The headquarters of NJ India Invest Pvt. Ltd (NJ) in Surat, one of India’s largest mutual fund distributors, looks like it is in the middle of nowhere. As you leave the hustle of the main city of Surat and enter into an industrial town nearby—it’s actually an extension of Surat but comes with its own railway station on the Western Railway—it gets quieter and you see more commercial structures and warehouses than residential homes. But in the middle of Udhna Udyog Nagar Sangh Commercial Complex, the 9-storey part-glass part-concrete façade building—where NJ’s office is—stands tall. Even for those who are close to the Rs20 trillion Indian mutual fund industry, the size of the structure stands out given that the firm was started by just two individuals—Neeraj Choksi and Jignesh Desai—in June 1994, a year or two out of college. It was known as NJ Capitastocks in those days.
The story of Neeraj Choksi and Jignesh Desai—two recent college graduates in 1994 who saw a future in mutual fund sales, which not many others did, and built a business managing Rs47,500 crore in assets under management (AUM) with Rs443 crore as gross commissions in 2016-17—is worth documenting.
