Context:
Quant Mutual Fund has received final approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to launch India’s first Specialized Investment Fund (SIF), marking a major regulatory and strategic milestone in the evolution of the country’s asset management industry.
Key Highlights:
- First-of-its-Kind Approval: Quant MF will launch the QSIF Equity Long-Short Fund, India’s first fund under the newly created SIF category.
- Strategy: The fund will use long-short investment strategies across:
- Equity
- Debt
- Hybrid categories
- Launch Timeline: The fund is expected to be launched in August 2025.
What is a Long-Short Fund?
A long-short fund allows the fund manager to:
- Take long positions in securities expected to rise.
- Take short positions in securities expected to fall.
This approach seeks to reduce portfolio volatility while enhancing potential returns, especially useful in uncertain or volatile markets.
About Specialized Investment Funds (SIFs)
SIFs are a new fund category under SEBI’s framework allowing mutual funds to offer advanced investment strategies. These funds can be launched as:
- Open-ended, close-ended, or interval schemes.
- Designed to expand product diversity and deepen India’s mutual fund ecosystem.
SEBI’s Compliance Mechanism for SIFs
- Minimum Investment Threshold: â‚ą10 lakh per investor.
- Breach Handling:
- If threshold falls below â‚ą10 lakh due to any transaction, all SIF units of the investor will be frozen for debit.
- The investor will be given a 30-day notice to rebalance and comply.
- If rebalanced in time, units will be unfrozen.
- If not, the units will be automatically redeemed at the prevailing NAV by the AMC.
