Hitesh Arora
Fund Manager at Abakkus and the only investment professional the firm now names on its Category III alternative funds. A nineteen-year career across Unifi Capital, Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan before joining Abakkus in January 2024 — after all four of these funds had launched.
Is Hitesh worth your time?
A well-credentialled fund manager on funds whose records mostly aren't his. Abakkus names him — and only him — as the investment person on four Category III alternative funds, and that attribution has recently been sharpened rather than inherited: between May 2025 and July 2026 the firm removed its founder and a director from the same disclosure column, leaving him alone. The difficulty is timing. He arrived in January 2024 — his previous employer's monthly deck drops him from its roster that month, and Abakkus's own deck names him weeks later — and all four funds launched before that, the oldest by roughly four and a half years. Abakkus publishes no returns, no assets and no fee terms for any of them, because Category III alternative funds are privately placed. So this is a page about who runs these funds now, not about a track record he built.
Investors who want the Abakkus alternative-fund book and are choosing it on the firm's process and the current manager rather than on a personal track record. The attribution is current and unusually deliberate — Abakkus narrowed it to him by removing two more senior names from its own filing. The firm's portfolio-management arm carries effectively no investor complaints.
- He joined Abakkus in January 2024 and all four funds launched before that — the Emerging Opportunities Fund – 1 by roughly four and a half years, the youngest by two months. Any since-inception figure for these funds is largely not his record.
- Abakkus publishes no returns, no assets and no fee terms for any of these four funds. Category III alternative funds are privately placed, so there is no public performance history to assess.
- Performance figures on Abakkus's website belong to its portfolio-management approaches, which carry near-identical names — an Emerging Opportunities Approach and Fund, a Diversified Alpha Approach and two Diversified Alpha Funds — and are managed by Aman Chowhan. Check which vehicle any number you are shown belongs to.
- Several data platforms credit these funds to founder Sunil Singhania. Abakkus's own current material names him as manager of no scheme; he is Promoter and Director.
- He is the sole named investment person on these four funds and on five more Abakkus schemes. No deputy or co-manager is named anywhere in the firm's material.
- Abakkus has disclosed five supervisory actions, none of them a penalty. Two are SEBI administrative warnings for delayed filing of quarterly activity reports — the warning dated 10 January 2024 names Abakkus Growth Fund, the exact trust holding these four schemes. The other three are portfolio-management inspection observations, including a finding that the firm failed to maintain the ₹50 lakh minimum investment per client during partial redemptions or fee accrual. None names him personally.
- He has effectively no public profile. A news search for his name alongside the firm returns nothing, and Abakkus's press coverage is uniformly framed around its founder. A reader will struggle to corroborate this attribution outside the firm's own documents.
- Abakkus publishes no complaints data for its alternative funds at all — the requirement attaches to its portfolio-management, adviser and research registrations, which are all nil.
- Abakkus's own sources disagree on attribution: its product pages name him alone, its regulatory filing pairs him with the compliance officer, and the superseded version of that filing named the founder and a director as well.
About Hitesh Arora
Hitesh Arora is a Fund Manager at Abakkus, the Mumbai investment house founded by Sunil Singhania in 2018. Abakkus's own investor presentation records his qualifications as B.Tech, MS, MBA and CFA, his total work experience as nineteen years, and his past organisations as Unifi Capital, Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan. The firm publishes no dates for those roles and no longer biography.
He is the named investment person on four of the firm's Category III alternative funds: the Emerging Opportunities Fund – 1, the Growth Fund – 2, the Diversified Alpha Fund and the Diversified Alpha Fund – 2. Abakkus's product pages list him as the sole key person on each.
He joined after all four launched. Neither firm announced the move, but both published monthly material that dates it. Unifi Capital's corporate deck for December 2023 still carries him as “Vice President (Fund Manager)”, managing its Insider Shadow strategy and covering metals, power and telecom; its January 2024 deck drops him while leaving the rest of the roster intact. Abakkus's own investment-profile deck, carrying data as at 31 January 2024, already lists “Hitesh Arora — Fund Manager” on its team slide. He therefore moved in January 2024 — by which time the youngest of these four funds had been running two months, and the oldest four and a half years.
He also appeared on the investment-team line of Abakkus's portfolio-management approaches from mid-2024 to at least June 2025, and has since been removed from those. Those three PMS approaches are managed by Aman Chowhan.
Career
- Jan 2024 – present
Fund Manager, Abakkus
Named as the sole key investment person on four Category III alternative funds. Neither firm announced the move; it is dated by their own monthly decks — Unifi carries him in December 2023 and not in January 2024, and Abakkus names him on a deck carrying January 2024 data. He also carried the investment-team line on Abakkus's PMS approaches from mid-2024 to mid-2025, and has since been removed from those.
- to Dec 2023
Vice President (Fund Manager), Unifi Capital
Unifi's own corporate decks describe him managing its Insider Shadow strategy and covering metals, power and telecom, and record more than a decade in credit markets at J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank beforehand. Abakkus itself publishes only the employer names, with no dates or roles.
Five principles
The MEETS framework
Abakkus screens on Management, Earnings, Events and Trends, Timing and Structural factors. Two of the four funds on this page name it explicitly in their published objectives.
Happy to be contrarian
One of the firm's six stated principles, alongside Alpha Generators, Fundamentals Driven, Agile and Flexible, Patience, and Risk Reward Equation.
A published list of what they avoid
The firm states it does not chase momentum, churn unnecessarily, copy and mimic, or take credit risk.
15:15:15, on the emerging-opportunities book
Companies qualifying on at least two of three tests — return on equity above 15%, earnings growth above 15%, or a price-to-earnings ratio below 15. The firm writes it with colons.
A fixed cap frame on the alpha funds
The two Diversified Alpha funds are constructed to an explicit 40:30:20:10 split across market capitalisations rather than left to drift.
The call that shows the method working
The firm narrowed the attribution to him
The strongest evidence here is a change Abakkus made to its own filing. Its “Regulatory information of AIF(s)” disclosure names the key investment team of every scheme. In the version dated May 2025, the entry for these four funds read Sunil Singhania, Biharilal Deora and Hitesh Arora. In the current version, dated 1 July 2026, it reads Hitesh Arora and Kiran Loke. The firm removed its founder and a director and left him as the only investment person named. Its product pages go further and list him as the sole key person on all four.
That matters because the market disagrees. Several portfolio-management data platforms credit these same funds to Sunil Singhania. Abakkus's own current material names him as manager of no scheme at all — he is Promoter and Director. Where this site and the data platforms differ, this site follows the firm.
One qualification, stated rather than buried. Kiran Loke, who appears beside him in that regulatory column, is the compliance officer of the investment manager, and she is listed on all ten Abakkus schemes including funds run by other people. So the column is partly a compliance record and cannot carry the attribution on its own. What carries it is the product pages, where he is the only name.
- 6 Jun 2019Abakkus Emerging Opportunities Fund – 1 launches — roughly five years before he joins.
- 11 Nov 2021Abakkus Growth Fund – 2 launches.
- 14 Dec 2022Abakkus Diversified Alpha Fund launches.
- 11 Oct 2023Abakkus's team page, captured this date, carries a full roster and does not include him.
- Dec 2023Unifi Capital's monthly deck still lists him as Vice President (Fund Manager); the January 2024 edition drops him while the rest of the roster is unchanged.
- 7 Nov 2023Abakkus Diversified Alpha Fund – 2 launches.
- Jan 2024Abakkus's investment-profile deck, carrying data as at 31 January 2024, names “Hitesh Arora — Fund Manager” on its team slide.
- 1 Jul 2026The firm's AIF regulatory disclosure now names him as the only investment person on these four funds, the founder and a director having been removed.
How the strategies have performed
Trailing returns, net of fees, annualised beyond one year. Shown only when sourced and dated; missing figures are unavailable, never zero.
| Strategy | 1Y | 3Y | 5Y | Since inception |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abakkus Diversified Alpha Fund - 2 | +11.4% | — | — | +18.05% |
| Abakkus Diversified Alpha Fund | +8.99% | +20.51% | — | +19.52% |
| Abakkus Emerging Opportunities Fund-1 | +1.72% | +17.35% | +16.59% | +27.43% |
| Abakkus Growth Fund - 2 | +5.89% | +14.86% | — | +15.68% |
Your return will not be the headline number. This is the spread of Hitesh's 3 tracked strategies' 3-year CAGR. Which strategy you hold, and when you invested, both move your outcome. Strategy-level dispersion, not a record of individual client accounts.
Figures are historical, unaudited and third-party reported, as of 2026-06-30. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.
What to press Hitesh on
Bring these to the call.
Ask what he has actually managed here, and since when.
Abakkus publishes no joining date; its own material puts it between October 2023 and July 2024. Ask the firm to confirm the date and to provide performance for these funds from that date rather than from inception.
Am I being shown the fund or the approach?
The names are nearly identical and the managers are different people. Ask which vehicle every figure belongs to, and get it in writing.
Ask for the returns, the assets and the fees.
Abakkus publishes none of the three for these funds. Ask for a scheme-level factsheet, the current net asset value, the fee and hurdle structure and the exit terms before committing.
One name, nine schemes, no deputy.
He is the sole named investment person on these four funds and on five more. Ask who the deputy is, who signs off on trades, and what happens if he leaves.
Why were the founder and a director removed from the filing?
Between May 2025 and July 2026 Abakkus removed Sunil Singhania and Biharilal Deora from the key investment team of these funds. Ask what changed, and what Singhania's involvement in the alternative book now is.
Two schemes have disappeared from the filing.
Abakkus Growth Fund – 1 and Growth Fund – 3 appeared in the May 2025 disclosure and are absent from the current one, with no product pages. The firm does not say they are closed. Ask what happened to them and how investors were treated.
Hitesh Arora · FAQ
What does Hitesh Arora manage?
Is the funds' performance his record?
Why is there no performance or fee information?
Doesn't Sunil Singhania run these funds?
Who is Kiran Loke, and is she a co-manager?
What are his qualifications?
Considering Hitesh's strategy?
We'll pull the current Disclosure Document, the actual fee schedule, and a portfolio-overlap check against what you already own.
PMS Sahi Hai is a distributor (APMI Reg. APRN08358), not a SEBI-registered Investment Adviser. APMI registration does not constitute an endorsement. We are paid by the product manufacturer; this does not change the price you pay. PMS & AIF investments are subject to market risks; past performance is not indicative of future returns. This is not investment advice. PMS Sahi Hai is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Hitesh Arora.