Macro picture in India remains intact: HDFC AMC

Milind Barve, Managing Director, HDFC Asset Management said the Cancer Cure Fund was a capital protection oriented fund and the fund house would not be charging any asset management fee for the cancer cure fund. HDFC launched a three year close-ended capital protection scheme debt fund for cancer cure of which 50% or 100% dividend income will be donated.

This social initiative was taken up for the tenth anniversary of company. He added that the tax deduction available under Section 80G. Barve further said the mutual fund industry had seen positive inflows for last two months with net inflows of Rs 1,370 crore in equity oriented funds in January.
 
The macro picture in India remains intact, Barve said. The number of SIP investors increasing in MF industry, he added. Below is a verbatim transcript of his interview with CNBC-TV18's Udayan Mukherjee and Mitali Mukherjee. Also watch the accompanying videos. Q: Walk us through the concept of this new debt fund and why are you choosing to do it? A: This is a new fund, completely new concept that we thought about. Our fund house, which is HDFC Asset Management Company, is completing ten years. I thought the best way to commemorate the ten years would be to something which is completely philanthropy oriented. It is not about growing assets under management and profits and so on and so forth. The object of the fund is complete 100% philanthropy. What we have done is that it is a three year closed ended debt fund, which will buy a high quality debt with the object of having the capital invested fully protected. It is a capital protection oriented fund. The income that an investor would have earned can go as a donation to the Indian Cancer Society. So, the investor has a choice of either putting all of the income that is 100% going towards donation or if it so chooses, you could put 50% of the income as a donation to the Indian Cancer Society. So, while the money that one invests in the fund is expected, it is a capital protection oriented fund that the objective of the fund is to return the principle intact to the investor, the income is something that the investor will forego and that will go as a donation to the Indian Cancer Society. I must also tell you that we as an asset management company are doing a couple of things. One of them ofcourse is that we are not charging any asset management fee or any cost to these funds. So, the entire income that is earned, will not suffer any cost, it will go straight potentially as a donation. We are spending some amount of money in advertising this product. But more importantly, we as a part of the HDFC group is putting in some of our own funds into this new fund as well. So, I think it is a way in which we think we need to do something for society, we should have done it many years back but I think it is never too late. All of us have to spend some of our energy sometime in the year towards something which has a real social objective and nothing more. So, this is about treating underprivileged children and patients who are defected with cancer, which was expected to be curable and going towards the treatment of people whose incomes are going to be below Rs 1.5 lakh per annum. I think the Indian Cancer Society is one of the country