The New Mutual Fund Challengers

India's Tightly Regulated And Highly Competitive Mutual Funds Market Is Dominated By Large Established Players. But A Bunch Of New Fund Houses Is Looking To Disrupt The Space That Is Already Riding High On Technology, Innovation And Digitisation

- Ashish Rukhaiyar

Nithin Kamath, Founder & CEO, Zerodha;

Samir Arora, Founder, Helios Capital;

Sameer Nigam, Founder & CEO, PhonePe;

Sachin Bansal, CMD & CEO, Navi Technologies

FUNDAMENTALLY STRONG

1 More than 40 registered asset management companies with a total AUM of around `40 lakh crore are in operation today

2 A dozen new firms are in queue to get Sebi’s nod to set up a mutual fund business

3 The mutual funds space is a tightly regulated and highly competitive segment

4 New entrants are eyeing a mix of active and passive schemes to gain market share

5 Some players are looking at low-cost products to attract investors’ attention

6 For incumbents, performance and track record remain their biggest USPs

For those with specks of grey, or more, in their hair, you would remember the time when getting a demand draft made in a public sector bank was a full day’s job. That, too, if one was friends with the branch manager or, perhaps, a friendly teller. And stock market oldtimers would recall the time when one had to shell out more than 1 per cent of the trade value as broking charges to the brokerage firm that would execute their trades. And screams on the floors of the markets to execute trades were the sine qua non of a bygone era.