Axis MF plans new offerings to drive growth

Axis Mutual Fund, which hopes that retail investors will come back to the market in the current year, plans to come up with various fund offerings to drive business growth, a top company official has said.
"We may come up with some close-ended schemes in the equity segment. As far as international funds are concerned, we are planning to launch two funds, which are under the consideration of the regulator. We also plan to come up with a few products in the debt segment this year," Managing Director and Chief Executive Chandresh Nigam told PTI.
The fund house, which today launched a hybrid product 'Axis Hybrid Fund-Series 8', expects to garner around Rs 300 crore from this new scheme.

When asked about folio addition, Nigam said despite the redemptions seen in the industry last year, Axis MF had added new folios to its kitty and hopes the trend will continue in the current year.
The mutual fund industry has lost around 20 lakh folios during the April-October period of 2013 as investors redeemed their investments.
"Those investors, who have invested around 2006-07 period, had exited from the market due to various reasons. We feel that investors will come back into the market in 2014," Nigam said.

The fund house is also of the opinion that domestic institutional investors will be net buyers in equities this year as the MF industry expects to see inflows from retail investors.

Notably, DIIs have net sold Rs 73,234 crore of domestic equities till December of this year, which is higher than the last year's Rs 56,923 crore, making it one of the highest sales of domestic equities by DIIs in nearly one decade.
This is in sharp contrast to foreign institutional investors buying pattern, which have bought more than Rs 1 lakh crore worth stocks in Indian market last year, making it one of the highest inflows in a year.
Axis MF is a jointly promoted by private sector lender Axis Bank and global financial services firm Schroders, in which Axis Bank has majority stake. It has assets under management of Rs 14,587 crore by the end of the December quarter.