The departure of chief marketing officer Jaideep Bhattacharya from UTI AMC earlier this month will not impact the fund performance, but may considerably diminish its marketing firepower at a time when fund houses are struggling to attract enough investors to equity schemes.

?Jaideep?s departure will not, in any way, impact the fund performance of the AMC as performance is solely driven by fund managers. Having said that, the overall sales strategy, branding and promotional activities as well as the overall market perception about the fund house may suffer,? said a senior industry executive, who didn?t want to be identified.

As the face of the fund house, Bhattarchaya was instrumental in changing the perception of UTI among institutional investors in the last six years, said market observers. He is known in the market circles for being aggressive in pushing for change in the way the AMC functioned. ?It?s a big blow to UTI because he was known to deliver and was around for such a long time,? said the executive.

According to industry observers, marketing plays a critical role in the mutual fund business. In many ways, marketing teams are the face of the fund house as they are instrumental in working with distribution channels, reaching out to investors and installing faith in the brand. Selling is integral to the MF business.

?A fund?s scheme is never brought and always sold. From that standpoint, a marketing officer with good credentials can play a significant role in contributing to the success of a fund house,? said Dhirendra Kumar, CEO, Value Research. Bhattacharya joined UTI AMC in August 2006 after stints at ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and ANZ Grindlays Bank.

He was named the Marketing Personality of the Year, Asia for the year 2009 by Asia Asset Management. He has been a member of the AMFI Board and member of the SEBI Mutual Fund Advisory Committee.

In a terse press release on May 4, UTI AMC had said that Bhattacharya had decided to move on to pursue other interests and that the board of directors had accepted his resignation.

UTI MF?s average AUM declined a little over 12% to R58,922 crore for the fiscal year ended 2012 from R67,189 crore in the previous fiscal, ceding its fourth position to Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund in the process. Twenty-one out of the 44 fund houses suffered a decline in their AUM in this period as the benchmark BSE Sensex retreated 10.5%.

The fund house?s performance was affected as it couldn?t launch new fund offers for almost a year after the departure of its chairman UK Sinha in February 2011.

Another setback was the controversy involving the appointment of a new CEO, with investment management firm T Rowe Price, its largest shareholder, protesting against alleged attempts to influence the selection process to favour bureaucrat Jitesh Khosla.

As matters came to a head and after remaining headless for nearly a year, Imtaiyazur Rahman was appointed interim CEO in January 2012. The fund house, which occupied the numero uno slot till FY06 in terms of the assets it managed, slipped to the number 3 position at the end of FY07 and, subsequently, to number 4 in FY09.