Nitin (Nick) Kumbhani

Nick Kumbhani started in 1968 as a freshman in Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey after finishing high school focused on Advanced Math, Science and English in Mumbai, India with just enough funds to finish one semester. At Stevens he took two courses in Computer Programming primarily doing numerical analysis using FORTRAN language on IBM Mainframe. He started working the second shift at a wire manufacturing company in Northern NJ. After finishing his freshman year at Stevens, WVU was gracious enough to give Nick two years of scholarship in the school of Electrical Engineering. Nick finished his undergraduate and received his BSEE in December 1971, with a minor in Economics. Nick is deeply grateful to WVU for the two-year tuition waiver scholarship.  

Nick began his master's in computer science at WVU in 1972. At the time, he also had a part-time job as a Fortran programmer at WVU Computer Center where he met a group of talented people that made a big impact on his life. Among those was Addison Fischer, a fellow Lane Academy member. Fischer recruited Nick to work for Allen Services Corp. in June of 1977. He was assigned to a project for NCR corp. to develop firmware for their third generation ATM currency dispenser. After completing that, Nick developed software in Intel’s native 8080 processor assembly language for the National Bureau of Standards Encryption algorithm for ATMs and banking software systems.  

Nick founded his own company, Source Data Systems (SDS), which pioneered ATM software and worked with over 100 major banks both nationally and globally. SDS was later acquired by a Fortune 500 company. He went on to found Kumbhani & Co (later Apex Capital Management) in 1987 to follow his second passion, Investment management.  

His philosophy was a combination of Established and Emerging Growth companies with bottom up qualitative and fundamental analysis approach which focused on Thematic Investing validated by market trends. His company started out with less than $1 million under management but it grew to around $100 Million mostly through word of mouth by 2000. This resulted in the best record of accomplishment among peer groups in the Large Cap growth Equity. Nick pioneered a whole new category called SMID (Small/Mid Cap) in the USA and went after the institutional client platforms serving many of the largest pension funds in the country.  

By early 2016 the company exceeded over $7 billion in Assets Under Management and 22 employees. Nick had distributed 31% of the company shares to employees. Later that year in June of 2016, they sold the firm to Fiera Capital Inc. He left Fiera at the end of 2021 and started another firm called Accent Capital Management. Nick also founded a Stock Brokerage house in Chennai, India in 1995, grew it to 39 employees and 21 satellite brokers and sold it to one of the largest institutional banks (ICICI) in 2001 

Throughout his career, he has worked diligently to build and preserve a track record that was in the top decile of all the investment managers in the US. The hallmark of his leadership style has been to listen to his employees. He empowers, nurtures and shares wealth with them, especially women and underprivileged workers. He has never lost an employee at either software or Investment Management firms.  

Nick’s wife, Kamal, joined him in 1994. Kamal has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Science and an MBA from India. They have worked side by side and are equally responsible for their success.