The chief marketing officer of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company Ltd, Prakash B Dalal, said that in due course, the services of investment advisors (mainly chartered accountants) would be utilised for marketing mutual funds to their clients. He added that in Delhi and Mumbai, chartered accountants had taken the initiative of investment advisory services for clients, besides providing regular consultancy on taxation matters.

Dalal said the fund would be targeting an additional 2000 new accounts every month besides establishing offices in 8 major cities. The total expenditure budget for the current year on advertisement and sales promotion was about Rs 4 crore, he added.

The fund manager of K-30, SN Rajan, said the equity fund had managed a growth of 90 per cent in the 9 months of the current year (it was launched in January 1999) against the 60 per cent gain registered by the BSE Sensex during the period. "This growth rate is not sustainable, but we will be happy with an average growth of 30 per cent in our equity scheme. We have internal targets limiting our scrip and sector exposures to 15 and 40 per cent respectively," he added.

The latest portfolio of K-30 shows that the fund has virtually exited from Tata Vashishti, Procter & Gamble and Smithkline Beecham Pharma. The token presence of these scrips is largely on account of scrips which cannot be sold as they are awaiting rectification/replacement of bad deliveries, he clarified. India Cement is the latest addition to its portfolio, with a weightage of 2.80 per cent.

On the immediate outlook of the market, Rajan said the Sensex could move sideways, but select pivotals could outperform the Sensex. Substantiating his argument, he pointed out that the Sensex (adjusted) gained less than 1 per cent in the last four years, whereas HLL yielded a compounded annual growth of about 25 per cent during the same period.

Rajan said the markets would get a major push from the IPCL disinvestment programme slated for January next year. Evaluation of bids from majors had already begun. The disinvestment would send out positive signals to the market about the government's intention to reduce the fiscal deficit.