Face to Face

Kishore Chamria - Head – Business Development for Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Ltd. and has been associated with the company since July 2008. He is responsible for developing and strengthening the distribution channel including the banks, NDs and IFAs. He has a total working experience of more than 17 years in financial planning and distribution of financial products and has worked across geographies in Eastern and Northern part of India.

He has done Executive Education Program on “Creating High Performance Organization” from IIM-Bangalore, “Business Data Analytics” from ISB-Hyderabad and “The General Management Program Certification” (TGMP).

He is a Certified Predictive Index Analyst from P I Worldwide and also pursuing “Six Sigma Black Belt” to bring excellence and Investors efficacy.

Q The Indian retail investor is bombarded with a variety of mutual funds. Often the investor is confusion as to which category one should opt for? Could you guide as to which are the category of funds a medium to long-term investor should opt for?

One should not get confused with too many offerings in the market as not every offering is for you. One needs to understand that every investor has different needs and has a different risk appetite and thus over the years, mutual fund industry has evolved and developed multiple products to cater to needs of various investors. Your investment horizon should broadly decide your investment choice.

Before choosing funds, investors need to first decide the goal/time frame for which they want to invest and the surplus they can spare on a regular basis for investing. This is necessary to decide the nature of funds needed to build a portfolio. Once this is done, based on the time frame, a combination of equity and debt funds and various categories under the same can be decided.

For temporary parking of money, investors should not venture beyond liquid or ultra-short-term funds. For time frame of up 2-3 years, short-term debt funds would be an option. For 3-5 years, investors can look at debt-oriented funds such as MIP, as it will give them minimal exposure to equities (up to 25%) or make a start with balanced funds, if they will hold it for 5 years. One should venture into equity funds for long-term goals of 5 years and above. Here, a combination of balanced, large-cap, midcap and multi-cap equity funds with some debt exposure is an ideal allocations scenario.