Google trends for the search term ‘mutual fund’ reveals a growing interest amongst investors from Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Daman and Diu in MFs over the last one year ending January 2, 2019.
The two union territories were followed by Maharashtra. Even though around 40% of the industry’s AUM comes from Maharashtra, it ranks third amongst Indian states in terms of web searches for mutual fund.
In the fourth place was another union territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli while Jharkhand was in the fifth position.
This data reflects the growing popularity of mutual funds beyond top 30 cities.
Analysis of AMFI AUM reveals a similar trend too. In the last one year ending November 2018, AUM in all the five regions except Maharashtra grew substantially: Andaman and Nicobar Islands (34%), in Daman and Diu (20%), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (36%) and Jharkhand (26%). Only assets in Maharashtra contracted marginally by 1%.
AMFIs mega campaign ‘Mutual Funds Sahi Hai’ can be credited with spreading awareness about MFs in the hinterlands. Good performance of equities in the last few years also attracted investors in small town to mutual funds.
Google trends analysis for the region wise interest for a term shows the location where the term was most popular over the last one year. It ranks location based on the proportion of time individuals searched the chosen term in the location compared to the total searches in that location. A higher value means a higher proportion of all queries, not a higher absolute query count. So, a tiny state where 50% of the queries are for ‘mutual fund’ will get twice the score of a giant state where only 25% of the queries are for ‘mutual fund’.
