With rising demand from retail investors for mutual fund schemes, MFs have lined up 70 New Fund Offers (NFO) and have filed draft documents for them with capital markets regulator Sebi. The documents for these 70 NFOs have been submitted with the Securities and Exchange Board of India since the beginning of this calendar year.
Some of these NFOs have already been launched, while other schemes would be opened for subscription soon after the necessary clearances. Of these 70 schemes filed, four draft offers have been filed in this month so far, while nine papers submitted in April and the other 24 were filed in March, 19 in February and 13 in January.
Reliance MF, LIC Nomura MF, ICICI Prudential MF, SBI MF, are among the fund houses that are offering NFOs to investors. Manufacturing, retirement, economic recovery, resurgence of the business cycle and e-commerce are some of the themes that are attracting mutual fund houses. Besides, a large number of these schemes are aimed at investment in equity and equity-related securities.
According to market participants, fund houses are rushing towards Sebi to launch new schemes as interest is growing among retail investors for mutual fund schemes, and the recent fund launches have also received good response from investors. Also, they said that the NFO market has picked up as the investors' confidence about equity markets is back and participation from retail investors is also on upswing.
In the past one year, equity markets gave returns of around 30 per cent and several funds gave more than the index returns. This has brought retail investors' interest back into equities and they started participating through mutual funds, market participants added.