WhiteOak Capital Group, a boutique investment management and advisory firm, will soon launch an Emerging Markets Fund out of Gift City in Gujarat. This dollar denominated fund would target Indian investors who want to diversify and take equity exposure in various emerging markets out of Gift City, Prateek Pant, Chief Business Officer, WhiteOak Capital Asset Management Company, told businessline.

“We are filing for it (with Gift City regulator). It will take about three months for approval. This will be an opportunity for Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) investors. This is more meant for Indian diaspora. They are more comfortable with Gift City now”, Pant said.

WhiteOak Capital Group is already running a $50-million Emerging Markets Fund domiciled out of Dublin. 

“Right now what we will launch is an emerging markets fund out of Gift City. We have already launched it out of Dublin. We will now launch the same fund at Gift City targeting Indian investors who want to invest in emerging markets out of Gift City,” he said.

Over the next one year, WhiteOak Capital Group also plans to launch a Developed Markets Fund to enable Indian investors to invest in US equities out of Gift City, Pant added.

For its fund vehicles in Gift City, the country’s sole international financial services centre, WhiteOak Capital Group is setting up a subsidiary.

WhiteOak Capital is the only asset manager in India which has its own emerging markets fund launched in June 2022.  It has a ten member investment team sitting out of Singapore to manage this fund, which yielded 12 per cent return in the last one year, Pant noted.

Founded by Prashant Khemka, an investment professional with over two decades experience, WhiteOak Capital group offers investment services through a wide array of fund vehicles domiciled in India, Ireland, Mauritius, and the UK to individual and institutional investors in India and worldwide. It manages an AUM of over ₹ 50,890 crore in India dedicated equity assets as of May 31, 2023. 

DOUBLING OF AUM

Meanwhile, speaking about the journey of the retail-focused mutual fund business that was set up in India last year, Pant said that the AMC (celebrating its first anniversary) has been able to deliver what it set out to do.

 “Over the last one year of our existence, we have set up 50 branches in 50 cities and rolled out six products — four equity products and two hybrid. We have now got our basic track record across these started off. While people know us on PMS and AIF side, we are now gaining traction in retail side also,” Pant said.

Pant expressed confidence that the fund house — which now has 15,000 partners empanelled with it —would more than double its current assets under management (AUM) of ₹4,000 crore in next one year.

“If India continues its outlier story, there is no reason why we should not…I will be disappointed if we don’t significantly more than double our AUM. I am reasonably confident of more than doubling our AUM”, he said.

This fund house has in the last one year rolled out flexi cap fund; midcap fund; large cap fund; tax saver fund; balanced advantage fund and multi asset allocation fund. Pant did not rule out launch of a small cap fund in coming days but noted that nothing is on the table right now.

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