Chennai, Nov 7 (IANS): The first annual meeting of unit holders of PPFAS Mutual Fund will be held here and in two other cities. This will be a first in the Indian mutual fund industry.

The meetings will be held here Saturday, in Bangalore Nov 15 and in Mumbai Nov 22.

This is akin to the annual general meeting (AGM) of a company, held in the city where the registered office of the company is located, said a top official.

PPFAS Asset Management Private Ltd. chairman and CEO Parag Parikh told reporters here: "We believe unit holders are the owners of the fund. In the meeting, we will tell them our philosophy and also hear them out. This is part of our transparency policy."

According to Parikh, the PPFAS Long Term Value Fund has around 2,900 unit holders.

He said: "Even if the number of unit holders is high, we will hold such meetings."

Unlike other mutual funds that have launched multiple schemes, PPFAS as a policy will operate only one scheme which is mainly targeted at long-term investors.

Parikh said: "Our corpus size is around Rs.509 crore now and the investment inflow is steady."

Schemes such as sectoral, mid-cap and others are for mutual funds that have to keep their sales force busy and for us the business is through word of mouth, he remarked.

Chief investment officer and director Rajeev Thakkur said: "With a corpus of around Rs.509 crore, our equity fund is bigger than that of many equity funds floated by public sector bank-promoted mutual funds."

According to him, the fundamental investment philosophy of the mutual fund is to invest in those companies where the prospects and the quality of management are good.

Thakkur said: "Rather than fixating on the asset under management (AUM), our focus is on investment performance. Our cost is under control as the distribution expense is very low."

Parikh said: "We invest in business and not in stocks. Our view is long term."

Around 66 percent of the corpus is invested in Indian equities, 28 percent in foreign equities and the balance in debt and money market instruments.

Parikh said the fund has the permission to invest up to 35 percent of the corpus in overseas stocks.