25 years of private sector MF: Rearranging the pillars

The emergence of robo advisors has transformed the landscape of MF distribution over the past few years

With the advent of private sector players in 1993, it appeared that the mutual fund (MF) industry had come of age. Of course, there were apprehensions regarding how investors would respond as they perceived public sector MFs to be safer bets. Besides, unlike their public sector counterparts with a wide network of agents spread across the  country, private sector players had to build their distribution network from scratch. 

Since this was going be a daunting and time-consuming process, they relied mainly on initial public offer (IPO) brokers initially for distribution of their products. The focus, clearly, was on quantity rather