In this edition of ‘Principal Business Champions – Winning Ideas’, we asked distributors to share with us learnings from their favourite IPL team or player.
Principal Business Champions is a joint initiative between Principal Mutual Fund and Cafemutual that offers a platform to the mutual fund distributor (MFD) community to share their valuable experiences.
We have received some interesting responses from distributors. Here are the entries that received the highest votes.
Website winner: Deepesh Mehta, Grow Wealth, Bangalore
I find many lessons in the Kings XI Punjab's journey this year. Despite having some of the top run scorers of the tournament - K L Rahul and Mayank Agrawal - the team could not do well in the first half of IPL 2020. They won only 1 out of 7 matches. This indicates that individual contribution is important but not enough.
In the 2nd half of the tournament; however, Kings XI Punjab's fortunes changed dramatically. This is because they found the right balance by including Chris Gayle in the playing eleven, backed talented T20 players like Nicholas Pooran and Chris Jordan and showed faith in some of the young Indian talents. So the learning is investing directly in a few stocks alone cannot help you achieve your goals as much as diversifying your investments in mutual funds can. After all, good players can win you matches but you need a good team to win tournaments.
Facebook winner: Girish Ganaraj, Finwise Personal Finance Solutions
I see the IPL teams analogous to the segments of the market. I see Mumbai Indians as a large cap stock. It has a galaxy of stars and almost every player is a match-winner. The team has a street-smart leader who manages talent well and guides players skillfully throughout the season. Also, it is a franchisee with deep pockets that can afford the best of coaches to devise the right strategy to support a winning team, year after year.
Similarly, I think Kings XI Punjab has the same characteristics as midcap/small-cap stocks. What this team cannot afford in terms of size and deep pockets, it substitutes with confidence and swag. Right from giving a chance to unconventional and young leaders; the team is filled with relatively unknown players, who on a given day can win a match against any team. But when the going gets tough (volatile), they sometimes end up short of breath.
Twitter winner: Rajendra Adya, Smartlink Finserv, Vadodara
My favourite player in the IPL is Mahendra Singh Dhoni. His ability to stay calm and cool in tough situations makes him a great finisher. His calmness also helps his team members to stay focused on their game in difficult situations.
Secondly, Dhoni's leadership quality is impressive. On several occasions, Dhoni has played the captain's innings to single handedly win matches for CSK. Further, he has shown that you do not need the most glamorous T20 players in the world to win the tournament. The key is to make tactical changes and manage the resources well, back experienced players to play their natural game and groom youngsters to get the best out of them.
