In Part II of his interview, Akshay Gupta, MD & CEO of Peerless Mutual Fund shares his distribution and product strategy.
How do you plan to strengthen your distribution channel?
We are focusing intensively on vernacular service delivery model. We are planning to introduce Telugu, Assamese, Tamil and Gujarati in next one year’s time to strengthen our distribution in target locations. However, we are delving in it slowly and steadily as everything has a cost attached to it. Our main focus is on independent financial advisors. We will come out with path-breaking solutions and programs for them.
FMPs and short-term debt funds are the flavour of the season. Is Peerless also planning to be a part of it?
We are not clear on the tax regulation of FMPs. We feel FMPs are illiquid products focused on HNIs. We currently have six products – three institutional and three retail – all being open-ended products. Our current focus is on retail, so these kinds of products do not suit our focus retail customers.
Any new funds that the company is planning to add to its product basket?
We are waiting for approvals for a few products such as infrastructure fund and flexible income plan from SEBI. We will launch the products when we see that the environment is ready for it.
We create new products after placing ourselves in the shoes of the customer. Before launching a new product, we always hold several meetings to zerodown on what a customer’s expectation would be from this product.
Your course of action for the next five years?
Our strategy is customer first. We are focusing on customer acquisition– retail and institutional. We plan to build a distribution channel around a location where we feel retail as well as institutional investors are being neglected.
Being the only mutual fund house headquartered in Kolkata, do you see any advantages of being based in Kolkata and any disadvantages of not being in Mumbai?
Advantage is that we are closer to the parent company so a large chunk of customer base is developed because of them. Another thing is that we are closer to our distribution arm. Being based out of Kolkata, the cost of operation is low which is very critical for AMCs in present low business margin scenario. If compared with newly started AMCs, we are the lowest cost to AUM.
Technology advancement is a plus point. No matter where you are headquartered in the world, you can still be in touch with your team at any point of time.
<<< Part 1 of this interview
