Industry is moving from products to offering solutions: Himashu Vyapak

In a two part interview with Cafemutual, Himanshu Vyapak, Deputy CEO, Reliance Mutual Fund shares his plans for the fund house in 2013.

How do you see the mutual fund industry evolving?

It’s a young industry. Earlier, the industry followed a product push model. Now, we are moving to a financial advisory model. For instance, earlier we offered only equity and debt products. In the last few years we have re-positioned our products.We have launched products like Reliance Gold Savings Fund, Flexible Asset Selection Tool (FAST) which help to make financial plans. The industry is moving into offering solution based products. This is because more investors are looking for complete financial planning solutions rather than just products.

Reliance Portfolio SIP is a true example which reflects a journey from products to solutions. It is a unique and evolved concept which offers 360 degree solution to our clients. They get the benefits of SIP and the convenience of investing through a single cheque in all asset classes as per their risk profile. This product portrays the journey from a product to solutions. Advisors can achieve the goal of their clients easily through this solution.

Distributors too are moving in the same direction. We have seen them graduating to becoming financial planners from being just distributors. People have started understanding the importance of financial planning.

Last month you launched a new investment facility, Portfolio SIP. What are the other facilities in pipeline?

We are working on a host of initiatives and products. Some of them are pending for approval with the regulator, like US Equity Opportunity Fund, R Shares CNX 100 ETF and R*Shares Dividend Opportunities Fund.

We are looking to promote Reliance Portfolio SIP in a big way. We have just done a soft launch of the solution, starting with those investors and distributors who have used our FAST solution. We are currently analyzing the initial response. We will promote and enhance it as per the feedback received from our partners. Currently, its offline but we want more investors to take advantage of this facility.

You have managed to garner 5.5 lakh folios in gold fund. How did you achieve it?

We tried to offer a simple product as per the requirement of the investor. Gold ETFs were already present in the market before we launched our gold fund. But you needed to have a de-mat account to invest in ETFs. Moreover, during those days not all advisors were offering ETFs. 

So, we only created an easy way to invest in it rather than buying physical gold. We launched a simplified gold fund, where customers could invest through SIPs with a minimum investment of Rs 100. We also introduced a daily NAV in these funds.

We were the first one to identify the proposition and created an opportunity and the rest followed. There is still a huge opportunity in this space. 

Tell us more about ‘Smart Step’. How do you plan to promote it?

Smart Step is a unique concept developed for sophisticated investors. It is an enhanced systematic transfer plan that is based on a scientific model which aims to consolidate bull and bear cyclical trends of equity markets in one cycle. This model enables investors to invest more when the market is down and invest more when the market is up. We have promoted it earlier and we plan to popularize it later.