Hi, I’m

KESHAV

Keshav Mittal

MITTAL

Running Long distance Kitchen Ricotta cheesecake Football Defender Outdoors Hiking
NYU Stern ’29
Long/short equity research
Lucknow, India → New York
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Sophomore at NYU Stern. I got here by way of business biographies, a family in real estate, and my grandmother’s craft. All three still shape how I work.

Background

I grew up in Lucknow, in the north of India, in a family that ran a real estate business. My grandmother had been an artisan before she set it aside to raise the family, and the old markets of the city were part of my childhood.

I spent twelve years at La Martiniere College on a full scholarship, served as head boy, and took Economics and Accounting in my final years because I wanted to understand what sat behind the products and companies I read about. In 2025 I moved to New York to study Finance and Accounting at NYU Stern, with a minor in Mathematics and Computer Science.

What defines me most is inquisitiveness. I take up something new, try to learn it properly, and try to learn as much from the people involved as from the task itself.

Reading

Business biographies, since the pandemic. Barbarians at the Gate and the Ferrari story first, Competition Demystified and Dead Companies Walking more recently, and the Acquired podcast on most walks.

Football and tennis

Defender. The one thing I would teach anyone is to play on your toes, because the reaction speed comes from there.

Long-distance running

Where I do my clearest thinking about a business.

Hiking

Cold Spring in upstate New York most recently, and the hill stations of northern India before that.

Ricotta cheesecake

The Italian kind. I take it more seriously than most people expect.

Dance

Free-style classes from Grade 1 through middle school. It is the one thing that is not on my resume.

Film and SUITS

I pay close attention to how films are lit and framed. SUITS is a long-standing favourite, and the negotiation scenes hold up well.

Ed Sheeran

The music I default to when I am working.

Before Stern

Two things I did in Lucknow that I still think about more than anything on my resume.

Proudest work

Gulliyans of Lucknow

400+artisans reached across three states
5exhibitions organised
~$75Kin sales generated through them
25+loan applications supported

One evening, walking through the old markets with my grandmother, we stopped at stalls where craftsmen pointed out the fine details in their patterns. What I noticed was that many of them were struggling. The skill was intact. The market had moved toward modern advertising and retail formats, and they had not been taken along.

I started Gulliyans of Lucknow to work with them directly: setting up an online presence, helping them understand pricing and positioning, and connecting them to larger marketplaces and to footfall through collaborations. With the state Bar Council we produced a legal and financial toolkit so artisans could navigate government schemes and protect their work.

The part I am proudest of is the recognition of value in something easily overlooked. That perspective has shaped how I look at businesses since.

Where the research habit began

The dairy cooperative report

As a high school researcher collecting data on defects in cooperative dairy supply chains, I found tampered lactometers in widespread use. Small farmers were losing 40 to 45% of the income they were owed to middlemen using manipulated tools.

A local aggregator I had come to know showed me his ledgers. Craters on the mud roads tripled his fuel cost in the monsoon, and defrauding farmers was the only way the route stayed open. Calling him out would have cut the village off from its buyer. Staying quiet would have let the theft continue.

I wrote a data-backed report showing that the route could not run honestly at those costs, and took it to the district council, which agreed to pave the roads and subsidise fuel. The lesson I took from it is to study how a system broke before naming the villains, and it is still the way I approach a company.

Why investing

My interest in business began with reading about it: the RJR Nabisco buyout, the history of Ferrari, and case studies of the products I used every day. Growing up around a family real estate business, I saw that the interesting part of a transaction was rarely the asset. It was the structure, the financing and the negotiation.

Investing is graded. A view about a business becomes a position, and the position eventually tells you whether the view was right. I find that discipline more honest than most, and it is why I chose to spend my time here.

Before Stern I managed high-net-worth portfolios in fixed income and long/short equities at CapGrow Capital, which showed me how much technical depth sits behind a decision. At Stern, placing first of 400 in the FTI Financial Accounting Case Competition confirmed that I read financial statements well. The pitches since then have been an effort to turn that reading into judgment.

How I work

I find one number in a business and pull on it until the pitch holds or breaks.

It is slow work. It is also the only way I have found to reach a conclusion I would put capital behind.

See the pitches ↓
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Selected pitches

Each one began as a single measurable claim. Scroll to move across.

GENI

Long
Genius Sports · NYSE · Applied Fundamental Research · Summer 2026

Genius Sports’ data feed gives in-play betting markets a structural speed advantage that the market prices as a commodity.

  1. Across 8,000 Kalshi bets, markets using Genius data settle in 202.6 seconds against 251 without it. That gap is what allows a sportsbook to reprice before the next play, and it is the source of the supplier’s pricing power.
  2. The U.S. wagering mix is shifting toward in-play, where suppliers capture roughly 2.65x pre-match pricing. A unit-economics framework for managed trading models that shift against an 18% decline in the fees DraftKings pays to run live betting.

WMS

Long
Advanced Drainage Systems · NYSE · Quantitative Finance Society · 2026

Advanced Drainage Systems holds a structural cost advantage over Contech on freight and resin that the market treats as cyclical.

  1. A freight-cost model across 3,250 U.S. cities puts ADS’s average haul at 45 miles against Contech’s 109. Proximity to the job site decides the bid, and the plant footprint makes the gap durable.
  2. ADS’s vertically integrated recycled-resin platform is worth $49 to $125M a year against virgin resin, and MS4 permit renewals across 7 jurisdictions add $141M of probability-weighted revenue over 2026 to 2028.

THC

Short
Tenet Healthcare · NYSE · Quantitative Finance Society · 2026

Tenet Healthcare’s hospital portfolio is underinvested, and the cost of that underinvestment is now arriving.

  1. Across 17 divested hospitals, acquirers invested $43 to $45K per bed where Tenet had spent $17 to $19K. That $24 to $28K per-bed capex gap is a direct measure of the deferred maintenance.
  2. State reports and 28 university and anesthesia expert checks point to $154M of incremental anesthesia cost by 2030, and court-disclosed buyout terms put cumulative cash-flow pressure from physician retirements at $2.1 to $2.5B.

SAV

Long
Cold storage, Savannah GA · Private RE · Stern Real Estate Group · 2025–26

Cold storage in Savannah earns its return from occupancy pricing and power cost, and both favour the development.

  1. Rent-utilization modeling shows pricing rising from $0.90 to $1.30 per square foot above 90% occupancy, which drives a 40 to 50% NOI uplift.
  2. Power is 60 to 70% of operating cost. Savannah’s 5 to 6 cents per kWh tariff saves roughly $80 to $120K per 100K square feet each year.

Memo and model available on request.

Each pitch has a full write-up and a working model behind it. Earlier work includes a long on ResMed and a sale-leaseback case on Office Properties Income Trust.

Request →
01 / 05

Experience

This past summer I was an equity research analyst at Applied Fundamental Research, a $142M fund in Cambridge, sourcing businesses worth owning for five to seven years in Industrials and Financial Technology, and monitoring the positions the fund already held.

Before that I spent the winter in Vienna at Lacus Legacy Investments, a $5B private equity firm, working directly under two partners. The work ran on agentic tooling and API calls, which was new to me. I spent the first weeks building Python tools and ended with an earnings-quality report that pulls news, prices and annual filings together for any company. The partners’ feedback was mostly about what a tool should refuse to do, which is a lesson I have kept.

At Stern I pitch for the long/short book at the Quantitative Finance Society, sit on the strategy board of the Stern Real Estate Group, and work through restructuring cases with the Special Situations Investing Group.

Tools: Bloomberg, Capital IQ, PitchBook, LSEG, AlphaSense, Snowflake, Python, Java, Claude Code, Codex.

Jun → Aug 2026

Applied Fundamental Research

Equity Research Analyst · Cambridge, MA · $142M AUM

Sourced 5 to 7 year long positions in Industrials and FinTech, tracked KPIs on the existing book, and built the desk’s MCP and API tooling.

Dec 2025 → Jan 2026

Lacus Legacy Investments

Off-cycle Private Equity Analyst · Vienna · $5B AUM

Deal sourcing in Healthcare, Real Estate and Tech across Europe, targeting $40 to $60M EV. Analyzed the business model of a $50M DACH real estate firm.

Before Stern

CapGrow Capital

Intern · Fixed income and long/short equities

Managed high-net-worth portfolios across fixed income and long/short equities, with coverage in TMT and consumer staples.

2025 → 2029

NYU Stern

B.S. Finance & Accounting, minor in Math & Computer Science · New York

3.95 GPA, Dean’s List. Quantitative Finance Society, Stern Real Estate Group, Special Situations Investing Group. Favourite course so far: Economic Policy in the White House.

2013 → 2025

La Martiniere College

High school · Lucknow, India · Head boy

Full scholarship for all twelve years. All India Rank 4 of 135,000 in Grade 12 and Rank 3 of 240,000 in Grade 10. K. K. Dass Medal for Best All-Rounder.

1st / 400FTI Financial Accounting Case Competition
Top 10%Pari Passu Restructuring Competition, on a sale-leaseback case for a distressed office REIT
3.95GPA at Stern, Dean’s List
AIR 4All India Rank 4 of 135,000, Grade 12

Working with people

As head boy I ran our school’s annual gala by calling people every hour, triple-checking their work and finishing tasks halfway through myself. The event succeeded on paper and felt hollow, because my teammates had stopped building it with me and started trying not to let me down. I have been learning since then to organise a team through open conversation and feedback, and to hold the same standard with more room in it.

During a pitch competition on ResMed, a teammate responsible for supplier channel checks went quiet as the deadline approached, and the rest of the team began to slip with him. I spoke with him directly, learned that time and family responsibilities were the cause, and we revised the commitments around them. The analysis went in complete and on time.

At my own graduation, the closing speech was mine to give by tradition. I stepped aside for the administrative head who had done the unseen work of the year, helped him prepare, and watched him give the speech people still mention.

What I have been learning

Where the past year went, in roughly the order it happened.

01

The why behind companies

Arriving at Stern I could follow the accounting but not the conversation. I spent the winter break on Competition Demystified and Dead Companies Walking, and have read the FT and the WSJ every day since.

02

Restructuring and distressed debt

A first-semester workshop led me to the Pari Passu newsletter and then to its case competition, where my team proposed a sale-leaseback for a distressed office REIT with heavy government tenancy. Weekly seminars at the Special Situations Investing Group since.

03

Commercial real estate underwriting

Valuation, loan sizing and equity waterfalls with hurdle rates at the Stern Real Estate Group, with weekly sessions on private credit and debt-maturity shocks.

04

Derivatives and macro

Commodities and FX trading, and futures and options pricing, through the Quantitative Finance Society curriculum.

05

Building research tools that refuse to guess

Python and API workflows for filing synthesis, earnings quality and insider-trade analysis, first in Vienna and then for the desk in Cambridge. Most of the design work was in deciding what the tool should decline to say.

Lucknow◆Business biographies◆Football◆Long runs◆Hiking◆Ricotta cheesecake◆SUITS◆Ed Sheeran◆ Lucknow◆Business biographies◆Football◆Long runs◆Hiking◆Ricotta cheesecake◆SUITS◆Ed Sheeran◆

Get in
touch.

I am glad to discuss any of the work above, or to share the memo and model behind a pitch.

keshavmittal@stern.nyu.edu
LinkedIn Resume