Prajna Capital - An Investment Guide

It's like having two AMCs under one roof; a large, well-run fixed income one and an average equity one. The fund house has been quite aggressive in its product launches. In the equity segment itself it came out with three schemes this year. By and large, it offers a lot of variety to investors. Unfortunately, its performance in equity does not match up to its debt funds. From its inception a decade ago, it has created history in the fund management industry. It followed a path of aggressive growth and reached the number two position in just five years. But ICICI Prudential is more dependent on institutional investors and debt assets. Out of its asset base of Rs 49371.12 crore, around 28 per cent comes from cash funds and almost 20 per cent from Fixed Maturity Plans ( FMPs ). The fund house is credited with running the largest ultra short-term fund and floating rate short-term fund. ICICI Mutual Fund was promoted by ICICI and later US-based investment bank JP Morgan acquired a stake...

AMCs are launching ELSS with the hope that people will invest in such funds at least for saving on tax In fact, despite volatile and uncertain equity markets, asset management companies have begun to launch equity linked saving schemes (ELSS) with the hope that investors would invest in such funds at least for saving tax. Recently, Bharti AXA, DBS Chola, JP Morgan and Tata AMC have launched their ELSS funds. ELSS funds are like other equity mutual funds with tax benefit. Investment in ELSS fund qualifies for deduction under 80C only if the money is invested for a minimum of three years. But in such fund investors need to stomach higher risk. Interestingly, some of these fund houses already have existing ELSS funds in their current portfolio but have come out with new fund offers (NFOs) in the same category. For instance, Tata Mutual Fund already has a tax gain fund called Tata Tax Advantage Fund but has come out with a new ELSS fund called Tata Infrastructure Tax Saving. Same is ...