Indiantelevision.com Team

(25 July 2007 9:00 pm)

BANGALORE: JM Financial Mutual Fund (JM) has planned an aggressive mass communication campaign for its new fund offer – the JM Contra Fund (JMCF).

The campaign will have a special thrust on television which will be aired on mass national channels, regional, niche and news channels starting 25 July. Outdoor and print are the other media that JM plans to use for the campaign.

To that effect industry sources reveal that JM plans spends of around Rs 90 million towards the promotion of JMCF, almost three times the amount it spent during its Small and Midcap NFO a few months ago.

The creative work for the JMCF campaign has been done in-house, even the media buying is in-house to a great extent, with some help from R K Swamy BBDO.

JM has embarked on an aggressive growth phase. It brought in the mutual fund industry’s equity investment wonder boy Sandip Sabharwal as chief investment officer (Equity), who in turn brought along with him his team from the SBI Mutual Fund. Its existing equity products have attracted investments, which have grown from Rs 1.6 billion to around Rs 12.5 billion in less than a year, while its total assets under management (AUM) have grown to around Rs 45 billion currently (approximately Rs 37.58 billion as on 30 June, 2007).

Though the numbers are very small when compared to the other players in the Indian Mutual Fund industry, the growth in percentage in the case of JM is currently unmatched as per JM sources. (Just one scheme from top player Reliance Mutual Fund created a record of sorts by attracting investments of over Rs 50 billion last year, Reliance Mutual Fund has AUM in excess of Rs 590 billion as on 30 June).

JM has increased its presence from 16-17 cities a few months ago to around 40 cities at present and plans to up that number to 75 over the next few months, hence opening new avenue for distribution and client servicing. Tapping the erstwhile Indian postal department for distribution of its products is quite a way off though, according to JM sources. Just last year, UTI Mutual Fund (with Rs 390 billion plus in AUM as on 30 June, 2007) received investments of over Rs 1 billion through this distribution avenue.