“The size of Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund has surely grown over the last decade. This has prompted some to wonder whether we should close for fresh investments. We are not considering this for now,” Thakkar said. “Our scheme looks large because we run very few schemes and do not fragment our assets under management. We wish to have an investment avenue open for our company, ourselves, family and friends.”
Thakkar said investors who are very keen to invest in a smaller scheme managed by the same investment team can consider investing in the Parag Parikh Tax Saver Fund which is much smaller than the Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund (albeit with a 3 year lock-in).
On overseas investments, Thakkar said there is no update on the increase in the overall limit on foreign investments. “Incremental investments in the Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund continue to be in Indian equities. We have to operate in the environment which is given to us and as we have been stating all along, the main objective to invest abroad is to reduce risk rather than necessarily earn a higher return. Parag Parikh Tax Saver Fund which has no foreign investments has done reasonably well despite investing only in India. We remain hopeful that at an appropriate time the overseas investment limits will be increased,” he said. Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund was known for its holdings in a few select overseas stocks. However, after the Sebi asked mutual funds to stop investing in overseas stocks after they breached the overall limit.
On the most repeated question of whether the fund house had plans to launch more schemes, Thakkar said “ We do not wish to clutter our offerings but either some change to our existing hybrid scheme or a new scheme offering may be considered given the changed environment.”
Thakkar said the recent changes to the income tax laws make a hybrid investing approach more tax efficient for a lot of investors who choose to have debt and equity investments and maybe other assets like Real Estate Investment Trusts / Infrastructure Investment Trusts (REITs / InvITs).
“We were largely in a state where we thought we had covered almost all the needs of investors by having a product for equity, tax saving, liquidity management and debt investments each,” he said.Remembering the early days, Thakkar said “it has been a decade since we launched our first mutual fund scheme and the journey has been incredible.”
“As a new mutual fund, we were largely unknown outside of a few clients for whom we were portfolio managers or brokers in the past or for those who were aware of our late founder Parag bhai’s writings. We had no backing of a large corporate or a bank and the brand was unknown,” said Thakkar. “In our wildest dreams, we could not imagine that from around 800 investors we would earn the trust of more than 25 lakh investors. We are happy that we have been able to play a small part in helping the investors reach their financial goals.”
