In April, both Zerodha and Smallcase announced that they would set up a joint venture to launch the Zerodha AMC business
Online brokerage Zerodha has got the final approval for its mutual fund business, Zerodha Fund House, which will be established in partnership with Small Case, said Zerodha founder and CEO Nithin Kamath. Industry veteran Vishal Jain will be the new CEO of the AMC business.
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In April, both Zerodha and Smallcase announced that they would set up a joint venture to launch the Zerodha AMC business.
“We just received the final approval for the @ZerodhaAMC we are building in partnership with @smallcaseHQ,” said Kamath on Friday evening on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter.
He said his motivation to start a mutual fund was twofold. The first was that the biggest challenge and opportunity for Indian markets is the shallow participation. He said that even after all the growth over the past three years, there are maybe 6-8 crore unique mutual fund and equity investors put together.
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“The second was that if we had to bring in the next 10 million investors, they needed simple products they could understand, and mutual funds were a perfect instrument. We aim to be index-only and create simple funds and ETFs that all investors can understand and invest in for all their goals,” Nithin Kamath said.
Vishal Jain, who has been part of the entire passive investing journey in India from Day 1, has joined us as a chief executive officer (CEO) to build the asset management company (AMC). “So yeah, keep an eye out for our first NFO (new fund offer),” Kamath said.
On Thursday, Helios Capital also received Sebi’s approval to launch a mutual fund business. Old Bridge Capital Management Pvt Ltd is awaiting Sebi’s final nod for a mutual fund licence. Besides, applications of three companies — Unifi Capital Pvt Ltd, Alpha Alternatives Fund Advisors LLP and Wizemarkets Analytics Pvt Ltd — are under the regulator’s consideration as of June 2023, data with Sebi showed.
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The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had given in-principle approval to Zerodha in 2021 for its mutual fund application.
Sequoia-backed smallcase offers people a chance to invest in the stock market through portfolios of stocks or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The company had earlier collaborated with Zerodha for thematic investment in 2016. The thematic investments included portfolios holding between 10-20 stocks. The themes were based on long term trends, policy reforms by the government, sectoral shifts, technology, demographics and culture.
