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Essel Mutual Fund, a recent entrant in the Indian mutual fund industry, is eyeing assets under management (AUM) of ₹8,000-9,000 crore by end-March 2019, a top official said.
This is against the current quarterly AUM average of about ₹1,700 crore. The expected growth is largely going to be led by liquid funds, Viral Berawala, Chief Investment Officer, Essel Mutual Fund, told BusinessLine here
Liquid funds
Currently, at about ₹1,000 crore, liquid funds account for a lion’s share of the overall AUM, he said.
It may be recalled that Essel Finance had in September last year completed the acquisition of Peerless Mutual Fund and re-branded itself as Essel Mutual Fund in October.
“In six months from the September quarter last year, our AUM has doubled to average ₹1,700 crore. Going forward in 2018-19, we expect overall AUM to be led by liquid funds, which is expected to grow to around ₹6,000 crore,” Berawala said.
Equity hybrid fund
At the same time, this fund house is also focussing on growing the assets of its equity schemes; these assets stand at about ₹400 crore now.
In 2018-19, Essel Mutual Fund plans to launch at least three equity-oriented funds, including the upcoming Essel Equity Hybrid Fund, whose new fund offer (NFO) opens on April 9 and ends on April 23. Berdawala said that the Essel Equity Hybrid Fund could invest between 65-80 per cent of the fund corpus in equities and would be a market-cap-agnostic product (on the equity side).
Berawala said the focus of the fund house will be to ramp up the AUM and build its brand before bringing something “innovative” into the market. “In the first 12-18 months of our existence, we want to fill the white spaces. We are still not there in big categories like mid-cap funds. We will do me-too products first and then look at innovative products. We do have some ideas on the products side,” Berawala said.
Transparency
Essel Mutual Fund plans to publish the entire portfolio of its liquid funds on its website. “No other fund house is doing this and we feel there is nothing wrong in being transparent,” he said.
On earnings growth of India Inc, Berawala said he is in the camp which sees earnings growth of 18 per cent for Nifty companies in 2018-19.
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