Australia-based investment manager Jaipur Asset Management (Jaipur AM) has created a new fund that will enable sophisticated investors, including SMSFs, to gain exposure to Indian equities.
The firm’s inaugural Jaipur India Growth Fund, launched three months ago, is the first unit under the master fund structure and is comprised of three initial underlying asset managers with total assets under management of about $75 billion.
The fund is a blended offering, targeting total returns exceeding the MSCI India Index by 2 per cent over the medium to long term, and has a minimum investment of $50,000.
“It’s a sophisticated investor market so it’s not going to suit the majority of financial advisers’ clients,” Jaipur AM chairman Stephen Hopley told selfmanagedsuper.
“We would expect that it will be mainly family offices and SMSF advisers specialising in the larger pools, and it’s more suited to perhaps family SMSFs. They’re the type of funds I think would be most likely to access us.
“The fund is ideal for mixing with Australian franking credit companies because you distribute income.”
Hopley said due to the current economic environment, the timing of the fund and the access created as a result provided a compelling opportunity for portfolios to consider an investment allocation to India.
“The biggest thing that will provide an investment opportunity is social change is being driven in India and virtually every piece of that social change is having an economic impact,” he noted.
“It’s a case of how you obtain access, in my view, rather than should you be invested or not.
“The ability of the fund is providing investors a direct Indian section to your portfolio whereby you can make the decision, which is unlikely to be made by an emerging markets fund, of being overweight India.
“But the key thing is to enable our investors to have access.”
Jaipur AM managing director Neelesh Mehta added: “What we saw was an opportunity of the world’s fastest-growing large economy in this environment and projections from leading institutions indicate that in the next 10 to 15 years it will be amongst the world’s largest economies.”
Jaipur AM’s underlying investment manager partners are Birla Sun Life Asset Management, SBI Funds Management and Unit Trust of India.
