Axis Mutual Fund hopes that its revamped marketing strategy coupled with technology initiatives will help the company catch up with competition and carve out a niche for it in the mutual fund space in the coming years.
“Our selling strategy is different now. Our products are goal-based and long-term. We don’t talk too much about products. We will do more multi-asset funds. We won’t market short-term performance of our products,” Axis Asset Management Company Managing Director and CEO Chandresh Nigam told The Hindu .
“I think investors can see through things very easily now. If you are doing something which is not in their interest, they will walk away,” he said.
Post-rejig of its selling strategy, the company has started seeing some select advisors and intermediaries moving towards the company. “This is really encouraging though we are yet to achieve big success. So this is still a small portion ie, only 15-20 per cent of investors are in favour of long-term-oriented or SIP-oriented funds,” he added.
Mr. Nigam also said the company’s multi-asset strategy paid dividends and it would to continue to lay strong thrust on this strategy. While its is focusing on capital protection series of funds, it has at least three new products (multi-asset) lined up for launch in the next 6-9 months.
Those include dynamic asset allocation product, child plan and a retirement solution product.
Meanwhile, the company is also giving lot of emphasis on technology to engage with the customers better. It is working on a mobile platform for online push of its products. It has already brought about 2500 of its advisors on this platform and in the second stage the remaining 2500 advisors will be brought on this.
Axis MF, which has moved to 12th position (as of June end) from 38th in AUM (asset under management)-wise in the past five years, is also in the process of tripling its advisor-force to 15,000 in the next 15 months.
This exercise will see company’s penetration growing from the present 800 locations.
