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Samir Arora, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s Firms Apply For Mutual Fund Licences

Helios Capital and Alchemy Capital have applied for mutual fund licences.

Private investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. (Photographer: Santosh Verma/Bloomberg News)
Private investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. (Photographer: Santosh Verma/Bloomberg News)

Helios Capital Management, a Singapore-based firm founded by Samir Arora; and Alchemy Capital Management Pvt., co-founded by billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, have applied for mutual fund licences with the market regulator.

Helios applied for the licence on Feb. 25, 2021, while Alchemy Capital Management did so on Jan. 1, 2021, according to the latest status report uploaded by the Securities and Exchange Board of India on its website.

Helios Capital Management Pte Ltd., registered with Singapore and Indian regulators, manages India-focused long-short and long-only fund, and a global long-only equity fund. Alchemy Capital, whose founders also include Hiren Ved, Ashwin Kedia and Lashit Sanghvi, offers portfolio management as well as alternate investment products.

Besides Alchemy and Helios, other investment firms also await mutual fund licences. Bajaj Finserv Ltd., Capitalmind (Wisemarkets Analytics Pvt.), Frontline Capital Services Ltd., Unifi Capital Pvt. and Zerodha Broking Ltd. have applications pending with SEBI.

Moneycontrol first reported this on Wednesday. Helios Capital, Alchemy Capital, Zerodha, and Capitalmind confirmed to BloombergQuint that they'd submitted applications. The other companies are yet to respond to queries sent on Thursday morning.

This comes at a time when the Indian mutual fund industry has seen consistent outflows despite equity markets scaling record highs. Since July last year, equity mutual funds have seen outflows every month. Even when foreign investors piled into equities, domestic mutual funds remained net sellers of stocks due to increased redemption pressure from profit-booking and portfolio rebalancing.