Small Is The Next Big Thing

First-time investors from smaller cities are increasingly showing greater appetite for mutual fund investments, but is the trend here to stay ?  Preeti  Kulkarni  probes for answers.

- Preeti Kulkarni

 Roopesh Kumar Yadav, a 37-year-old central government employee based in Meerut, is not associated with the city’s famed sports equipment manufacturing industry, which has supplied its sought-after willows to many a celebrated cricketer. Yet, Meerut’s legendary status as the Sports City of India has lent its flavour to his investment approach. He believes in accumulating the ones and twos while not losing sight of the occasional sixer to push up total gains. “I have been investing in an equity mutual fund since June through an SIP of ₹4,000 per month. Recently, I also directed an additional savings of ₹20,000 to this fund to boost my corpus,” explains Yadav. Why settle for a 280- odd score when 350-plus is the new normal seems to be his mantra. “My PF is unlikely to grow into a sizeable corpus as it does not fetch lucrative returns. Moreover, interest rates offered by post office and bank deposits are also quite low. Equity funds are my best bet to create a large enough retirement fund,” he reasons.

Aiming Big

Yadav represents the growing tribe of retail investors from the not-so-big cities who are increasingly relying on mutual funds to realise their dreams. As per data from mutual fund research firm Morningstar India, investors from B-15 cities – the ones beyond the list of top 15 cities – accounted for 17.7 per cent of the overall industry assets under management (AUM) as of September 2017, up from 17 per cent in October 2016 (See: Upward March).