A STUDY ON MUTUAL FUNDS:-

INVESTOR AWARENESS

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 SYNOPSIS ON
A STUDY ON MUTUAL FUNDS :- INVESTOR AWARENESS

Submitted to

JANTA COLLEGE BAKEWAR, ETAWAH

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of degree of

MASTER OF COMMERCE

Submitted by: SHAILESH PRATAP SINGH

Under the guidance of: Dr. YOGESH SHUKLA

POST GRADUATE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE JANTA

COLLEGE BAKAEWAR, ETAWAH
CSJM UNIVERSITY, KANPUR, U.P.( M.COM 4th SEM )
MARCH, 2024.

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 Introduction
While the Indian mutual fund industry has a six fold increase in AUM over the last
10 years, it is yet to emerge as the preferd investment choice for retail investos in
india.
More than 50 years have gone by since UTI started its first sale in july 1964, and it
is believed that in the next few years, the industry will perform closer to the original
mandate of encouraging and mobilizing savings of small investors. It is widely
believed that MF is a retail product designed to target small investors, salaried
people and others who are intimidated by the stock market but, nevertheless, like to
reap the benefits of stock market investing. At the retail level, investors are unique
and are a highly heterogeneous group. Mutual funds provide various facilities that
msake saving and investing simple, accessible and affordable , by using
professional management diversitification variety of product liquidity affordability
convienence and case of record keeping moreover strict government regulation and
full discloser of information makes the investment more secure in india.

In mutual fund market the key area of interest of marketing

experts are understanding the investors expectation and meeting those expectations.
The mutual fund sector is one of the fastest growing sector in Indian economy and has
tremendous potential for sustained future growth. The present era of exponential
growth has seen changes, refinement innovations etc. in products practices and
distributin and channel development. The industry needs to identify the expectation of
the investor and meet their expectations in better way by overcoming the challenges
the mutual fund industry is facing.

Mutual funds are being an institutional investment agency are treat as a suitable
vehicle specifically for small investors , who normally feel shy of the capital market
and are unable to predict its conditions. Through different scheme mutual fund can
provide expert advice and portfolio management by reducing unsystematic risk. While
offering good returns. As mutual fund is gaining so much of importance and most of
the investor preferring mutual funds it is essential to find out the factor influencing the
investor before selecting the mutual fund scheme & company.

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Now a days people are much aware about the financial products and having
sufficient market information and are ready to take challenge of investing in
financial market through mutual funds. But only information received through
various advertisements on mutual fund will not help investors to select right fund or
scheme large number of management companies have came up with huge variety of
scheme due to which selection of particular because confused puzzle. Considering
all these circumstances this study has been undertaken . the core objective of the
study to analyze that what are real factor which influence the investor awareness &
selection of mutual fund schemes.
Heeding the adage "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" the holders of mutual
funds shares are able collectively to gain the advantage by diversifying their
investments, which might be beyond their financial means individually.

In the present scenario Mutual fund investments are the excellent resource of
investments and it is further helpful for the salary class people for getting tax
benefit. Mutual fund industries are gaining weight for the reason that salaried
group people and the middle income people prefer their investment preferable
avenue for the investment destination. There are different traditional
investment options are available i.e., gold investment, government bonds,
real estate, post office savings schemes, insurances and fixed deposits etc.
Most of the investors are gaining awareness about the mutual funds
irrespective of their age, gender and their income etc. In reality, most of the
people investing in mutual funds are not clear regarding its functioning and
management. Subsequently the business organizations which are offering
mutual funds have to present absolute information to the potential investors
relating to mutual funds.

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 WHAT IS A MUTUAL FUND?

Mutual fund is the pool of the money, based on the trust who invests the
savings of a number of investors who shares a common financial goal, like
the capital appreciation and dividend earning. The money thus collect is then
invested in capital market instruments such as shares, debenture, and foreign
market. Investors invest money and get the units as per the unit value which
we called as NAV (net asset value). Mutual fund is the most suitable
investment for the common man as it offers as opportunity to invest in
diversified portfolio management, goosd research team, professionally
managed Indian stock as well as the foreign market, the main aim of the fund
manager is to taking the scrip that have under value and future will rising,
then fund manager sell out the stock. Fund manager concentration on risk-
return trade off, where minimize the risk and maximize the return through
diversification of the portfolio.

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 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Literature review
The mutual fund industry is expected to play a vital role in financial intermediation
in the Indian economy; hence mutual fund’s collective ability to draw investment
funds and the use of those funds here of considerable interest [Dr.Shantanu mehta,
Charmi shah, 2012].
The global financial and economic crisis that unfolded in 2007 unsurprisingly had an
impact both on the amount of savings being channeled into mutual funds over the
world, and on the distribution of resources among mutual fund classes embodying
varying degrees of risk.

The trends in resource mobilization by the industry give a fair idea about mutual
fund investors’ behavior in the post-crisis period; the movements away from or
towards different types of mutual funds bearing various degrees of risk, are an
indicator of mutual fund investors’ collective risk appetite under differing economic
circumstances.

As investor decisions are generally based on the returns generated by the funds, it is
important to see how mutual funds have fared in term of returns performance,
particularly during times of financial market stress. Further, the mutual fund
industry’s role in the Indian capital markets is also defined by both the amount and
type of resources garnered by it, as these jointly determine the deployment of
resources by mutual funds.

Syama Sunder (1998) conducted a survey to get an insight into the mutual fund
operations of private institutions with special reference to Kothari Pioneer. The
survey revealed that awareness about Mutual Fund concept was poor during that
time in small cities like Visakhapatnam.

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 In economic expansions, investors strongly display the documented behaviors of
chasing returns and searching for managerial skill. In contrast, recession investors do
not chase returns and exhibit a weaker tendency to seek alpha. Even before
controlling for momentum, no smart money effect exists in recessions.

Zhao (2004) reviewed fund families typically claim that closing a fund protects the
fund superior performance by preventing it from growing too large tobe managed
efficiently.

Madhusudhan V Jambodekar (1996) conducted a study to assess the awareness of

Mutual Fund’s among investors, to identify the information sources influencing the
buying decision and the factors influencing the choice of a particular fund.

“An Empirical study on factors influencing the mutual fund/scheme selection by

retail investors” and there study revealed that among product qualities the most
important factor was performance of the fund followed by brand name of scheme
[Walia, N. and R. Kiran, 2009].

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 OBJECTIVE

The growth objective of the mutual fund is to achieve capital appreciation over
the long term by investing in securities with the potential for growth.
These funds typically focus on investing in stocks and equity-oriented instruments to
generate higher returns for investors. Enable investor to understand basic money
management concept like saving and investment and management risk.

The main objective of the study are:-

1. To analyze the investors awareness and perception regarding investing and
spreading awareness amongst small investors.
2. To measure the factors influencing the investors while selecting the mutual fund
company
3. To study the advertising effectiveness of mutual funds.
4. To find a correlation between mutual fund advertising & investor awareness &
selecting mutual funds schemes.
5. To help an investor make a right choice of investment, while considering the
inherent risk factors.

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 OPERATIONAL DEFINATION

in few years mutual fund has emerged as a tool for ensuring ones financial well-
being. Mutual fund jave not only contributed to the India’s growth story but have
also helped families tap into the success of indian industry. As information and
awareness is rising more and more people are enjoying the benefits of investing
in mutual funds. The main reason the retail mutual fund investor remains small is
that nine in ten people with income in India do not know the benefits of mutual
funds. But once, people are aware of mutual fund investment opportunities and
benefits, the number of people who decide to invest in mutual funds increase to
as many as one in five people.

This project gave me a great learning experience and at the same time it gave me
enough scope to implement my analytical ability. The analysis and advice
presented in this project report based on market research on the saving and
investment practices of the investors and preferences of the investor for
investment in mutual funds. This report will help to know about the investors
preferences in mutual fund means are they prefer, which option (growth or
dividend) they prefer or which investment strategy they follow ( systematic
investment plan or one time plan). This project as a whole can be divided into
two parts.
The first part gives an insight about mutual fund and its various aspects, the
company profile, objectives of the study, research methodology. One can have a
brief knowledge about mutual fund and its basics through the project.

The second part of the projects consists of data and its analysis collected through
survey done on 150 people. The sample was collected through personal visits,
formal talks and through filling up the questionnaire prepared. The data has been
analyzed by using mathematical or statistical tools.

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 Objective and Methodology
This study emphasize on one of the principle of corporate finance-dividend principle.
Although dividend is not a new area of research, iL is still attracting the attention of many
researchers, it remains one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in modem corporate
finance. The topic of dividend remains one of the most controversial issues in corporate
finance. For more than half a century financial economists are engaged in modelling and
examining corporate payout policy. Long ago Black ( 1976) stated that,

"The harder we look at the dividend picture, the more it seems like a puzzle, with pieces
that don't fit together". Since then a vast amount of literature has been produced examining
dividend. Recently, however, Frankfurter and Wood (2002) concluded same as Black (1976)
that: The dividend "puzzle," both as a share value enhancing feature and as a matter of
policy, is one of the most challenging topics of modem finam:::e or financial economics. Also
Allen et al. (2000) summarized the current consensus view when they concluded "Although
a number of theories have been put forward in the literature to explain their peivasive
presence, dividends remain one of the thorniest puzzles in corporate finance".
Different authors have used different combinations of variables for explaining the dividend
behaviour.

Besides, there are different approaches to the decision involving distribution ersus retention
of net profit after taxes. The present study aims at identifying the factors orvariables
influencing corporate dividend policy significantly with reference to BSE listed
firms.Therefore, more specifically the objectives of this study are as follows:-

• To study the trends in the dividend pattern of Indian finns.

• To analyze industry-wise dividend payment pattern.

• To analyze the influence of firm characteristics such as profitability, growth, indebtedness

and investment opportunity on the dividend. The
study is exploratory, casual and empirical in nature. It is based on information available
from the BSE-100 firms' data during the period 1996-97 to 2006-07. For our study the data
primarily obtained from the corporate database (PROWESS) maintained by CMIE, the Center
for Monitoring the Indian Economy. We restrict our analysis to firms which have no missing
data which may be difficult to account for. Thus our study consists of data of70 firms
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constituting BSE-100. For further analysis total obseived firms are segregated into different
sectors. Three broad sectors viz. Manufacturing sector, Banking sector and Other Seivices
sector constitutes 46, 09 and 15 firms respectively. We confine our analysis to BSE listed
firms only because all the listed finns are required to follow the nonns set by SEBI for
announcing the financial accounts. It is also observed that BSE listed firms dominate Indian
Stock Market and they represent different industrial sectors. To analyse the data different
statistical techniques (viz descriptive statistics, multiple regression analysis, trend analysis,
forecasting etc.) and some financial techniques (ratio analysis) are used. The analysis of data
is done through SPSS package.

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 LIMITATIONS
1. Model assumes that perfect market conditions will prevail. However,
perfect market is an ideal and hypothetical situation only and does not exist in
reality.
2. Alike flotation cost, transaction costs, brokerage charges are actually paid by
shareholders, thus they prefer quick generation of income in form of
dividend.
3. Assumption of fee availability of shares is criticised because of applicability
of certain restrictions on investors in respect of purchase of securities
beyond a limit.
4. The management of the firm knows in detail about the firm's operations, its
operating profit, and movement in information, but it is disseminated
selectively, or no uniform information is available to all shareholders,
especially, at free cost. 9. Firms do not follow strict investment policy, rather
firms go to every extent possible to generate earnings of the firm. A strict
investment policy has much serious implications on value of a firm.
5. The assumption of funding new project from retained earnings limits
the expansion of business. Firms do raise funds from external sources.

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