Does it make sense to go for separate retirement-based mutual funds? R Sivakumar explains

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

R Sivakumar, Head Fixed Income, Axis MF, says “what we are trying to do is to have more of a bias towards debt than to equity. This is therefore suitable for someone who is closer to retirement age than someone who is only in the savings part of your career and therefore, as you get older, you will need to de-risk your portfolio. The objective here is that while you get closer to your retirement, either you switch into this fund or increase your allocation into a fund like this which then reduces the risk of your portfolio as you get closer to retirement. ”

I really want to understand the entire concept of having separate retirement-based mutual funds. How different are these funds from a regular mutual fund that your AMC has to offer?
It is a very good question to understand what makes this fund different from others. To be honest, the investments that we make are largely the same kind of instruments – equities, fixed income and therefore one might think that it is just another mutual fund. The important thing is two parts. One, from an investor perspective, these funds come in with specific features. In our case, for example, a minimum five years holding period. Money is locked in for five years at the minimum or until the age of 58.

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From the investor perspective, while this is locked in but from the fund manager perspective, it really gives a longer runway or visibility of the corpus of stability and therefore the fund is able to take a much longer horizon view when it