In the past decade, Indian mutual fund industry had seen a dramatic imporvements, both qualitywise as well as quantitywise. Before, the monopoly of the market had seen an ending phase, the Assets Under Management (AUM) was Rs. 67bn. The private sector entry to the fund family rose the AUM to Rs. 470 bn in March 1993 and till April 2004, it reached the height of 1,540 bn.
Putting the AUM of the Indian Mutual Funds Industry into comparison, the total of it is less than the deposits of SBI alone, constitute less than 11% of the total deposits held by the Indian banking industry.
The main reason of its poor growth is that the mutual fund industry in India is new in the country. Large sections of Indian investors are yet to be intellectuated with the concept. Hence, it is the prime responsibility of all mutual fund companies, to market the product correctly abreast of selling.
The mutual fund industry can be broadly put into four phases according to the development of the sector. Each phase is briefly described as under.
First Phase - 1964-87
Unit Trust of India (UTI) was established on 1963 by an Act of Parliament. It was set up by the Reserve Bank of India and functioned under the Regulatory and administrative control of the Reserve Bank of India. In 1978 UTI was de-linked from the RBI and the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) took over the regulatory and administrative control in place of RBI. The first scheme launched by UTI was Unit Scheme 1964. At the end of 1988 UTI had Rs.6,700 crores of assets under management.
Second Phase - 1987-1993 (Entry of Public Sector Funds)
Entry of non-UTI mutual funds. SBI Mutual Fund was the first followed by Canbank Mutual Fund (Dec 87), Punjab National Bank Mutual