Equity mutual funds witnessed an addition of over 24 lakh investor accounts or folios in the first seven months of the current fiscal (2015—16), primarily on account of strong retail participation.

This follows an addition of 25 lakh folios for the entire last fiscal, 2014—15.

Folios are numbers designated for individual investor accounts, though one investor can have multiple accounts.

According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) data on investor accounts with 44 fund houses, the number of equity folios jumped to 34,121,188 last month from 31,691,619 at March—end, a gain of 24.3 lakh.

April last year saw the first rise in more than four years.

Before 2014—15, there was a complete lull in equity inflows as well as generation of new folios, but in the past one year, equity markets have come back to life and yielded solid returns.

It is the optimism of investors because of which the folios in equity segment have increased.

Besides, increased participation by retail investors in equities has led to an increase in folio numbers, experts said.

Mutual funds have reported net inflows of Rs 59,935 crore in equity schemes in the first seven months of 2015—16, helping the industry grow the folio count.

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