Moneycontrol Mutual Fund Summit brings policymakers and market leaders together in Delhi

NEW DELHI: India’s mutual fund story is moving from savings to scale. Moneycontrol hosted the Moneycontrol Mutual Fund Summit in New Delhi in September, bringing together senior policymakers, government officials, asset management company leaders and market strategists to discuss the role of mutual funds in India’s growth and long-term wealth creation.

Held under the theme ‘Powering Viksit Bharat Through Mutual Funds’, the summit explored how taxation, economic policy, household savings, financial inclusion, technology and changing investment strategies could shape India’s investment landscape as the country works towards its ambition of becoming a developed economy by 2047.

The summit brought together senior government representatives and leaders from the mutual fund and asset management industry, including Arunish Chawla, secretary, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, Ministry of Finance; Saurabh Garg, secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation; and Sanjay Bahadur, member, Central Board of Direct Taxes.

From the industry, participants included Navneet Munot, MD & CEO, HDFC Asset Management; Nilesh Shah, MD, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company; Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO, Edelweiss Mutual Fund; Sid Swaminathan, MD & CEO, JioBlackRock Mutual Fund; and several other investment and fund-management leaders.

Opening the summit, Central Board of Direct Taxes member Sanjay Bahadur said mutual funds were increasingly becoming the preferred investment route, particularly among younger investors.

He said the shift was taking place as younger Indians increasingly moved away from simply parking surplus money in physical assets or fixed deposits. Bahadur also called for a simpler taxation framework that focuses on ease of understanding and compliance rather than individual transactions.

The discussion around household savings was further expanded by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation secretary Saurabh Garg, who highlighted the rise in female labour force participation and the need to move more household savings into financial assets.

Garg said female labour participation had crossed 40%, compared with around 30% earlier, while women’s earnings had also grown at a slightly faster rate than men’s. He added that households continued to prioritise capital preservation over higher returns, making the financialisation of savings currently held in physical assets an important opportunity.

The scale of India’s expanding investment ecosystem was highlighted by Department of Investment and Public Asset Management secretary Arunish Chawla, who described saving and investment as key drivers of economic growth.

Chawla pointed to the rise in demat accounts from around four crore six years ago to 24 crore, saying the financial sector’s share of household savings was increasing, with mutual funds accounting for a significant part of that shift.

He also highlighted the importance of public asset management and the growing connection between retail investors and professional asset managers.

Technology and artificial intelligence emerged as another key theme at the summit. HDFC Asset Management MD & CEO Navneet Munot said financialisation was increasingly accompanied by the equitisation of savings, while arguing that India also needed stronger growth in fixed-income funds.

Munot said fund managers able to use AI effectively could gain an advantage, but cautioned that markets remain driven by individual decisions and constantly changing views. According to him, there would always be market situations that machines could find difficult to predict, particularly when it came to contrarian thinking.

The conversation also focused on making investing more accessible and ensuring that investors remain invested through different market cycles.

JioBlackRock Mutual Fund MD & CEO Sid Swaminathan said democratising investing should not be limited to providing access. The larger objective, he said, should be delivering investment outcomes for a wider section of the population.

Swaminathan pointed to the industry’s current base of around six crore investors and said the long-term goal should be to expand that to 60 crore. At the same time, he stressed the need to ensure existing investors remain invested during both rising and falling markets.

Market conditions and investment opportunities were discussed by Axis AMC CIO, PMS and Listed Equity Alternates Naveen Kulkarni, who said crude oil could remain a short-term challenge but was less concerning from a long-term perspective.

Kulkarni also pointed to more reasonable valuations following the market correction and highlighted growth backed by quality and growth at a reasonable price as themes investors could consider.

The summit featured a wider group of market participants, including Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company MD Nilesh Shah, Edelweiss Mutual Fund MD & CEO Radhika Gupta, DSP Mutual Fund CIO Anish Tawakley, JioBlackRock Mutual Fund CIO Rishi Kohli, Capitalmind Mutual Fund CEO Deepak Shenoy, Trident Capital Investments founder and CIO Sachee Trivedi, Motilal Oswal Financial Services director Pratik Oswal, Tata Asset Management senior fund manager Chandraprakash Padiyar and ICICI Prudential AMC senior fund manager, MF Equity Rajat Chandak.

The Moneycontrol Mutual Fund Summit, Delhi edition, was presented by HDFC Mutual Fund, co-presented by JioBlackRock Mutual Fund and powered by Axis Mutual Fund. Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund and Tata Mutual Fund were event partners, while Reliance Industries was the associate partner.

By bringing policymakers and market leaders into the same room, the summit put the spotlight on a central question for India’s next growth phase: how can a deeper, broader and more financially aware investor base turn household savings into long-term capital for Viksit Bharat 2047