Market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), is set to launch 1,500-2,000 super-ATM centres across the country in the next 12-18 months for the growth of the mutual fund industry, a top official said. "To facilitate investments in mutual funds and availability of information to investors, we need to create a huge infrastructure. We are trying to build this through a concept of super-ATM centres around the country," Sebi's executive director, KN Vaidyanathan, said at a mutual fund award function here. At the press of a button in super-ATMs, investors would be able to transact and get all the information about mutual fund schemes. The ATMs will also send queries and receive information, he said. Sebi would partner with the mutual fund industry to build infrastructure and a large part of the work will be in place in the next 12-18-months. Mr Vaidyanathan said that the mutual fund industry was poised to grow from Rs 3-lakh-crore to Rs 30-lakh-crore in the next five years. The number of shareholder accounts was also set to grow from two crore to five crore in the next five years.
Being a part of the Tata group, the fund has the backing of a very trusted brand name with strong retail connect. While the current CEO has done an excellent job in leveraging the Tata brand name to AMC's advantage, it is ironic that this was just not capitalised on at the start. Incorporated in 1995, Tata Mutual Fund remained an 'also-ran' fund house for around eight years. Till March 2003, it had a little over Rs 1,000 crore in assets and 19 AMCs were ahead of it. But soon after that the equation changed. It was the fastest growing fund house in 2004 and 2005. During these two years, it aggressively launched six equity funds, two debt funds and one MIP. The fund house as of now stands at No. 8 in terms of asset size. This fund house has a lot to offer by way of choice. And, it also has a number of well performing schemes. Tata Pure Equity, Tata Equity PE and Tata Infrastructure are all good funds. It also has quite a few good debt funds. The funds of Tata AMC are known to...
