Crisil launches new benchmark for investment vehicle aimed at the affluent

'Sub category' will help companies and clients in comparing various alternative investment funds.

Crisil Research on Thursday launched a new "sub-category" level benchmark for the domestic alternative investment fund (AIF) industry. It will help provide peer comparison for AIFs belonging to seven sub-categories within the three broad AIF categories: I, II and III.

AIFs are pooled investment vehicles just like mutual funds but aimed for the affluent and they have a minimum ticket size of Rs 1 crore.

Under Category-I, there will be benchmarks for venture capital funds. Under, Category-II there will be four benchmarks namely equity funds--unlisted, equity funds--listed and unlisted; real estate funds and debt funds. While the benchmarks under Category-III are long-only equity funds and long-short equity funds.

“The sub-category level benchmarks will be useful to all stakeholders — investors, intermediaries, and AIFs alike — as they provide a 360-degree view of the performance of a particular sub-category. These will help investors home in on the type of fund best-suited to their investment objective, besides enabling intermediaries to focus on specific types of funds for their clients, and AIFs to compare their performance with a peer set,” said Piyush Gupta, Director, Crisil Research.

Currently, the equity funds (listed & unlisted) under category-II have the largest asset size at Rs 49,500 crore, followed by long-only equity funds under category-III (Rs 33,600 crore).

The sub-category level AIF benchmarks data will be disclosed by Crisil on half-yearly basis (based on September and March end data), as per guidelines prescribed by market regulator Sebi.