IDBI Mutual Fund is set to launch the country's first ever domestic index fund in September which will track the NSE-50 (Nifty) index. The IDBI AMC is also, in the first of a series of schemes, launching a money market mutual fund today.
A K Basu, CEO, IDBI AMC, told Business Standard that IDBI Mutual was exploring the possibility of tying up with a foreign company to gain expertise in fund management.
Unit Trust of India had earlier launched the country's first offshore index fund in February this year and had, incidentally, entered into an alliance with UK-based Commercial Union also to gain expertise in fund management.
Basu said the IDBI AMC would launch a series of schemes over the coming months, the first being the money market mutual fund slated for launch today. The scheme would be open for subscription for six days, till June 14, and then closed for one month.
With this, IDBI Mutual will join the select list of Kothari Pioneer and UTI as AMCs which have launched money market mutual funds. Basu said: The AMC has not planned any targets at this stage as far as initial collections are concerned. While Kothari Pioneer had collected Rs 1 crore, UTI managed to collec Rs 31.8 crore.
The next scheme in line would either be a short term deposit scheme or a designer scheme slated for launch around June 24. The short term deposit scheme is also a new innovation and the open-ended scheme would collect deposits for periods of 35 days, 91 days and 371 days from investors.
Under the short term deposit scheme, investors will park their funds for a specified time and investments will be in debt instruments, Basu said. The designer scheme would be called A Mix and Map scheme where unit-holders would decide the debt:equity ratio for their respective portfolios. These two schemes will be followed by a children's benefit fund in the first week of July and a pension fund in August.
