The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s new Specialised Investment Funds sound like a grand idea soured in implementation. The regulator designed SIFs to bridge the gap between mutual funds and Portfolio Management Services or Alternative Investment Funds by lowering the entry ticket to ₹1 million. That looked like a promising move to attract investors priced out of the ₹5 million or ₹10 million thresholds for PMS and AIFs, offering them non-traditional exposure in equities and fixed income.But the excitement did not last long. Advisers and investors had hoped SIFs would deliver the sort of innovation seen in PMS: equity themes, unlisted stocks, pre-IPOs, or blended styles combining value, growth and momentum. Instead, SEBI rolled out a framework focused on advanced hedging strategies—long-short positions, allocations to REITs, private credit and Infrastructure Investment Trusts—offered in open-ended, close-ended and interval formats, and targeted at investors with higher risk appetites.
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