Trust MF gears up for its first equity fund, Aakash Manghani to oversee the float

Trust MF is now getting ready to launch equity funds

Trust Mutual fund, which ranks at the 37th spot on the list of Indian mutual fund houses, with assets worth Rs 1,233.61 crore, is on course to launch its first equity fund. On February 14, it announced the addition of a new equity fund manager to its team, Aakash Manghani. He is the second equity fund manager to join Trust after Mihir Vora joined as its chief investment officer in October 2023.

Although Trust Asset Management Co (AMC) Ltd was launched in February 2021, it had launched only debt funds so far. Its first scheme was Trust Banking & PSU Banking Debt Fund. After that, it had launched overnight, liquid and short-term funds.

Its Chief Executive Officer, Sandeep Bagla has been a debt fund manager throughout his career. However, in 2023, the finance ministry- through the Finance Bill- removed the long-term capital gains tax benefits and indexation benefits for debt funds. This put many funds- especially those that focused on debt funds- in a quandary. And even though the removal of tax benefits don’t make the proposition of debt funds unattractive, they did lose some sheen since the tax benefits elevated debt funds by a level or two over its competitors, like fixed deposits.

Bagla told Moneycontrol that the fund house plans to launch basic equity fund, a small-cap fund, a mid-cap fund, a large-cap fund and so on. “Our first offering, Trust Flexi Cap Fund, has already got the approval from Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India). We will be launching it soon,” he said.

Before joining Trust, Manghani worked at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance as a fund manager. Of late, some mutual funds have begun poaching insurance sector’s fund managers as they are perceived to be more accustomed to long-term investing.

Trust MF has been one of the new-age fund houses to enter the Rs 50-trillion Indian mutual funds industry. Other fund houses to have entered the MF industry in recent years were Old Bridge MF, Zerodha Fund House, Samco MF and WhiteOak MF. Navi MF and Groww MF got new sponsors after their previous owners exited the Indian MF industry.