SEBI working with mutual funds to make ₹250 SIP bets viable for industry growth: Madhabi Puri Buch

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₹500 per month in a systematic investment plan are viable, but ₹250 are not and the focus will be to try to look at ways of making such investments rewarding. "We are working with them (MF industry) to see where is the cost, what can Sebi do to facilitate making it possible to bring that viability down to ₹250 a month, because then it is the equivalent of what Hindustan Lever did with shampoo sachets. You just explode the market," Buch said.

The comments come on a day the MF industry reported its highest-ever monthly investments through SIPs at over ₹17,000 crore for November. It also comes amid expectations of an aggressive entry by the Reliance Group entity Jio Financial Services into the MF space. Buch said such sachetisation will help the financial inclusion agenda, and also help the Indian capital markets.

Citing the experience of over the last one year, Buch said hardening of rates in the developed markets made foreign investors sell Indian equities, but India was not impacted as much as other emerging markets because the domestic investors held fort and also forced the foreign investors to come back because of the yields the market was offering. "In effect, the benefit of our domestic flows and the retail flows had a double impact. The impact of them coming in and the impact of the foreign money returning because they couldn't afford to miss the Indian story," she added.