A sailor’s flair for steering portfolios

An avid sailor, Sarath Reddy takes to the high seas on weekends. That gives the 57-year-old investment manager and founder-CIO of Unifi Capital the chance to get away from the stress and uncertainties of the financial market."The passing of my father, and then my grandfather when I was very young, shaped who I have become. I began working early and chanced upon investing. It was interesting and became a logical career aspiration as I enjoyed it and was good at it," says Reddy. As a youngster, he read about investment gurus and admired the founders of Goldman Sachs. "But as an adult today I look up to Shiv Nadar and Azim Premji. More than MNCs, I'm inspired now by interesting journeys of people like these," he adds.Reddy started out with an MNC bank in Mumbai, which offered a great work culture and a sense of security. While he learned a lot and even met his wife there, professionally he did not find enough freedom. He quit, came to Chennai and at age 27 helped a business house set up an investment services platform from scratch in 1994. By 2001, he was ready to do something on his own. He got together with three other people to launch Unifi. Teamwork has been a defining part of the journey. Starting with four employees, Unifi now has 150, and serves about 11,000 clients in 22 states with offices in all major cities. However, Unifi, which has around 25,000 crore assets under management, is a company with no annual targets for staff, and is completely owned by 15 of its employees."As an asset management firm, Unifi began with portfolio management, added AIF (alternative investment fund) about 13 years ago and mutual fund last year. All three are focused on asset management," says Reddy. Until 2012, Unifi remained rooted to the south. It later expanded to Mumbai and then Delhi and Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Pune.While starting Unifi, Sarath put in all the capital he had, but he needed more. He roped in five like-minded investors. After some time, the company realized that investors, beyond a point, don't add much value. Between the 5th and the 17th year, the promoters ploughed their profits back in and bought them out. The investors did quite well and were happy to sell their shares back. Unifi then became entirely employee-owned and started giving stocks to longer-term employees. Not just employees, even most clients have stuck with the firm for the long term."The challenge for firms like ours is we don't have access to talent like Mumbai has. We develop our own talent, but convincing people from other cities to move to Chennai for the long term isn't easy. Once we get them to come here, people stay back. That became a source of strength," says Reddy.In April 2024, Unifi launched its subsidiary for international investors, Unifi Investment Management, based in GIFT City, Ahmedabad. This firm currently manages and advises on assets worth $72 million for global institutions and families. For Indian investors seeking global diversification, Unifi is among the earliest fund houses to build an in-house team dedicated to bottom-up research and active investing in a concentrated portfolio of 20 businesses selected from 250 largest firms across the world. In March 2025, Unifi Mutual Fund launched its first scheme, the Unifi Dynamic Asset Allocation Fund, which currently has an AUM of over 600 crore across 1,950 investors. Unifi Mutual Fund plans to launch two more schemes shortly and will focus on actively managing only these three schemes for the foreseeable future.