The current situation may even be worse than 2008-09, said Nilesh Shah, MD & CEO of Envision Capital. “We have all the ingredients of a bear market, all the symptoms are suggesting strong bear market. In fact, the initial set of decline has been significantly higher than what we saw in 2008-09 or probably worse than what it was in 2008-09,” he said.

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Talking about investment strategy, he said “Over the last 2 weeks we have been nibbling, we have been using these declines to buy into some of the high quality names. Learning from the past experiences in an environment like this, we need to stick to high quality names and use these huge declines to keep adding and accumulating these kind of names and that’s exactly what we have been doing.”

“We are still sitting on some cash and that’s been helpful. It helps us to have some dry powder when by and large this carnage is over,” said Shah in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

According to him, it’s hard to call the market bottom because no one knows where the bottom is. “Of course, financial markets are reacting to corona thing and that has its implications on the real economy but our financial markets are reacting to all of that and I think it’s too early to take a precise call or have a very definitive view in terms of where all this is going to settle down at,” he further added.

On the banking space, he said the sector will face challenge of slow economic activity. “Right now some of the banking names look to be overdone. These are circumstances in which regulators can step in and initiate a lot of measures which can essentially calm the nerves and that’s something that cannot be ruled out."

"In some of the names, valuations are becoming attractive and these are stocks, which probably if they survive and do well, they would essentially in the next round come up and bounce back strongly, but the big caveat is if they survive,” Shah added.

He further said that IT companies will bounce bank after 1-2 quarters of subdued growth.

Consumer stocks haven't corrected enough yet, said Shah.

“In terms of the real economy, the core sectors, probably one can still afford to wait. So I would still think that the long-term India story is going to revolve significantly around the financials and consumer names. Value is beginning to emerge in the banking and financial space. The consumer space is something where probably one may still want to wait before prices become even more attractive,” added Shah.