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Driven by addition in equity fund folios, mutual fund (MF) houses registered a surge of more than 7.85 lakh investor accounts in the first two months (April-May) of the current fiscal, taking the total tally to 4.84 crore.
This is on top of an addition of 59 lakh folios in 2015-16 and 22 lakh in 2014-15. In the last two years, investor accounts increased mainly due to robust contribution from smaller towns.
Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts, though one investor can have multiple folios.
According to data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) on total investor accounts with 43 fund houses, the number of folios rose to 48,448,079 at the end of last month from 47,663,024 in March-end, a rise of 7.85 lakh.
Growing participation from retail investors, especially from smaller towns and huge inflows in equity schemes, have helped in increasing the overall folio counts, experts said.
The equity category witnessed an addition of over three lakh investor folios to 3.64 crore in the first two months of the current fiscal.
Mutual funds have reported a net inflow of more than Rs 8,900 crore in equity schemes during the period under review.
The net inflow is in line with BSE's benchmark Sensex rising 5.23 percent.
Mutual funds are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a large number of investors. The funds are invested in stocks, bonds and money market instruments, among others.
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