The Hindu Business Line : We have some very interesting international products: Robeco

Mumbai, March 31 Mr George Moller, Chief Executive Officer of Robeco Group, which owns a 49 per cent stake in Canara Robeco Asset Management Company, shared with Business Line the revamp plans for a complete makeover of Canara Robeco AMC.

What are your plans for Canara Robeco AMC, now that you have acquired 49 per cent stake in it?

It needs to be totally revamped. What we feel is that we have to build it up again from the scratch. It is one of the oldest mutual fund in India, it has great heritage but it needs to be re-polished substantially. That’s our challenge.

How are you working out the makeover of the asset management business.

We are revamping our domestic product range here in India. At the same time we have some very interesting international products which we want to re-wrap in India. We will be ready to distribute some of these products later this summer; the first product is expected to be launched sometime in July.

Can you tell us more about these products?

We don’t want to come with plain vanilla products. We want to have really something which is very attractive to the market. We are known internationally as people who are really good at sustainable products, clean technology issues. So we want to re-wrap some of those products in Indian market.

One product, for example, is our Water Fund; that is investing only in water issues globally, because we believe water is a problem and it will become a larger problem, so it will be a big source of economic activity. (In the) Same way we look at new energy forms – renewable energy and alternative energy.

We have some other funds as well, which are theme oriented; those themes make economical sense because those themes really are at the heart of economic development. We believe that these funds will be very interesting and attractive to the Indian market.

So we will put a range of these products in the market and grow that way. We expect to grow rapidly and we really want to be in top ten, probably in the next three years.

What kind of investments will the revamping of the old AMC entail?

We will substantially increase the spending of the company.

RBI has allowed Indian Mutual funds to invest up to a certain limit. Will you be taking Indian investors’ funds to other world markets?

Basically if we import our mutual funds from Europe and the US – which we will do at a point of time and sell them to the Indian market – that is how you take Indian money outside India. We have some very good European funds and American funds and they will be distributed here.

Product-wise what will be the focus, equity or debt?

In money market products or fixed income products, we believe that potentially there is less interest for it in India right now. We will concentrate mainly on the equity side in the first phase, in the second phase we will go mostly for debt products.

How do you see the future growth potential for the MF business in India?

Growth has been very high, that attracts us, at the same time with the decline in the markets now, there will be little bit of pause. In the long term it should grow further rapidly because people are getting wealthier and people want to save.

Mutual funds are very well known in the Indian market. So we foresee rapid growth, but what we hope that the Indian market would not only look at Indian products but also indeed look outside to subscribe to international products.

How are you going to propel the growth of Canara Robeco Mutual Fund?

We have our own people on the ground; one of them Mr Paul Vrancken is a director of the firm who knows India very well. We will get some more here. We have a plan together with Canara Bank to increase the share of MF distribution. We need to train people; we need to give them more information, we need to support them, so a lot of infrastructure is needed around that effort that is going to be put in place. We also have to incentivise the people who work for Canara Bank who are willing to sell the products, besides tapping institutions and other distribution networks.

Globally what are your assets under management?

Robeco Group has presence in Europe and US and manages assets worth $200 billion worldwide

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