What should be your portfolio allocation in volatile times with macro headwinds? Radhika Gupta answers

Economic Times

23-06-2025

Synopsis Radhika Gupta shares insights on the Indian mutual fund industry's growth. The industry has seen a significant rise in AUM and retail participation. Digital access and industry efforts have contributed to this growth. Gupta advises investors to manage money according to their goals. She suggests investment strategies for different risk profiles. Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO, Edelweiss AMC, had predicted a year of returns consolidation for 2025 in the beginning of the year. She has been advising tempered expectations due to global volatility from geopolitics, economic policy changes, and tariffs. Despite a recent earnings growth slowdown in India, a rebound is expected in the second half of the year, driven by government efforts to boost consumption.
For equity-focused aggressive investors, Gupta recommend flexi and multicap funds, emphasizing mid-cap potential due to strong earnings growth and representation of future-oriented sectors like healthcare and capital markets. Moderate investors may find balanced advantage or aggressive hybrid funds suitable, offering a mix of equity and debt with tax efficiency.
ADVERTISEMENT Let me start with the journey that the mutual fund industry in India has seen. Let us take a decade, from an AUM of Rs 8 lakh crore, it now stands at Rs 65 lakh crore. What has been that inflection point for the Indian markets and especially for the mutual fund industry which triggered such kind of growth and which was supportive?
Radhika Gupta: The last 16 years have included the golden decade for the mutual fund industry. Of that, this government has been in power. The numbers are very surprising. From Rs 8 lakh crore industry AUM, it is now close to Rs 70 lakh crore, but also what is more interesting is we have gone from maybe 4 crore folios to 23 odd crore folios.
Why did equity mutual fund inflows drop by 22% in May? If you look at mutual funds as a percentage of bank deposits, we have gone from 10% to 30%. More of the AUM has become retail. More of the AUM has become equity. More people are investing via SIPs. More distributors are out there. It is a development of the whole ecosystem. And a bunch of things have contributed to it. One is the confidence in the India story.
Finally, when you are investing in equities, it reflects a confidence in the country in the equity market and the growth of companies, the level of aspiration. The marketing on the India story has been very strong.
Second, digital access over the last 10 years has become much better. It started from the time when we got Jan Dhan to enable broader access and then so many digital initiatives that have happened, the whole growth of fintech have now made mutual funds accessible to a much wider class of people, across a much wider class of cities, so that has helped. Third is a lot of effort by our own industry. For instance, Mutual Fund Sahi Hai as a campaign to create awareness in 2017, really has made this instrument a household instrument. Of course, we have a long way to go.
ADVERTISEMENT As a woman investor, and manager of an over Rs 1.3 lakh-crore fund, how do you manage your money? According to data, women's participation in mutual funds has more than doubled since 2019, the SIP AUM has grown 4x. We want to know how you manage your money and that should give us a lot of knowledge of how we can look at managing our own.
Radhika Gupta: First, women's statistics across the board vis-s-vis financial inclusion and involvement have gone up. By the way, even women's bank account numbers are up to 80% from 50%. I was told that one out of four unique MF investors now is a woman. In the case of our own AMC, that is probably 30% women investors. So, this trend is moving. How do I manage my own money? It is very simple. It is very dal chawal in my own words. Women make great investors once they understand the basics of investing. I look at my goals and I manage money according to my goals. I think 90% of my portfolio is mutual funds and mutual fund investments. And I really look at where I want to go in terms of one-year goals, three-year goals, five-year goals, and my long-term money goes into equity. My medium-term money goes into hybrid funds. My short-term money goes into debt funds. But really, that is what it is.
ADVERTISEMENT Now, let us talk about the markets because of late, the SIP numbers are growing. The participation is also there. But there are redemptions also and that is because the construct of the market post September we have seen the markets getting a little jittery. Now, at this point in time we are seeing the geopolitical tensions on the rise, there is trade war and what else, the crude is also on the boil. Give us your reading on the markets.
Radhika Gupta: I said this at the beginning of 2025 that after a reasonably un-volatile time post Covid and extraordinary returns, perhaps we should see 2025 as a year of returns consolidation. So, taper down your expectations. Do not sit at the extreme event end of the risk spectrum because there are actually twin factors that are happening. One, the world has not looked this volatile in a while. The combination of geopolitical events in multiple parts of the world, change in economic policy in multiple parts of the world, and the whole noise around tariffs that we have seen, the world map has not looked so volatile. Although, I do believe that as far as something like tariffs have come, the markets have gone up and down, but now they have digested a lot of the noise. But volatility is here to continue.
ADVERTISEMENT Secondly, we have seen a subdued period of earnings growth in the last four-five quarters in India which we think will start to pick up towards the second half of the year given the effort the government has done around pushing up consumption, lot of new orders happening. So, we inherited a tricky global map and a little bit of slowdown that should reverse itself as we go to the second half of the year. The structural story continues to be very strong and I would say as far as the SIP book is concerned, people have been watching this Rs 25,000-26,000 crore number with bated breath, but it has been remarkably resilient. Of course, customers that do SIPs will also redeem from those folios for goals because they want to book profits because of markets. But net-net, at least in my tenure of this industry, I have seen this book grow from Rs 4,000 crore to Rs 26,000 crore. SIP has become a way of investing, a way of saving that appeal. So, I would actually love to see a big Indian goal at a one lakh crore per month SIP book.
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We mentioned that we have not seen such geopolitical tensions or such volatile times in a while. Now, for someone who is not very good at stock picking or someone who does not want to navigate this volatile market, mutual funds are the safest option but it is a very large universe to pick from. How does one go about picking the right type of mutual fund? What should my portfolio allocation look like at this juncture when clearly there are macro headwinds?
Radhika Gupta: So, I will give you some advice, but the first thing that people should do is to take the benefit of a financial advisor because I really believe with the number of options in the fund universe out there and each individual's investment needs being different, portfolios have to be more customised. I really believe people should take help out there. I would give you three quick frameworks for different types of investors. For aggressive investors who want to be equity oriented, this is a time to be in flexi and multicap products. I am not saying largecaps and I am not saying smallcaps. This is the time to be in the middle of the spectrum. You do not want to be 100% largecap because you see earnings growth in the midcap space. You see a lot of the stories and a lot of the sectors that represent the India of tomorrow, your hospitals, your hotels, your capital goods, capital markets, all of them are present in the mid and smallcap space. So, build a curated flexicap or multicap fund. It will give you very nice blended exposure. For moderate investors, the hybrid fund space is good, especially categories like Balanced Advantage or Aggressive Hybrid. These are khichdi categories. They have equity, debt, and they do a good job with tax efficiency.
For conservative investors, we have forgotten a little bit about fixed income as an asset class, especially post the change in taxation. But there are very good tax efficient fixed income solutions out there on the mutual fund platform. Arbitrage, income plus arbitrage are what people should look at.
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