Birla Sun Life, Sundaram and IIFL have come out with their new fund offers.
Buoyed by the healthy inflows in equity funds and steady rise of equity folios since May, the mutual fund industry is trying to attract investors through NFOs. AMFI data shows that fund houses have collected over Rs.6,000 crore from NFOs in the current calendar year.
Three fund houses – Birla Sun Life, Sundaram and IIFL have come out with their equity funds. Of the three, one is a RGESS, one open end and one is closed end.
Birla Sun Life has launched third series of its RGESS Fund called Birla Sun Life Focused Equity Fund Series 3 while Sundaram MF has launched seventh series of its Sundaram Select Micro Cap (1400 days).
Benchmarked against CNX 100, Birla Sun Life Focused Equity Fund – Series 3 aims to invest in companies from BSE 100, CNX 100 and PSU Navratnas, Maharatnas and Miniratnas (RGESS eligible securities). Anil Shah will manage the fund. It will follow a blend of bottom up approach (for stock selection) and top down approach (for sector allocation). The fund manager would primarily focus on long term growth prospects for identifying stocks.
Earlier, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund had collected Rs. 89 crore from the last two series of its RGESS. RGESS provides 50% deduction from income for investments of up to Rs 50,000 which is over and above deduction of Rs. 1 lakh for first-time investors under Section 80CCG of Income Tax Act.
IIFL has launched its open ended equity scheme called IIFL India Growth Fund. The NFO is currently open for subscription and closes on October 21. The scheme aims to generate long term capital appreciation by investing in a portfolio of equity and equity related securities. Benchmarked against CNX Nifty Index the scheme will not charge any exit load. The fund will identify sectors that are likely to do well in the medium term based on the business cycle of the economy. Manish Bandi is the fund manager of the scheme.
Meanwhile, Sundaram Mutual Fund has launched seventh series of its Sundaram Select Micro Cap Series V (1400 days). The NFO is currently open for subscription and closes on October 22. The scheme aims to seek capital appreciation by investing predominantly in equity/equity-related instruments of micro-cap companies. A company whose market capitalisation is equal to or lower than that of the 301st stock by market cap on the NSE at the time of investment will be considered as micro-cap.
The trend of close end funds started last year with IDFC’s Equity Opportunities Fund. Most of these close end funds launched recently by fund houses have a bias towards mid and small cap sectors. Recently, UTI Focused Equity Fund collected Rs. 770 crore during its NFO, becoming the highest grosser in the closed end equity fund category.
