Sachin Bansal's Navi Mutual Fund plans to launch electric vehicles fund

After filing papers for over 10 new schemes with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last month, Sachin Bansal-backed Navi Mutual Fund has filed draft documents for four more funds, including an electric vehicles fund.

Most of the documents were filed for passively managed funds, which are easy to understand and cost-effective, as the fund house seems to be looking to make a place in this category.

The fund house has filed papers with SEBI to launch an electric vehicles fund — Navi Electric Vehicles and Driving Technology Fund of Fund (FoF) — an update with the markets regulator showed on Friday.

"The investment objective of the scheme is to provide long-term capital appreciation by investing in units of overseas ETFs (exchange-traded funds and/or index funds that invest in electric vehicles and driving technology)," the draft documents showed.

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The fund of funds will be benchmarked against the STOXX Global Electric Vehicles & Driving Technology NET Index.

Apart from this, the fund house has filed documents for Navi Nifty India Manufacturing Index Fund and two international funds — Navi S&P 500 FoF and Navi Total China Index FoF.

Market experts said passive funds have outperformed actively managed funds in the last couple of years, and that is why such funds are gaining traction among investors.

Passive funds are also gaining popularity in India because of their low expense ratio, they added.

In an actively managed fund, the fund manager has more involvement in the decision making and is more active in looking after which stocks to buy or sell in its portfolio.

In contrast, a passive fund is designed to track the performance of an index by investing in the same stocks in the same weightage, a process that is mostly automated.

The fund house had filed papers for as many as 11 schemes last month, including Navi Total US Stock Market FoF, which would allow Indian investors to invest in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF.

Vanguard is the leading largest asset manager in the world and a pioneer in passive investing.

In July, the fund house had launched the Navi Nifty 50 Index Fund, with an expense ratio of 0.06 percent for its direct plan offering, the lowest in the index schemes category so far.

Bansal, Co-founder of Flipkart, had acquired Essel Mutual Fund from the Essel Group in February 2021 and renamed it Navi Mutual Fund.