In an effort to explain significance of mutual funds and to de-jargonize its complicated terminology, AMCs have come up with innovative methods of delivering the mutual fund story through comics, cartoons and short films.
So, on one hand, Axis Mutual Fund is trying to explain the mutual funds concepts through popular Punjabi comic characters Santa and Banta, on the other IDFC has produced a short Hindi film called ‘Bachat Nivesh Badhat’.
Axis MF has introduced the third Sardar in the Santa-Banta tale called Funta. Funta is an intelligent Sardar who tries to explain Santa and Banta the significance of mutual fund investments by using simple examples. Karan Dutta, National Sales Head of Axis MF said that the 6 series of Santa-Banta-Funta is a part of the investor awareness program aimed at simplifying communication between investors and AMCs.
Sometime back, Edelweiss MF came up with a character called Mr Absolute (depicting a common man) to explain various attributes of Edelweiss Absolute Return Fund. Vikaas Sachdeva, CEO of Edelweiss MF said “We have tried to explain our product in simple terms. It’s not a part of investor awareness programme it’s just an effort to simplify the understanding of product among the investors.”
Birla Sun Life MF has used the old age fable of Crow and Pitcher to illustrate the advantage of SIP in achieving financial goals.
SBI MF,
Tata MF and Kotak Mahindra MF came up with Fund Guru, Professor Simply Simple and
Faayde lal Ke Funde. All the concepts aim to explain the mutual funds jargons
in an interesting and easy way.
A Tata MF Spokesperson said “Through Professor Simply Simple, we have got something right and we plan to build on this success. We are therefore looking forward to taking this initiative further by creating engaging videos that would spread virally and reach out and influence more people. We also plan to create a separate micro-site to host the lessons and videos. We are also planning to create engaging games which will have people participate and learn in an unobtrusive manner.”
IDFC MF has found a novel way to explain the relevance of mutual funds with the help of a short Hindi film called ‘Bachat Nivesh Badhat’. The 13 minute long film revolves around three men - Kharcha Lal, Bachat Ram and Nivesh Kumar and their families along with a narrator called Shubhchintak. As the name suggests, Kharcha Lal fritters away his earning in expensive jewellery, clothes and other luxury items. A few years later, he meets with an accident and all his money is spent on medical treatment. Bachat Ram saves money but is unable to buy a house. Nivesh Kumar, has, of course smartly invested his savings in mutual funds and is able to achieve his financial goal and buys the same house which Bachat Ram failed to buy.
Moral of the story: If you want to attract investors, take the help of comics, cartoons and films.
