The first introduction of a

mutual fund A mutual fund is a professionally managed investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV i ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

occurred in 1963, when the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

launched

Unit Trust of India UTI Mutual Fund was carved out of the erstwhile Unit Trust of India (UTI) as a Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registered mutual fund from 1 February 2003. The Unit Trust of India Act 1963 was repealed, paving way for the bifurcat ...

(UTI). UTI enjoyed a monopoly in the Indian mutual fund market until 1987, when a host of other government-controlled Indian financial companies established their own funds, including

State Bank of India State Bank of India (SBI) is an Indian multinational public sector bank and financial services statutory body headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. SBI is the 49th largest bank in the world by total assets and ranked 221st in the ''Fortune ...

Canara Bank Canara Bank is an Indian public sector bank under the control and ownership of Ministry of Finance, Government of India. Established in 1906 at Mangalore by Ammembal Subba Rao Pai, the bank also has offices in London, Dubai and New York. Hist ...

and by

Punjab National Bank Punjab National Bank (abbreviated as PNB) is an Indian public sector bank headquartered in Delhi. The bank was founded in May 1894 and is the second largest government-owned bank in India, both in terms of its business volumes and its network ...

Mutual funds are an under-tapped market in India

Despite being available in the market, less than 10% of Indian households have invested in mutual funds. A recent report on Mutual Fund Investments in India published by research and analytics firm, Boston Analytics, suggests

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...

s are holding back from putting their money into mutual funds due to their perceived high risk and a lack of information on how mutual funds work. There are 46 Mutual Funds as of June 2013. The primary reason for not investing appears to be correlated with city size. Among respondents with a high

savings rate Saving is income not spent, or deferred consumption. Methods of saving include putting money aside in, for example, a deposit account, a pension account, an investment fund, or as cash. Saving also involves reducing expenditures, such as recur ...

, close to 40% of those who live in metros and Tier I cities considered such

investment Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing i ...

s to be very risky, whereas 33% of those in Tier II cities said they did not know how or where to invest in such

assets In financial accountancy, financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value ...

. In 2019, Asset under management (AUM) of the mutual fund industry rose by 13% to 24 trillion in 2018 by November

Distribution

Mutual funds in India are distributed mainly in 2 ways:-

Online

Customers can buy mutual funds online via the corresponding

asset management company An asset management company (AMC) is an asset management / investment management company/firm that invests the pooled funds of retail investors in securities in line with the stated investment objectives. For a fee, the company/firm provides more ...

's website or via brokers. There are a number of new platforms that have come which offer direct mutual funds in their platform. Subscribers can buy mutual funds from these platforms. Direct mutual funds provide better returns, generally between .5% to 1.5% more than their regular counterparts. This is due to the fact that brokers charges are excluded from the returns. A 1% deduction from a return of 12% from mutual funds, leads to a 8.33% lesser return to the investor, which is a huge amount.

Offline

Most of the

have an offline distribution network. These distributors mainly sell regular mutual funds which carry some commission on it. FundsIndia, NJ, Prudent, QFund are some of the popular distributors in India.

Average assets under management

Assets under management (AUM) is a financial term denoting the market value of all the funds being managed by a financial institution (a mutual fund, hedge fund, private equity firm, venture capital firm, or brokerage house) on behalf of its clients, investors, partners, depositors, etc.
The average assets under management of all mutual funds in India for the quarter Dec 2015 to Mar 2016(in ₹ Lakh) is given below: or

Mutual Fund Acquisitions

References

{{Reflist Financial services companies of India 1963 establishments in India