At a time when vegetable prices are soaring, investment in mutual funds are getting more affordable.
Two fund houses - Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund and Reliance Nippon Life Mutual Fund have reduced the minimum lump sum investment amount in their schemes to as low as Rs 100.
Recently, Reliance Nippon Life MF changed the minimum investment amount for lump sum investment in its multi cap fund and growth fund to Rs 100 from Rs 5000. The measure came into effect from August 29 this year. Aditya Birla Sun Life MF is another fund house that has been offering this for some time now.
Responding to an email query, Reliance Nippon Life MF said, “A significant number of Indians do not have a stable income (wage earners, farmers, etc). Hence, they are not comfortable running SIPs as they are not sure of having money in their bank account on the day of SIP instalment. Hence, they wish to invest as and when they have additional flow to invest. We wish to enable access to all such investors.”
“By making the investment size smaller, we intend to make a suitable long term investment product accessible to such investors who can start small and scale later when comfortable,” Reliance Nippon MF said.
A Balasubramanian, MD and CEO, Aditya Birla Sun Life MF believes that Rs.100 lump sum would help the industry bring investors who are at the bottom of the pyramid. He further said that the fund house introduced this facility after the micro SIP of Rs.100 received an overwhelming response from online investors. “We have seen people opting for micro SIPs through online platforms. In my view, a one time investment of Rs.100 will gain more traction among these investors. I am confident that these people will increase their investment once they gain confidence in mutual funds.”
Nevertheless, the challenge in making such offerings successful is to make them cost-effective and viable.
Recognising the challenge Bala said, “While the cost of acquisition is much higher than Rs.100 for AMCs, we should not discourage such people to invest in mutual funds just because they are underprivileged.”
Some industry officials said that one of the major challenges will be to smoothen operational challenges such as transactions. Although mobile and data connectivity has already reached rural India, the target investors for such offerings are still not comfortable with digital transactions.
