Abrdn New India Investment Trust (ANII)

ANII is a single-county investment company focused on India's equity market. It aims for long-term capital growth by targeting high-quality companies with strong fundamentals, leveraging a bottom-up investment approach to identify ‘compounders’ — businesses capable of delivering consistent outperformance over time. India’s robust macroeconomic reforms, favourable demographic trends, and structural economic growth are central to ANII's investment thesis, and it takes a conviction approach to play this, running a portfolio of 40-42 companies spanning financial services, healthcare, and consumer markets.In this interview, John Hughman chats to James Thom, Senior Investment Director at Abrdn and co-manager of ANII. They discuss India’s investment potential and the company’s strategy to tap into it; the macroeconomic improvements, including policy-driven stability, and the country’s ‘demographic dividend’ and growing per capita wealth as catalysts for growth; why India’s premium valuations are justified, and how a benign economic and political backdrop is likely to drive further corporate earnings growth; India’s growing involvement in global supply chains and how they are offset by persistent challenges, including job creation and geopolitical risks.