Inside the House: WhiteOak AMC 

The Indian mutual fund industry has seen a wave of new entrants over the past few years. But though these may be new in their AMC avatar, most are backed by well-known industry veterans. Many of these new AMCs also appear to sport interesting philosophies, have funds that promise something different, or which have rapidly climbed the returns charts. 

With the influx of all these new names, we’re now launching a series where we look into the pedigree of these new AMCs, what they aim to be doing, their investment approach and so on (and thanks to our longtime subscriber for suggesting this series!)

In this report, we take a look at WhiteOak AMC. We’ll look at its background, investment approach, and how its operations and performance have shaped up so far.

Pedigree

WhiteOak Capital Management – i.e., White Oak AMC – is part of the White Oak Capital Group. This is an investment management and advisory firm established by Prashant Khemka in 2017. WhiteOak has operations both domestically and globally, servicing sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, family office and the like. As per available information, the group has a collective AUM of Rs 95,796 crore as of October 2025. The White Oak Group had established domestic PMS and AIF offerings as well as offshore funds. WhiteOak AMC is the group’s Indian mutual fund business, which started operations in July 2018. 

Before founding WhiteOak, Khemka worked with Goldman Sachs; having started out as a research analyst in the US arm of the firm, he eventually moved to senior roles there. He then served as the CIO of Goldman’s domestic arm. 

The CEO of WhiteOak AMC is Aashish P. Somaiyaa, who joined in 2020. Somaiyaa had served as MD and CEO of Motilal Oswal AMC between 2013 and 2020, overseeing the time when the AMC gained footing in the mutual fund industry and shifted from being a PMS house. 

The CIO of WhiteOak AMC is Ramesh Mantri. He joined WhiteOak Capital Management in 2017 and moved to the AMC in December 2021. Before WhiteOak, he had founded Ashoka Capital Advisors which was also an investment advisory firm. He has also worked at CRISIL as a credit analyst and at Alden Global Capital, a US-based hedge fund.

Investment Management

WhiteOak follows a multi–fund manager approach. The CIO, Ramesh Mantri, is the primary fund manager for all equity and hybrid schemes. Other managers handle debt and arbitrage. Each equity scheme also has several assistant fund managers who cover specific sectors. The primary equity manager focuses mainly on portfolio construction and risk management.

WhiteOak uses its own stock selection framework, which it calls OpcoFinco. Here, every company is viewed as having two parts: an operating business and a financing arm. The financing arm earns the cost of capital, while the operating arm earns whatever is left after covering this cost of capital. WhiteOak claims this framework helps identify companies that can earn returns above the cost of capital on incremental investments. According to them, this helps avoid optically cheap companies that struggle to generate sustainable returns and therefore underperform over time.

WhiteOak also – in its equity funds – follows a bottom-up approach with the philosophy that ‘outsized returns are earned over time by investing in great businesses at attractive values’. This approach leads to the AMC focusing heavily on midcap and smallcap stocks. The research team screens about 1,000 stocks and shortlists around 400, forming the investible universe. Sector heads then analyse the shortlisted companies in detail. 

The screening exercise is repeated at least once a year. New listings through IPOs, demergers and other events are evaluated separately as they arise. According to the founder, WhiteOak does not follow hard exclusion rules such as avoiding all companies with debt or all new-age businesses. It also looks for pricing inefficiencies, which are more common in mid- and small-cap segments.

This approach is probably a reason why the AMC’s equity funds sport an extremely large number of stocks. For one, it already has a vast investment universe. Two, this means it moves down the marketcap curve, and thus has to keep allocations low to account for both risks and liquidity. We’ll dig deeper into portfolios and performance later.

Fund Offerings

WhiteOak launched its first mutual fund, a Liquid Fund, in January 2019. Its second launch was also a debt scheme, an Ultra Short Duration Fund in June 2019. 

Its first equity fund, the WhiteOak Capital Flexi Cap Fund, came much later in August 2022. This was post Ramesh Mantri’s move to the AMC. Since then, the AMC has launched equity schemes across largecap, midcap, multicap and thematic. A notable absence in WhiteOak’s lineup is a smallcap fund. Though the AMC has said it finds significant opportunities – especially pricing inefficiencies – in mid and smallcap stocks, the CEO has publicly stated that running an open-ended small-cap fund is challenging. 

On the hybrid side, the AMC tried to be different. It started with WhiteOak Capital Balanced Advantage Fund in February 2023. In the multi-asset category, it launched in May 2023, after the shock tax changes for non-equity funds. But unlike other multi asset funds that were at the time aiming to be equity-oriented in their portfolio using derivatives, White Oak decided to be truly multi-asset and target the more lenient taxation of non-equity/non-debt funds.

In another different move, WhiteOak chose to launch a Balanced Hybrid Fund, which maintains 40%–60% equity allocation. SEBI allows an AMC to launch either a Balanced Hybrid Fund or an Aggressive Hybrid Fund (65%–80% equity), not both. WhiteOak’s scheme is one of only two Balanced Hybrid funds currently available in India as of now (though the usefulness of the category in a portfolio is limited, in our view).

On the assets side, WhiteOak has obviously pushed its equity funds. The Flexi Cap Fund leads with AUM of about Rs.6,481 crore. The Multi Asset and Mid Cap funds have also crossed Rs.4,000 crore each. In contrast, the AMC’s debt (and oldest!) schemes lag, together managing just over Rs.1,000 crore.

Portfolio trends 

We’ll focus primarily on WhiteOak’s equity funds, given their size and popularity. The following trends emerge: 

1. Smallcap dominance: A clear pattern across WhiteOak’s equity portfolios is their preference for small-cap stocks in all funds. It appears that the AMC is trying to provide smallcap-like returns without going for a pure smallcap fund! Sample this: its Flexicap fund held an average 24% over the past year in smallcaps, compared to 10% in midcaps. The ELSS fund held 34% in smallcaps, against 12% in midcaps. Even its midcap fund has the regulatory 65% in midcaps and has a solid 16% in smallcaps. Its largecap fund also sports a smattering of smallcaps.
2. Large portfolios: Another signature feature is a high number of stocks combined with high turnover. Most portfolios hold more than 100 stocks. As of October portfolio, the flexicap fund held 132 stocks, while the Midcap and Large & Midcap Funds held 115 and 113 stocks respectively. The Large Cap Fund was an exception, with a portfolio of 62 stocks. As mentioned above, this is primarily owing to its large universe of stocks and its smallcap penchant. 
3. High turnover: Turnover ratios are also high, frequently in the 200% range, implying that the portfolios are effectively rotated twice a year. The Flexicap had a turnover of 182%, while the Midcap and Large & Midcap Funds both had turnover levels of 241%. Even the largecap fund reported a 216% turnover. This churn could be partly due to its very high stock numbers, since it may be adjusting holdings based on performance or make incremental changes in holdings. It could also come from frequent profit booking or cashing in on short-term opportunities (the AMC, however, has stated it does not adopt momentum strategies). The past 2-3 years has provided ample opportunities for such short-term strategies. It remains to be seen whether the funds continue with this level of churn across all markets; it is hard to sustain churn especially in correcting markets. The funds have not yet gone through a downward market phase to test their downside containment.
4. Cash calls: Another trend is the AMC’s comparatively high cash allocation. Many of its major categories had an average cash position of around 12%. 

On sector allocation, WhiteOak’s portfolios do not show major deviations from category averages. Currently, a mild overweight to Financials and Technology is visible, while Energy appears to be underweight across several funds. that said, given the level of its churn and its stock-specific approach, sector allocations can shift.

Performance

Since the funds do not have a long operating history, we analysed one-year rolling returns of funds launched before 2024 in the key categories from their respective launch dates. Category averages and benchmark index returns have also been considered from the period of respective WhiteOak fund’s launch date. Also note that all returns are for the direct plan, growth option.

Clearly, WhiteOak funds have delivered solidly better than both index and peers across categories in its average performance. Outperformance is especially strong in the ELSS and multicap categories. This could be owing to its aggressive strategy and apparent ability to contain downsides better than peers. That said, these are based only on 1-year returns for just about 3 years – and even lesser, in the case of multicap and large & midcap funds. 

The funds’ long-term mettle is yet to be tested, as whether its strategy of high churn and large portfolios work in all market cycles. As we wrote about earlier last week, markets in the past 5 years have provided exceptional return opportunities which may be hard to come by going forward.

In the hybrid categories as well, WhiteOak has got off to a good start. Its multi-asset fund had the advantage of a good gold exposure aiding recent returns. 

On the debt side, WhiteOak’s funds have not mirrored the equity funds’ trends. Both debt funds have lagged their categories by 0.2-0.4 percentage points. But given that WhiteOak’s fund launches have firmly been on the equity side, much cannot be expected in the debt lineup. It is also likely that these debt funds exist mainly to support systematic transactions rather than to compete in the debt space.

Costs

WhiteOak’s equity and hybrid funds generally carry below-average expense ratios. Across direct plans, the AMC’s equity funds have an average expense ratio of 0.59%.

• Flexi Cap: 0.51% vs category 0.75%
  
• Large Cap: 0.57% vs 0.86%
  
• Midcap: 0.55% vs 0.78%
  
• Large & Midcap: 0.57% vs 0.72%
  

In hybrids, the average expense ratio is 0.47%.

• Balanced Advantage: 0.57% vs 0.69%
  
• Multi Asset: 0.34% vs 0.53%
  
• Equity Savings: 0.48% vs 0.70%
  

In debt, WhiteOak has only two funds, both, however charge above-average expenses:

• Liquid Fund: 0.21% vs 0.14%
  
• Ultra Short Duration Fund: 0.50% vs 0.31%

To conclude, WhiteOak has shown a strong start in its equity and hybrid categories. Their lower expense ratios also indicate a responsible approach so far. However, their portfolios’ high stock counts and high turnover imply that the investment strategies may be more oriented toward short-term opportunities. This needs to be observed over longer periods. 

At this stage, we have rated only a few WhiteOak funds and most of them have ‘Hold’ calls, primarily because we are waiting for a longer track record. We have one recommendation alone in Prime Funds from the AMC – WhiteOak Capital Special Opportunities Fund – which falls under High-Risk Turnarounds section. The intention here is to allow tapping into a high-return fund to boost overall portfolio returns, but keep allocations low to minimize impact of risks stemming from a short track record.