Reliance Mutual Fund Under Performs The Time Periods

Background:

Reliance Capital Limited is the sponsor of Reliance Capital Assets Management Ltd set up in June 1995. Reliance Capital Ltd. is a member of the Reliance Group and has been promoted by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), one of India's largest private sector enterprises. The fund house manages assets worth Rs 80962.94 crore at end of March 2009.

Reliance Growth Fund (G) an open-ended equity scheme launched in September 1995. The investment objective of the scheme is to achieve long-term growth of capital through a research based investment approach. The minimum investment amount is Rs.5000 and in multiples of Re.1 thereafter. The unit NAV of the scheme was Rs 233.32 per unit as on 13 April 2009.

Portfolio: The total net assets of the scheme increased by Rs 152.02 crore to Rs 3239.85 crore in March 2009.

Reliance Growth Fund (G) took fresh exposure to two stocks in March 2009. The scheme purchased 8.98 lakh units (1.72%) of Financial Technologies (India), 7.32 lakh units (1.47%) of United Spirits in March 2009.The scheme completely exited from Cambridge Solutions by selling 56.00 lakh units (1.44%) in March 2009.

Sector-wise, the scheme took no fresh exposure to any sector in March 2009.Sector-wise, the scheme did not exit completely from any sector in March 2009.

The scheme had highest exposure to Lupin with 21.53 lakh units (4.58% of portfolio size) followed by Reliance Industries with 7.86 lakh units (3.70%), Divis Laboratories with 12.02 lakh units (3.54%) and Jindal Steel & Power with 9.27 lakh units (3.44%) among others in March 2009.It reduced its exposure to State Bank of India by selling 1.98 lakh units to 6.13 lakh units (by 0.68%), Divis Laboratories by selling 1.88 lakh units to 12.02 lakh units (by 0.37%), Jain Irrigation Systems to 21.87 lakh units (by 0.27%) and Bharti Airtel by selling 4025 units to 11.64 lakh units (by 0.16%) among others in March 2009.

Sector-wise, the scheme had highest exposure to Pharmaceuticals - Indian - Bulk Drugs at 8.12% (from 8.47% in February 2009), followed by Banks - Public Sector at 4.90% (5.54%), Computers - Software – Large at 4.19% (4.26%) and Telecommunications - Service Provider at 3.89% (3.94%) among others in March 2009.

Sector wise, the scheme had reduced exposure to Banks - Public Sector to 4.90% (by 0.64%), Pharmaceuticals - Indian - Bulk Drugs to 8.12% (by 0.35%), Plastics Products to 2.31 % (by 0.27%), and Sugar to 1.98% (by 0.08%) among others in March 2009.

Performance: The scheme underperformed the category average over all the time periods.

Over three-month period ended as on 13 April 2009, the scheme posted returns of 14.25% underperforming the Sensex that posted returns of 20.90%. Over 6 month period, the scheme's returns dropped to 3.34% underperforming the Sensex that fell 3.02%.

The returns of the scheme over one year period fell 30.92% underperforming the Sensex that plunged by 30.62%.

ETFs V/s Mutual Funds

You must have heard from people that the gold ETF was the best investment in 2008! Are you aware what a gold ETF is? Let us first know what basically an ETF is.
ETF is the abbreviation for exchange traded fund, a financial instrument that tries to imitate its benchmark index by investing in stocks in the same proportion as that of the benchmark index.
On other hand a mutual fund is a trust that pools the savings of a number of investors and invests the collected money.
You can say that an ETF is similar to an index mutual fund which also invests in stocks in the same proportion as that of the benchmark index. So Nifty BeES ETF by Benchmark Mutual Fund invests in the same stocks as that of its benchmark S&P CNX Nifty Index.
You may be wondering how are ETFs different from mutual funds, as both collect money from investors and invest in scrips or other assets like gold.
The factors in which these two differ from each other are

Low cost:

ETF have lower cost as they are generally passively managed and invest only in index based stocks. They don’t trade, buy or sell stocks frequently, and the proportion for investment in each scrip is normally fixed, based upon the weightage of that scrip in the index.
Thus, ETF requires low management expertise as research and marketing expenses are less.
Mutual Funds on the other hand are more dynamically managed and hence have a higher expense ratio. Fund houses spend a lot of money on research of scrips. They buy and have a tendency to churn the scrips more frequently.
Take this for example Nifty BeES has a cost structure of around 0.50% as compared to 1.25% of ICICI Prudential Index Fund. Apart from management costs, mutual funds also charge entry and exit load which take almost 2% out of your total investments; whereas in ETF, you have to pay only brokerage charge.

Liquidity:
ETFs can be sold or bought like stocks during market hours, unlike mutual funds which can be bought and sold only at the day’s end as per their calculated net asset value (NAV).
To understand the above, lets us assume, if you want to redeem your investment on a particular day for some monetary need and by sheer bad luck the market begins to fall. As ETFs are traded on the markets you can minimize your loss by immediately selling your ETF.
Had you wanted to redeem from a mutual fund you would have had to wait till the end of the trading session for the generation of NAV; by the time the market might have fallen substantially, leading you to suffer a higher loss.

Long-term investor protection:

the stock exchanges, thus Asset Management Company managing the ETF is not involved in the transaction. However, in case of mutual fund, units are purchased and sold by the Asset Management Company.
This may lead to investors suffering if there is a large exit of money from the scheme as was witnessed in many mutual fund schemes during the October-November 2008 period. During the period, long term investors had to suffer, due to large outflow of funds from schemes which led to many fund managers selling their best assets in fire sales.
Thus, ETF protects long-term investors` value as assets are not sold even when there is large selling seen in ETFs.

Low tracking error:
ETFs have very low tracking error, which is the difference between the returns by funds measured against its benchmark index. This is because, ETFs invests in stocks that constitute the benchmark index, in the same proportion as their weightage in the index. Also the gap between ETF`s NAV and market price is less because of arbitrage opportunities which traders take advantage of.
On the other hand, mutual funds are not so keen to invest in stocks in the same proportion of the benchmark index of the scheme, and mostly deviate from the returns posted by the index. Index funds have high tracking error as there is no arbitrage between the funds` NAV and market.
Thus, if you believe that index will gain, have limited funds to invest in stocks, and not comfortable with any particular scrip, then exchange traded fund will be the right investment option.

Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/personalFinance/idINIndia-39097720090417?sp=true

What are the kind of stocks/sectors one should be buying now?

Find below views of Mr. Sandip Sabharwal

Part I - The anatomy of the bear
As I sit to analyze the kind of stocks and sectors one should be buying into at this point of time with a medium term perspective it is important to analyze the anatomy of the bear market. In order to do this I would first go back to the last phase of the bull market, which was the main phase of excesses and extreme euphoria.
Epilogue – The big blow off - This phase started from the month of September 2007 and lasted till January 2008. This was the period in which the Sensex went up from around 14500 to 21000. This was the time period in which valuations went up ridiculous levels, there was a huge deluge of money from hedge funds, there was extreme leveraging and retail investor frenzy was at its maximum. At the risk of repeating this was also the period in which even most professional fund mangers could not see the fact that the bubble had become so big that it had to burst. The genesis of the last phase of the bull market lay in the beginning of the rapid monetary easing by the US Federal Reserve subsequent to the start of the mortgage crisis and the beginning of the emergence of the financial crisis in the US and Europe. As a very good friend of mine puts it “ This was a phase where as the easing cycle started a large number of hedge funds thought that the liquidity is now going to over flow from a glass that was already full, without realizing that there was actually a very very big hole in the glass”.This was the phase of the market where fundamentals were of no relevance and companies with grand plans and worst cash flows outperformed most of the other stocks. In this phase the BSE Mid cap index went up from 6000 to 10000 level a gain of a whopping 66%.
I will break up the bear market of the last 15 months into three parts
PART 1

The end of Euphoria – January to September 2008 – This was the first phase of the bear market and was pre Lehman Brothers collapse. In this phase there was a sudden reversal of liquidity flow and was also the phase in which commodities kept on rallying ( till around July to September depending on the commodity we are talking about) and was the phase in which inflation was a bigger concern in most emerging markets and euro zone. In this phase there was a very rapid increase in policy rates by central bankers all over the world as crude, copper, steel prices etc kept on rallying in the backdrop of a slowing global economy and reducing liquidity. This was the phase in which most market participants underestimated the scale of the problems in the financial systems in the Western economies and in general loss levels were underestimated. Economies all over the globe kept on moving from bad to worse in this period. However this was also a period in which lot of emerging market economies were believed to be relatively insulated and their suffering would only be due to collateral damage. This was the time period in which both mid cap and large cap companies fell in value. However this was also a phase where there was some sort of distinction in the markets between companies that would be relatively insulated from the slowdown effect. Companies that had good order books or a good execution history were relatively spared in the carnage. This was sort of a normal bear market phase in which markets fall by 25-30%.In this phase hedge funds faced huge redemption pressures and most emerging markets saw significant outflows. In this phase which lasted till the middle of September 2008 the Sensex fell by 30% and the BSE Mid Cap index by 45%.
PART II

End of liquidity and execution disbelief – September 2008 to January 2009 – This was the period in which financial institutions in the USA started collapsing. Although smaller companies were collapsing the big one like Lehman hit everyone on the head. This led to liquidity totally drying up globally. The three month LIBOR shot up to nearly 4%, yields on US Treasury bills became virtually zero as capital preservation became the prime focus. This was the time period in which there was forced selling from a large number of FII’s and Hedge Funds due to the virtual collapse of the financial system in Western economies. There was extreme panic in the month of October/November 2008 and led to the formation of a panic bottom in the markets in October 2008. This was also the phase till be beginning of December 2008 where there was a virtual collapse in mid cap stocks although large cap stocks started stabilizing after making the panic bottom. In this phase valuations were of no importance. There was huge execution disbelief and due to the liquidity crunch the market started doubting the execution ability of projects that were already awarded. In this phase order books lost their relevance and most market participants started believing that things will never improve. This was the time when central bankers globally started cutting rates aggressively and also started pumping huge amount of liquidity into the system. However the fear was so high that nothing seemed to have any impact. Markets started to improve from the beginning of December before Mr. Ramalinga Raju burst into the scene in the first week of January.In this phase companies with high debt levels, requirements of refinancing, high forex exposure, requiring large working capital fell the most.In this phase the Sensex fell by another 35% and the BSE Mid cap index fell by another 40%.
PART III

Total Disbelief and the lack of confidence – January 2009 to Beginning March 2009 – Even as markets had started stabilizing from the beginning of December 2008 the Satyam scam broke out and this combined with the process of change in regime in the USA and a constantly deteriorating scenario in the economic scenario globally led to the virtual “Falling off the cliff” of the markets, specially on the mid cap space. This was the phase in which no one wanted to own any mid cap stock and even large cap stocks with suspect accounting standards or suspect managements saw their stock prices crashing extremely badly. This was a phase in which most Western economies stock markets made new lows and most emerging markets held on to their October lows in term of large cap indices. However mid caps continued their free fall. This was the phase in which I believe that mid caps finally bottomed out as investors who were still holding out finally lost patience and sold these stocks at dirt cheap valuations. This was the phase which was the total reverse of October 2007 to Jan 2008 where investors just wanted out of mid caps. This was also the time in which investors wanted to stick to the bluest of blue chips and risk perception was the highest.In this phase companies with suspect management practices, suspect accounts, commodity companies or those with exposure to the Middle East countries fell the most.In this phase the Sensex fell by around 23% and the BSE Mid Cap index fell by around 30%.
In the second part of the article I will talk of what are the segments of the markets to buy into now.
INCIDENTLY MARKETS ARE LOOKING OVERSTRETCHED IN THE NEAR TERM. SHOULD GIVE UP SOME GAINS.

Source: http://sandipsabharwal.blogspot.com/

SBI Mutual Fund cuts minimum investment limit in 4 funds

State Bank of India's mutual fund unit on Wednesday lowered the minimum monthly investment limit in select funds to 100 rupees, joining the likes of UTI Mutual Fund and ICICI Prudential Asset Management.
The funds are Magnum Balance, MMPS-93, MSFU Contra fund and SBI Blue Chip fund.
SBI Mutual Fund hopes to attract about 250,000 investors in the first year with this initiative, SBI chairman O.P. Bhatt said.
Typically, the minimum investment into Indian mutual funds is 500 rupees, but an increasing number of money managers are lowering the investment threshold, in a bid to attract small investors from tier II and tier III cities.
Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idINBOM28785320090415

UTI AMC attracts bids from 4 investors; valued at Rs 3,500 cr

The highest bid has valued UTI AMC at around Rs 3,500 crore, which is around 7.3% of the assets under management.
Schroders, Vanguard Mutual Fund and T Rowe Price have reportedly submitted bids to acquire 26% strategic stake in UTI Asset Management Company (UTI AMC), India’s oldest and fourth-largest fund house.
The highest bid has valued UTI AMC at around Rs 3,500 crore ($690 million) which is around 7.3% of the assets under management (AUM), The Economic Times reported today.
UTI AMC has four shareholders State Bank of India (SBI), Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Bank of Baroda (BoB) and Punjab National Bank (PNB), holding 25% stake each.
It was formed six years ago when the government was forced to restructure the erstwhile Unit Trust of India, following a payments crisis. Its assured return schemes were transferred to a separate company called Special Undertaking of UTI (SUUTI), and the rest was moved to UTI AMC.
The latter’s four state-owned shareholders had acquired the firm from the government for Rs 1,250 crore. The ET report adds that each of these four shareholders will sell part of their stake to the strategic investor instead of a fresh issue of shares.
The plan to induct a strategic partner in UTI AMC was announced last year by the former finance minister P Chidambaram. UTI AMC had even toyed with the idea of a public float but this didn’t materialise as the markets turned turtle.
It had originally considered a private placement followed by an IPO that would have brought down the stake owned by its four shareholders to 51%.
The shareholders had planned to raise around Rs 2,500 crore last year that would have valued the asset management firm at Rs 6,500 crore. The bids which are reportedly submitted for the strategic stake now values UTI AMC 46% lower than this.
Among those who had courted the firm earlier include Japan’s Shinsei Bank and the National Australia Bank. Shinsei has since then joined hands with private investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala to launch a mutual fund venture in India.
There were a couple of deals involving mutual fund houses last year where Religare Enterprises bought out Lotus AMC and IDFC acquired Standard Chartered’s asset management business in India.

Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/indiaDeals/idINIndia-39018320090413?sp=true

30% cap on MFs' exposure to money market papers

In a bid to reduce concentration risk for mutual funds, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) On Monday said that funds’ exposure to money market instruments of an issuer will be capped at 30 per cent of its net assets. Schemes can, however, continue to invest up to 15 per cent or 20 per cent of net assets, as the case may be, in other investment grade debt instruments of an issuer.

“These limits will not cover investments in government securities, T-Bills and Collateralised Borrowing and Lending Obligations (CBLO),” the market regulator said.
A large number of schemes, including FMPs, had invested heavily in debt instruments of a single company. Such kind of exposure to the money market instrument of a single issuer made these schemes risky for investors in the event of a default. According to a Crisil report, nearly one-third of fixed income funds have parked more than one fourthof their assets in one company.
Huge exposure to a single company leads to non-diversified portfolio. The report further said that 38 per cent of the debt schemes have significant exposure to the NBFC sector.
While the mutual fund industry has applauded the move, there are still a number of schemes that have invested a sizeable portion of their net assets in a single company. For example, Birla Sunlife FTP series AL retail plan has invested 24.73 per cent in Wockhardt. Similarly, HDFC's 18M Jan2008 retail FMP has put in 23.36 per cent of its net assets in Tata Motors.
Parijat Agrwal, head of fixed income at SBI Mutual Fund, said, “This is a step in the right direction for mitigating risk. Mutual fund portfolios will now become more structured.”
However, experts say that even the 30 per cent limit is very high as funds can invest 15-20 per cent in debt instruments of an issuer, which will take the total exposure to 45-50 per cent.

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/30-capmfs%5C-exposure-to-money-market-papers/355017/

India is better placed compared to global economy: Nanavati, Religare MF

Saurabh Nanavati is the CEO, Religare Mutual Fund where he oversees all functions including investments, operations and sales. Saurabh`s last assignment was with HDFC Standard Life Insurance, as chief investment officer overseeing USD 2 bn in equity and debt investments besides other asset classes. Prior to HDFC Standard Life Insurance, he was with Deutsche Asset Management for little under 4 years. His earlier assignments also include stints with multinational institutions like Reuters and HSBC India. Saurabh holds an Electronics Engineering degree and is an MBA in Finance from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies.Here are some excerpts from an exclusive interview with Saurabh Nanavati.

What investment philosophy does Religare Mutual Fund follow to provide value to investors? Is it different for a bull market or a bear market?

The 2 broad tenets of our investment philosophy are ``Active Fund Management`` and ``Being True to Mandate``.

Active Fund Management - Our Core Investment premise is that the Equity Markets are not completely efficient and therefore a well organized and thorough research effort combined with a disciplined portfolio management approach will enable outperformance of the market index over time.

True to Mandate - The fund`s investment mandate is paramount. We do not have a style bias. The Stock selection, industry and asset allocation will flow from the fund objectives.We do not have a different style for a bull market and a bear market.

What are the attributes you look for in stocks before taking a buy or sell call? Also give us an idea about your research team.

We have a proprietary stock categorization model. We categorise stocks into 7 different categories - Star, Leaders, Warriors, Diamonds, Frog Prince, Shot Gun and Commodity.Each category has a detailed description of the kind of fundamental attributes that we expect the company to possess. This approach helps the fund managers to focus on the attributes that drive stock performance and keep a watch for red flags.

As regards the investment team, we have a clear segregation between fund managers, analysts and dealers. We have 3 fund managers, 4 analysts and 1 dealer at present in the AMC team and an additional 2 Fund Managers on the PMS side.The analysts track roughly 280 stocks at present and we are looking at increasing the coverage by another 40 stocks in the next 3 months.

Give us your outlook for the markets in 2009? Will we see the effects of global financial crisis receding?
The first three months of 2008 were good but the situation deteriorated in the next nine months. This year, 2009 may see 12 bad months and the situation might continue even to the first half of 2010.
The global financial crisis is going to take a long time to resolve and the growth paradigm of mercantilism wherein the developing world produces goods and services to meet the insatiable appetite of the US consumer may never take centre stage again.

Capital flows are also likely to remain subdued due to risk aversion. Further, the governments of the western world who are injecting capital into their banks would like them to keep that capital at home. This crisis has heightened the risk of protectionism in the US and other developed markets as they are under public pressure to do whatever it takes to halt the decline.

However for India, the agenda must be the opposite - we must tear down the red tape and barriers that act as a hindrance to foreign capital. But we must also be vigilant to ensure that our economy and businesses are protected against unfair trade.

What are your predictions on the interest rate movement over medium term? Could you share your perspective on the Indian bond markets for 2009 given the continuous monetary easing and increasing government borrowings?

In the second half of 2006, RBI had then indicated its concerns regarding credit growth and started raising interest rates. But the economy did not feel the pinch of rising interest rates because foreign money was flooding into the system. In FY2007 total foreign capital inflows surged to over USD 50 billion and then doubled to USD 108 billion in FY2008. To put this in perspective the capital inflows in FY2008 were an 8 fold jump compared to the inflow in 2002.

The RBI continued to hike rates in the first half of 2008 and the economy was slowing in response to that. But the slowdown has morphed into an abrupt halt with the collapse of the banking system and credit markets in the western world which started in late 2007 and is still ongoing.

RBI has since changed its stance to a pro-growth strategy in Oct 2008 and started cutting interest rates. We feel that the rate cut stance will continue up to Sept 2009 and we can expect another 100 bps reduction in Repo, 150 bps in Reverse Repo and 50 bps in CRR in the coming months.

Bond yields have however factored in some of these cuts, and we feel that the 10 year yield may not rally beyond 5.50% from 6% currently, in an absolutely bullish case beyond 5.25%. This is because of increased government borrowings. We expect government borrowings to exceed their projections for next year as there will be a fall in direct and indirect revenue collections due to the downturn.

What is your approach for investing in government and corporate papers? How much do you rely on external credit rating while investing in the corporate paper?

Our fixed income philosophy is based on 3 parameters - Safety, Liquidity and Consistency.Again we have a defined investment philosophy and process, with clear segregation between credit analysts, fund managers and dealers. We currently have 2 credit analysts, 3 fund managers and 2 dealers.Credit analysts rely on external credit as a starting point post which they do their own internal analysis.Both in equity and debt, if the respective equity analysts and credit analysts do not approve of a security, the portfolio manager cannot buy it in his portfolio.Due to an increased risk aversion globally, government paper and corporate paper spreads have increased to around 300 bps from 150-200 bps earlier. We feel that the spreads may not compress to earlier levels for the next 18-24 months. However, a higher spread means a higher yield and therefore if the credit analyst has done his job well, it will enable the fund manager to buy the Corporate paper and earn a higher yield for the investor.

According to you what lessons should we take from the India`s biggest fraud at Satyam?Recent report by CRISIL substantiates weak governance practices in 50% of the 29 IPO graded by them since May 2007. How do you rate India Inc on corporate governance parameters?

At a philosophical level, India was always taking the higher moral ground as compared to the developed markets, that 50% of the Sensex companies were promoter owned, faster decision making and great corporate governance. This has been shattered after the Satyam episode. So when analysts say Satyam was an accident, I disagree. Investors have lost faith in our corporate governance standard currently and the whole market will suffer because of this episode.We clearly have issues on corporate governance parameters and I personally feel, that there will be some startling disclosures in the next 12 months by India Inc. Auditors too will tighten their requirements and not sign off easily on grey areas, forcing more disclosures.

Recent quarters showed significant drop in corporate earnings on back of higher input and fund cost. Going forward, what is your take on FY10 earnings? Will it continue to fall?

For the last 6 months, we have been communicating a 5-10% EPS de-growth from FY08 to FY10, to the market. This is for the Nifty stocks. The broader markets may have a higher earnings fall. Six months back, analysts consensus were talking of 15% growth and currently they have brought down these estimates to flat growth. We are yet sticking to our stance of a 5-10% earnings fall in this period.Difficult to predict when this will turn but our sense is we are at least 18 months away from a trend reversal.

With the impact of global economic meltdown started reflecting into domestic economy, how do you see the economic outlook moving ahead?

India is yet much better placed as compared to the global economy. But it may be difficult to meet the growth projections of 5.5-6% growth for FY10. Even assuming a normal and good monsoon, our expectations would be around 4-4.5%. There will be a definite slowdown in the services sectors and manufacturing sectors due to reduced demand. Job losses will peak between April to Sept 2009 and this will curb demand growth at the ground level.Looking at the positive side, there are three factors which should aid India decouple itself from this global recession after 12-18 months.a) Sub-prime - Due to RBI`s conservative policies, India is actually not having a major sub-prime kind of an issue - of home loan defaults and banking collapses at the ground level. This is a big positive. India yet has a financial system intact as compared to the rest of the world.b) Rural Consumption - This theme is definitely intact and will be largely responsible for India`s 4-4.5% GDP growth rate. The pay commission increase of last year will reflect in increased or stable rural spending.c) Political Reforms - The third factor will definitely be the elections and the new government stance. Difficult to talk of the outcome but the industry will need to be fleet-footed in terms of anticipating and understanding the new government`s stance on issues, as well as their powers to push reforms in a coalition situation.

What are challenges faced by the MF industry in the current scenario? How do you plan to overcome these challenges? What is your outlook for the MF industry in 2009?

MF investors are facing a confidence crisis at this point of time, post the Sept-Oct 2008 liquidity crisis. We will also see consolidation in the mutual fund industry in the coming two years. This business is for the long-term serious players only and carries fiduciary responsibility. I am sure promoters have now realized this and are re-visiting their business plans.From our perspective, it is time to get back to basics. Simple products, customer education, increasing visibility, strong platform to deliver consistency and shareholder commitment. Small innovations sometimes deliver fantastic results. All these are our focus areas.I am sure the industry will emerge stronger at the end of 2009. Let me assure you that the transparency levels are yet the highest by far in this industry and customers will appreciate it, once the risk appetite comes back.

Religare AMC is relatively new in the MF industry, what are your plans for scaling up the business?

Of the three existing business models in India AMC Industry - Retail, Institutional and Quasi-Institutional, Religare AMC has adopted the Retail Business Model. With the acquisition of Lotus Mutual Fund, Religare AMC now has a presence in 38 cities through 41 own branches. We intend to set-up a further 62 branches in 62 cities in the next 18 months to increase our network to a 100 cities. With a presence in 100 cities through own branches, Religare will be in the top 7-8 AMCs from a distribution reach perspective. It is important to understand the difference of having your own branch and having a presence through the registrar offices which are in over 150 locations.

Apart from managing fund house, what other things you like to do?

Spending time with my children (aged 5 and 2), reading economic articles and cricket. Proving skeptics wrong, in every walk of life, is also what I enjoy the most. I am going back to the movie ``Matrix``, where Keanu Reeves was told that ``this has been never done before`` to which he replied ``that`s why it will succeed``.

Source: http://www.myiris.com/newsCentre/storyShownew_opt.php?fileR=20090413142504196&secID=fromnewsroom&secTitle=From%20the%20News%20Room&dir=2009/04/13