SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch has said that the capital markets regulator wishes to sachetise mutual fund investments going forward. 

Speaking at an event hosted by the Business Today in Mumbai, Ms Buch has said that the mutual fund industry feels that investments of Rs 500 per month in a systematic investment plan (SIP) are viable, but Rs 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 the cost is, what SEBI can do to facilitate, making it possible to bring that viability down to Rs 250 a month because then it is the equivalent of what Hindustan Lever did with shampoo sachets. You just explode the market,” Ms Buch adds. 

The comments come on a day when the MF industry reported its highest-ever monthly investments through SIPs at over Rs 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. 

Ms Buch has said that such sachetisation will help the financial inclusion agenda and also help the Indian capital markets. 

Citing the experience of over the last one year, Ms Buch notes that hardening of rates in the developed markets has made foreign investors sell Indian equities, but India is not impacted as much as other emerging markets because the domestic investors have held fort and also forced the foreign investors to come back because of the yields the market is offering.