India’s growth story more promising than other EMs, says market veteran Nilesh Shah

• Nilesh Shah, MD & CEO at Kotak Mahindra AMC highlights how the Indian economy has turned attractive over the years.
  
• AMFI CEO says that a lot more needs to be done to take MFs to tier II, II and even IV cities.
  
• The ₹39 trillion Indian mutual fund industry has grown multifold since the launched ‘Mutual Funds Sahi Hai’ campaign.
  
• The ownership in Indian equities is skewed towards foreign investors as compared to domestic investors be it MFs, insurers, pensions funds and more, excluding promoters.
  

Indian markets have delivered better returns than most emerging market indices, in spite of a falling rupee and rising inflation.

Nilesh Shah, MD and CEO at Kotak Mahindra AMC who is also a member of the economic advisory council to the Prime Minister is bullish on the Indian growth story.

“In 2014, we were the tenth largest economy in the world, today we are fifth largest. By 2030, we should be about third largest, overtaking the UK, Germany and Japan. Our market share of global GDP was 2.6% in 2014 today it is 3.5% and we should be about 5-6% by 2030. This means that growth going forward will be better,” he said, speaking at FICCI’s Annual Capital Markets Conference.

MF industry has to do a lot in rural regions, says AMFI CEO

The ₹39 trillion Indian mutual fund industry has grown multifold since its launched ‘Mutual Funds Sahi Hai’ campaign in 2017, which did wonders for the industry.

The assets under management of the industry has grown more than five times in the last 10 years from ₹7.53 trillion in 2012 to ₹39 trillion right now.

N S Venkatesh, the CEO of Association of Mutual Funds in India believes that a lot more needs to be done to spread the word across the country.

“AMFI has started work from 2016 onwards. In 2017, we launched the Mutual Funds Sahi Hai campaign and it caught the fancy of the investing public. We need to do more, in the sense that we need to go into the tier II and tier III cities, even tier IV cities. Regional languages ads are being published by AMFI. So we believe that we need to go vernacular to address Bharat,” said Venkatesh.

Domestic investors must gain from Indian equities

For the first six months of the year, foreign investors have been exiting the Indian markets – and they pulled out a total of ₹2,15,000 crore. Yet, their dominance in the Indian markets hasn’t gone down, according to market experts.

Shah said that 19% of India’s stock market cap is owned by FPIs and about 8% is owned by FDIs. Their ownership in Indian equities is more than domestic mutual funds, domestic insurance companies, domestic pensions funds and retail and HNI investors excluding promoters.

“We hope and pray that over the next 25 years we will be able to bring that many investors to our fold so that in 2047 or before, a substantial portion of Indian economic ownership is for the benefit of Indians. When our companies declare good results, there should be more celebration in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Raipur than in Tokyo, Singapore and London,” said Shah.

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