Jio BlackRock enters Indian MF market with focus on profitability and growth
BlackRock Asset Management
, one of the latest high-profile entrants into the
Indian mutual fund industry
, maybe following a slightly different playbook from group entity Jio's disruptive telecom foray. The 50:50 joint venture between Mukesh Ambani-backed
Jio Financial Services
and the world's largest asset manager BlackRock, may not be as aggressive on its pricing strategy to grab market share, unlike Jio's sharp discounting that helped it catapult into the big league in telecom.
Profitability and capturing share from new growth in a market that has grown threefold in five years will be some of its mantras.
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"It is not at all to just capture market share, and profitability will be important and pricing is one of the key points," said Sid Swaminathan, MD and CEO,
Jio Blackrock
Asset Management, in an exclusive interview with ET.
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"We know the market is going to grow, we want to help it grow and get a share of the new growth that is coming, rather than capture from existing incumbent players. It's the growth story we are here for," said Swaminathan, who spent close to two decades with BlackRock in various fund management capacities, before relocating to India, about a year ago.
The fund house is keen to offer differentiated content, value-added products and grow the market rather than grab share from existing players, he said. One of the differentiators Jio BlackRock will bring is its proprietary tech platform Aladdin, which will help in cutting transaction costs. "That allows us some cost engineering which we will pass on to end customer which results in more competitive pricing," said Swaminathan.
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The industry is keeping a close watch to see if Jio BlackRock will undercut rivals in the ultra-competitive mutual fund industry.
Jio Blackrock started operations in India this month with launch of three debt schemes that include overnight, liquid and money market funds that mopped up ₹17,800 crore in early July. There have been talks that Reliance has also invested in the NFO.
"I don't want to be disclosing those levels of numbers now. Point is they are a large institution. They invest in all MFs right now. We have had 90 different institutions invest, so the breadth we got is very large; it is well diversified to begin with and we continue to add more investors post the NFO," he said.
It is expected to soon launch another five index funds, including four equity and one fixed-income fund. While the fund house has started with index funds, it aims to offer the entire range of index and active funds, funds that are driven by data, exchange traded funds (ETFs), specialised investment funds (SIFs) and alternate investment funds (AIFs) over time.
While the Indian mutual fund market offers both regular and direct plans, the fund house has started with only direct plans, bypassing mutual fund distributors who sell regular plans and earn a commission.
'There is a growing trend towards digital; people are comfortable doing finances on the phone; we are looking to harness that with a direct digital model and that looks like the right way to start. However, nothing is off the table and as the business grows we will evaluate and take a call,' Swaminathan said.
The Indian mutual fund industry, one of the fastest growing globally, has seen assets under management expand threefold in the past five years—to Rs 74.41 lakh crore in June 2025 from Rs 25.5 lakh crore in June 2020.
The industry is abuzz with speculation that Jio Blackrock will scale fast and could also look at acquisitions. 'It is too premature to look at acquisitions. We are just getting started. From a strategy perspective we want to be in a situation where we will look at the evolution of the market, how we grow, what we see changing and how we adapt with our funds and distribution. We don't want to rule anything out,' said Swaminathan.
'We want to be a significant player here in the long term, but on the path to that we will get a better idea once we spend more time in the market,' he added
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