Homeless to celebrity investor with Rs 120 crore portfolio, 1.2 million Twitter followers: Meet Porinju Veliyath

Once dubbed the ‘small cap czar’, Porinju Veliyath has a gripping rags-to-riches story. From losing his home and setting out to work at just Rs 1,000 per month, Porinju Veliyath is today a highly influential voice in the stock market, known for his knack of winning on multibagger stock bets. 

Veliyath is today a wealthy investor who has a lavish farmhouse and luxury cars. Known for unconventional bets, Porinju’s portfolio has a net worth of Rs 120 crore in April 2023. This is a phenomenal climb of over 2000 percent in less than 8 years. As per Trendlyne.com, his portfolio was just Rs 5.87 crore in December 2015. Porinju is also a social media star. The celebrity investor has over 1.2 million followers on Twitter.

The 60-year-old ace investor was born in 1962 in a lower-middle-class family in a village in Thrissur near Kochi in Kerala. He belonged to a farming family which hit a financial crisis when he was 16. They were forced to give up their home to fight off debts. Realising that he needs to step up, he began working as a teenager. 

Next few days - another opportunity for cherry-picking stocks. Year-end selling, global weakness & Adani, SVB sentiments, etc. bring you this opportunity!
India will shine in the emerging multi-polar geopolitics and amid the deteriorating fiscal outlook of the US and Europe.

— Porinju Veliyath (@porinju) March 14, 2023

Porinju started off earning Rs 1,000 monthly as an accountant and then worked as a phone operator with a Rs 2,500 salary. “I had to start working right from my teens…It was not easy. We were homeless when I started working,” he once told a leading business newspaper. Porinju’s first stock market job was as a floor trader with Kotak Securities in 1990. He moved to Mumbai, and took on a new name, Francis, which is an English translation of his name. He gained stock market experience doing different jobs like research analyst and fund manager. 

At the turn of the millennium, Porinju was somehow unsatisfied with life in Mumbai and decided to move back to his home state. Back in Kerala, he founded his own fund management company called Equity Intelligence in 2002 in Kochi. Apart from managing his own portfolio worth crores of rupees, Porinju also manages portfolios of other investors worth several hundred crores. His personal portfolio reached its all-time high of Rs 213.11 crore in September 2021.

Apart from being a remarkable investor, Porinju is also a businessman. He is a director of Arya Vaidya Pharmacy. The company offers a wide range of Ayurvedic products in collaboration with  Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) under the brand name ‘Lever Ayush’. He has also written a book called Ohariyiloode Engane Nettam Koyyam (In english: Complete step-by-step guide to share market and investing).