Mutual fund newcomer WhiteOak Capital Asset Management plans to open nearly 100 branches across the country in the next 12 to 18 months.

In addition, the company has lined up six different mutual fund products, the first being a flexible cap fund, followed by an emerging market fund, a large cap fund, a mid cap fund and an equity-linked savings scheme (ELSS), Prateek Pant, chief commercial officer of WhiteOak Capital Asset Management, told PTI during an interaction.

The company has already filed offering documents with Sebi for the six mutual fund schemes and will launch them as soon as it receives regulatory approval.

Speaking of its strategy for new funds, Pant said, WhiteOak will primarily focus on active funds because the company believes there is a lot of opportunity in these funds. In addition, it will use the expertise of its 30-member strong investment team.

The regulatory push to separate the cost of managing funds from the cost of advising/distributing and the push towards advising practice, institutional preference, government decision to divest through exchange traded funds (ETFs) , the huge base of new entrants who are digital first, the need for investment simplification, among others, are some reasons to focus on active funds, he added.

The asset management firm believes in multi-modal presence and it will build its own digital interface and have a huge digital presence across various fintechs and stock exchanges to ensure the differentiated product and content reaches investors.

WhiteOak, which has already built up distributors, “plans to open nearly 100 branches in 80 cities over the next 12 to 18 months,” Pant said.

At present, the asset management company has 40 branches in 30 cities including Jaipur, Varanasi, Dehradun and Amritsar.

White Oak Capital Group, which provides investment management and advisory services for equity assets of over Rs 42,000 crore, recently entered the mutual fund space by acquiring Yes MF.

The group is founded by Prashant Khemka, former CIO of the India Equity and Global Emerging Markets Equity businesses of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The firm is confident of attracting large clients given its experience in portfolio management services (PMS) and alternative investment fund (AIF) divisions.

Currently, the total business of AIF stands at Rs 5,000 crore, PMS is around Rs 7,000 crore and it has 7,000 to 8,000 PMS investors.

In the last financial year, the company saw the largest inflows on the PMS side, at over Rs 5,000 crore. The three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of its PMS business was 26-27%.

(Only the title and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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