The Company was founded by Amitabh Sonthalia in 1998 as a stock-broking and proprietary trading firm. The firm was named after our then Chairman and co-founder Late Shri Sant Kumar Sonthalia, a second generation stock-broker with a reputation built over decades of experience in the Indian capital markets.
We started operations in the year 2000 after acquiring the membership of the National Stock Exchange of India. The focus during the initial years was on facilitating trading and investments for some leading individuals and corporate houses in India. We also managed the proprietary book consisting mainly of arbitrage and other lucrative market-neutral strategies, developed in-house.
To further strengthen our investment focus, our founding director, Amitabh Sonthalia, enrolled for and completed the Executive MBA program at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Singapore, during 2004-06. Eventually, the structural shifts in the markets and exposure to global best practices, led us towards a more research oriented outlook. Accordingly, in 2004 we started our Equity Research division.
The period 2008 onwards was very tumultuous in the history of the Global Financial markets. It was also a period of great learning for us as our risk management, trading, and investing skills were put to test. We were able to weather this and benefit from both the volatility and the outstanding opportunities that were thrown up by the markets. In a significant strategic move, we shifted our focus from stock broking to managing proprietary assets across different asset classes.