India is a country of infinite opportunity and limitless market, said Nimesh Shah, CEO, ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company when asked whether mutual funds are competing with banks’ fixed deposits.

In Dharavi, which is just 3 kms away from Bandra-Kurla Complex where most mutual funds are headquartered, savers would be more than happy if their money comes back after 5 years of investment as they are so lured by chit funds and ponzi schemes.

When mutual funds are trying hard to tap beyond the top 30 cities, there is so much work that needs to be done in the top cities itself, he said at the SBI Banking and Investors Conclave held here on Tuesday.

“An idli wala in Charni Road can easily start a monthly SIP of ₹70,000. The question is are we making efforts to tap him,” he said.

Stating that banks and MFs are complimenting and not competing with each other A Balasubramanian, MD & CEO, Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company said the industry’s ‘mutual fund sahi hai’ campaign incidentally was launched when RBI started tightening the prudential norms that capped banks loan exposure to corporate and sector.

This led to banks offering other investment products to depositors. Today, banks are the highest distributors of MF products and SBI MF is the largest in the industry, he said.

Before the ‘MF sahi hai campaign’ started in 2017, SBI MF equity AUM was ₹67,000 crore and most fund houses were bigger than SBI MF in equity AUM.

Today, he said SBI MF is the largest and has ₹5 lakh crore of equity AUM and overall asset ₹10 lakh crore.

Nilesh Shah, MD, Kotak Mahindra AMC said gold imports including smuggling are worth $500 billion and if this money is invested in banks, it would have gone to capital formation.

Sundeep Sikka, CEO, Nippon India Asset Management said of the overall SIP account, 54 per cent are from smaller cities and the number of women investors in smaller cities are much higher than big cities.

This Diwali, he said investors bought gold worth ₹500 crore through MF schemes and this is much higher than ₹40 crore logged last year.

In fact, he said the real aatma nirbhar was when foreign investors pulled out ₹90,000 crore from the equity market and the MF industry used the retail investment to absorb the shock.

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