Jhunjhunwala, the man with the Midas touch

Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who died on Sunday at age 62, was often dubbed India’s Warren Buffett due to his passion for equity investing.

The death of India’s best-known stock investor came just a week after the official launch of Akasa Air, one of his latest investments, and about four decades after he started dabbling in stocks with borrowed money while he was still in college.

It led to an outpouring of tributes from prominent people such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi to small investors who made sense of market vagaries with the ace investor’s advice.

“Rakesh Jhunjhunwala was indomitable. Full of life, witty and insightful, he leaves behind an indelible contribution to the financial world. He was also very passionate about India’s progress,” PM Modi said on Twitter.

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A chartered accountant by education, Jhunjhunwala had not been keeping well for the last few months due to a kidney ailment. The self-made billionaire is survived by his wife Rekha, who is also an investor, and three children.

The Jhunjhunwala couple had founded RaRe Enterprises, a broking firm named after them, in 1992.

The ace investor became fascinated with stocks by watching his father, a retired tax commissioner, juggle market investments, he had said in an earlier interview.

After graduating with honours from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, he borrowed Rs 5,000 from a brother-in-law in 1985 and began buying shares at age 25. The Sensex, which was at 150 when Jhunjhunwala began investing, now trades at over 59,000 points. He was the 36th richest billionaire in India, according to Forbes’ 2021 listing, and a self-made trader known for picking stocks for the long term.

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He believed in the Indian story and carved a niche for himself as a risk-taking and witty “Big Bull of Dalal Street”. With a sharp understanding of the stock market and good grip on macro and micro issues that affected India Inc, he never shied away from taking bold risks, which put him in the top league of investors.

“Risk is the essence of life. If you don’t risk, you are nothing,” Jhunjhunwala once said.