder's capital is locked in alongside an investor's, the two are, in a very real sense, on the same side of the table. MOAMC contrasts the three ownership types across several dimensions: founder-driven companies tend to build for multi-generational wealth and manage risk with an owner's mentality focused on protecting permanent capital; MNCs tend to optimise for externally set, quarterly-cycle KPIs; and PSUs tend to be risk-averse and process-heavy, driven by regulatory mandates and fiscal-year accountability. MOAMC's own research lends some empirical weight to this. Looking at NSE-listed companies over the decade from FY15 to FY25, the house found that founder-driven businesses grew profits roughly 5.4 times over the period and market capitalisation roughly 3.1 times - comfortably ahead of the MNC cohort (which moved from losses to profit over the period, with market cap growing roughly 2.2 times) and the PSU cohort (profit growth of roughly 2.8 times, with market cap growing roughly 1.6 times). It is worth being clear about what a study like this can, and cannot, tell you: it describes what happened, on average, across a large group of companies over one specific decade, not a guarantee of what any individual founder-led company, or this strategy, will deliver in future. But directionally, it is consistent with the intuition that skin-in-the-game ownership is a real, measurable advantage over time. How Stocks Earn Their Way Into the Portfolio The Founders Portfolio applies a fairly systematic, multi-stage filter to arrive at its final holdings, starting from a wide universe and progressively narrowing it: Universe: the top 500 listed companies by market capitalisation - spanning roughly ₹5,000 crore to over ₹11 lakh crore - form the starting point. Ownership filter: companies must generally have a minimum 26% promoter holding (inclusive of meaningful ESOP or management ownership), with an exception carved out for financial-sector companies where promoter shareholding norms differ. Profitability filter: companies must clear a minimum profit-before-tax threshold, broadly set at around ₹100 crore. Capital-efficiency filter: companies must demonstrate capital efficiency, generally a minimum through-cycle ROCE of around 15%. Quality filter (QGLP): the remaining shortlist is assessed on corporate governance, management quality, vision, execution track record, succession planning and capital-allocation discipline. Earnings and valuation filter: the final selection favours companies expected to deliver additional earnings growth of roughly 3 percentage points over the benchmark over the next three to five years, available at relatively attractive valuations. This funnel typically narrows a starting universe of 500 companies down to a final concentrated portfolio, with the house retaining flexibility to make an exception for up to about 20% of the portfolio where a high-conviction idea does not tick every box in the framework. Managing Risk in a Concentrated Portfolio Because the process above naturally produces a fairly concentrated, high-conviction portfolio, MOAMC layers a five-part risk-management framework on top of the stock-selection process: Stock weight limits: minimum and maximum exposure limits set for each holding. Sector sizing: limits on how far the portfolio's sector weights can deviate from the benchmark. Diversification: the overall portfolio is generally capped at around 20-25 stocks, balancing conviction with diversification. Profit-taking and stop-loss: a proprietary framework governs when the team trims or exits a position that has moved sharply in either direction. Liquidity: a framework to ensure the portfolio retains the ability to act efficiently when a decision needs to be executed. How the Portfolio Is Built As with any actively managed strategy, the specific companies that clear all of the filters above, and their relative weights, change over time as businesses grow, valuations move and new founder-led companies list or mature into the strategy's investable universe. Current holdings, sector allocation and market-cap split are available in MOAMC's latest factsheet - get in touch with us for the most recent copy. Performance, Sensibly Read The Founders Portfolio is benchmarked against the BSE 500 TRI and reports performance using the Time-Weighted Rate of Return (TWRR) methodology. Having launched in March 2023, it is one of the newer strategies in MOAMC's PMS suite, which is worth bearing in mind when assessing its track record - a few years of data, however encouraging, is a shorter window than the multi-cycle histories available for some of the house's older strategies. The usual caveats apply: performance-related information is not verified by SEBI, individual client returns can differ from the aggregate strategy-level figures, and past performance does not guarantee future results. Who This Strategy Is Built For The Founders Portfolio may suit investors who: Find the skin-in-the-game argument for founder-led businesses intuitive, and want a strategy built explicitly around it. Are comfortable with a concentrated portfolio of roughly 20-25 stocks spanning large-, mid- and small-caps, rather than one confined to a single market-cap band. Have a horizon of five years or more, given both the strategy's own limited history and the time typically needed for a stock-selection thesis like this to play out. Want exposure to India's broader founder-led and entrepreneurial growth story, beyond any single sector. As a concentrated, founder-focused equity strategy, it carries market risk, concentration risk, and a specific risk worth naming directly: promoter-driven ownership is not, by itself, a guarantee of good governance, which is why the framework's own quality filter explicitly screens for corporate governance and management quality. Investors should also weigh the strategy's relatively short live track record (since March 2023) when deciding how much weight to place on performance data. The Team Behind the Strategy The strategy is managed by Vaibhav Agrawal (CIO - Alternates & Fund Manager), who brings over a decade of experience in stock-picking, having earlier worked as a ratings analyst at CRISIL and as an investment analyst at Motilal Oswal AMC; Dhaval Mehta (Fund Manager), who brings 14+ years of experience in equity research and portfolio management, including a stint managing a multi-thousand-crore portfolio at Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC, and earlier roles at ASK Investment Managers, Emkay Global Financial Services, Ventura Securities and Infosys; and Abhishek Anand (Principal Officer, PMS), who brings 20+ years of experience across financial services and equities, including more than a decade at Centrum and earlier roles at SBI Capital and Dun & Bradstreet. Where Money n Wealth Fits In If the founder-led investing thesis appeals to you, Money n Wealth is empanelled to help you access the Motilal Oswal Founders Portfolio - including the latest factsheet, current holdings, and an honest assessment of whether a concentrated, founder-focused strategy fits your risk appetite and horizon. This article is for general information only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest in the Motilal Oswal Founders Portfolio. Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company Ltd. (SEBI Registration No. INP000000670) is the Portfolio Manager and is solely responsible for the strategy's investment decisions and disclosures. Investments in securities, including through portfolio management services, are subject to market risk, and clients are not offered any guaranteed or assured returns. The name of the strategy does not indicate its prospects or returns, and performance-related information for PMS strategies is not verified by SEBI. An individual client's portfolio composition and returns may vary from the aggregate strategy-level figures depending on the timing of investment and other client-specific factors. Please read the Portfolio Manager's Disclosure Document and all strategy-related documents carefully, and consult us and your tax advisor, before investing.
