Jio BlackRock, the asset management joint venture between Reliance’s Jio Financial Services and BlackRock Inc, is betting on a mix of cutting-edge investment technology, digital-first direct distribution, and India’s largest consumer platform to make inroads into the country’s $600 billion mutual fund industry, Sid Swaminathan, Managing Director and CEO, Jio BlackRock told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interaction.
At the heart of its investment process is Aladdin, BlackRock’s in-house technology platform used to manage nearly $12 trillion in assets worldwide, and by other asset managers as well. “It allows us to produce and manage funds that are innovative, much more risk-aware, and do that at scale,” said Jio BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Sid Swaminathan. “In a scale market like India, you need to be able to manufacture at scale and then distribute at scale.”
For the latter, the firm will tap Jio’s telecom base of 460 million subscribers, embedding its app inside Jio Finance and MyJio, while also working with other digital platforms and registered investment advisers. “The ability to just be present in those channels where there’s a lot of traffic is excellent for us,” Swaminathan said. India’s digital finance adoption, he added, is growing “at a rate much, much faster than anywhere else in the world.”
The addressable market remains largely untapped: equity investments account for just 6% of Indian household savings, compared with mutual fund penetration rates of about 80% in the UK and 150% in the US, measured against GDP. “We are still only scratching the surface.”
Swaminathan said, noting that investor participation in mutual funds in India is “still in the teens.”
Building trust quickly will be key. “If we are able to build the trust and comfort of investors quickly, that can really accelerate participation because the means of access is very simple — it’s on your phone,” he said. “The ultimate big disruptor after the series of micro disruptions could be that a vast part of the market is very comfortable with just being digital and accessing funds on their phones.”
Swaminathan also said India currently has strong macroeconomic tailwinds like India’s demographic dividend, controlled inflation, and steady economic growth. While there may be “a few hiccups now and then,” he said the long-term outlook is “very, very positive” and the industry could be two to three times larger in five years.
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Still, Jio BlackRock isn’t setting asset under management targets yet. “We are just getting started. We’ve only launched a handful of funds, with plans to launch a series more in the next few months,” Swaminathan said. “We are in the learning phase right now. In a few months’ time, we will be in a much better place to say what’s realistic, what’s achievable, and what’s ambitious.”
Swaminathan stressed that Jio BlackRock’s goal is to help grow the overall market through differentiated products and investor education, rather than simply chase scale. “The big picture for us is not necessarily what our AUM is,” he said. “It’s where the market is from here — and how much of that we end up getting.”
Watch the entire video interaction right here on Moneycontrol.
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