NEW DELHI: Dalal Street’s veteran fund manager Nilesh Shah on Wednesday denied rumours floating on social media claiming that he has resigned from Kotak Mahindra AMC and will join as CEO of the yet-to-be-launched Jio BlackRock Mutual Fund.
“There is absolutely no truth in this breaking news / story / rumour. Kindly ignore the rumour mill,” Shah said on X.
— NileshShah68 (@NileshShah68)
Last month, the demerged entity of Jio Financial Services or JFSL had announced the formation of Jio BlackRock, a 50:50 joint venture between JFSL and the world’s largest asset manager.
Jio and BlackRock have set aside an initial investment of $150 million each in the joint venture and will start operations after getting regulatory and statutory approvals to deliver tech-enabled access to affordable, innovative investment solutions for millions of investors in India.
The $540 billion mutual fund industry could be on the verge of a fresh round of disruption with the entry of newer players. Zerodha, which has partnered with fintech smallcase to start the asset management business, is about to launch mutual funds with two passive and direct-only schemes in the next few weeks.
“An enormous untapped market like India will require a lot more players in the industry and ecosystem. We strongly believe more fund houses and providers will only expand the market and increase investor participation. There are many levers yet to be applied that can be a differentiating factor and a strong emphasis on digital delivery of simple products will be ZFH’s strategy,” Vishal Jain, CEO, Zerodha Fund House, had told ET Markets earlier when asked about the rising competition from newer fund houses.
With about 284 index funds and ETFs, the retail adoption of passive funds has been low in India. Just the way banks use their branches and digital platforms to cross-sell an entire suite of financial products, Jio BlackRock can also do it by using the vast reach of RIL’s twin consumer businesses – Jio and Retail.
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