Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on this call.

Our financial results, presentation, and press releases have been shared on the stock exchanges as well as on our website, and we trust you have had the opportunity to review them. Today, I'm joined by my colleagues Vinay Lakhotia, CFO and Head of Strategy, and Mr.

Sandeep Samsi, Head of Investor Relations, Marketing, and Corporate Communications. Before I take this opportunity to provide you with a brief perspective on the market scenario, our performance, and our way forward, I would like to take a moment to thank UTI's shareholders, board, and trustees for the confidence and trust they have reposed in me in continuing to build on UTI's legacy.

Having been closely associated with this organization for nearly a decade, I believe we have built a strong foundation across our investment capabilities, distribution, and technology. Our focus now is to accelerate growth from this base, improve our growth, and continue delivering long-term value to all the stakeholders.

Let me begin with a brief overview of the macroeconomic environment and industry trends. The year FY '25-'26 has been a year of resilience in investor behavior, even as markets have witnessed volatility.

The key differentiator has not been the short-term movement in flows, but the enduring structural stability in investor behavior towards financial assets, and of course, particularly mutual funds. Despite global uncertainties, whether in geopolitical developments, trade shifts, or capital flows, India's fundamental growth drivers have remained intact.

Domestic demand continues to be strong, and the financialization of savings is clearly sustaining momentum. We have been seeing this clearly in the growth in systematic investment plan investments.

Talking now about equities and mutual funds in particular, on the industry trends, FY '25-'26 continued to witness strong retail investor participation. Total mutual fund folios at approximately 27.39 crore as of March 2026.

Retail mutual fund folios, equity plus hybrid and solution-oriented schemes, increased to around 20.82 crore. The industry's average assets under management reached 79.46 lakh crore as of March 2026, demonstrating steady expansion driven by both market performance and sustained inflows.

Retail AUM stood at ₹42.89 lakh crore, and this underlines the growing contribution of individual investors to the overall mutual fund industry. SIPs continue to be a key driver of flows and investor discipline.

The monthly SIP contribution stood at ₹32,087 crore in March 2026, while SIP AUM reached nearly ₹15 lakh crore, accounting for 19.94% of overall MF industry AUM. While there has been some moderation in inflows across certain categories in recent months, investor participation remains broad-based.

Industry equity mutual fund inflows stood at ₹40,450 crore in March 2026. This is remarkable and indicates continued interest in equities as an asset class in spite of intermittent market volatility.

Let me now move on to talk a little bit about our company performance, and I'll take you through our performance highlights. The financial year 2025-'26 has been a year of strong execution across our core strategic priorities, from strengthening retail flows, deepening distribution relationships, scaling our product franchises, and investing in technology-led operating leverage.

We have also undertaken several structural initiatives to strengthen the operating platform and expanded our geographic presence in a calibrated manner while maintaining net-zero incremental cost by managing branch operations efficiently. We have significantly improved our supervisor to feet-on-street ratio from approximately 1:1 to 1:5 over these recent years, with one manager now overseeing around five relationship managers.

Our total employee strength, which stood at 1,402 employees as of March 2024, is now at 1,248 as of March 2026. Talking about the group, UTI Group's total AUM stood at ₹23.42 lakh crore as of March 31, 2026.

Our mutual fund AUM reached ₹3.88 lakh crore compared to ₹3.39 lakh crore last year. In FY '26, we added 7.16 lakh new investors as identified by their PANs, taking our total folio base to 1.38 crore.

During the year, our gross new SIP registrations crossed 14.5 lakh, of which 76% were through digital channels. On the product side, we successfully launched the UTI Multi Cap Fund, which mobilized about ₹1,000 crore, with strong participation across banks, national distributors, and MFDs.

In addition, our UTI Arbitrage Fund crossed the ₹10,000 crore AUM milestone during the year. Our passive business continues to scale well with ETF AUM at ₹18,963 crore and index fund AUM at ₹5,934 crore, aggregating to ₹24,897 crore during the year, and we continue to maintain leadership position in the smart beta category.

We expect our momentum in this passive business will continue to be supported by a robust pipeline of new launches during the coming year. On the institutional side of our business which falls under our PMS division, both the EPFO and CMPFO concluded the process of appointing new portfolio managers through a open bidding system.

For the third consecutive term, UTI AMC was selected as one of the portfolio managers for EPFO. In the case of the CMPFO, we were chosen as one of the two portfolio managers for the second consecutive term.

Both mandates have been awarded for a tenure of five years. Switching to our pension fund business, our pension business grew during the year, with total AUM at ₹4.02 lakh crore, representing a 11.8% increase year-on-year, while the private sector pension AUM grew by 46% year-on-year.

This continues to remain an important strategic growth area for us. An important area of focus for us through the year has been digital transformation and productivity enhancement.

Our digital business initiatives have delivered strong outcomes, including a 234% increase in revenue, 33% increase in transactions, and 31% reduction in cost per transaction. We recently launched one of the industry's first AI-powered contact center solutions, Vaani, which has already automated 59% of our inbound calls.

This has materially improved customer response time and service efficiency. We also launched an in-app WhatsApp payment facility via CAMSPay and are the first AMC in India to offer this service to investors to transact and engage in live chat via WhatsApp and make payments.

To bridge the gap between complex financial insights and reach a diverse investor base, we also launched an industry-first AI-translated vernacular initiative with the launch of our monthly fact sheets in Hindi. We are also translating our fund manager communications into eight regional languages—Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam—to provide our views in regional languages for our pan-India audience.

As mutual funds go deeper and deeper into the heartland of India, we think being able to provide communication in different languages will hold us in good stead. From an investment performance standpoint, we continue to remain focused on process consistency and disciplined execution.

In fixed income, 50% of our AUM ranked in the top two quartiles over a one-year period and 60% over the three-year period. Similarly, our hybrid strategies and our value-oriented strategies have continued to show strong long-term performance in the equity space.

Our passive strategies have a consistent track record of low tracking difference which is very important in terms of the investor outcomes. Our equity research coverage has further expanded in line with the growth in the market.

This strengthens our ability and to identify opportunities across market segments. Overall, FY '25-'26 has been a year when we have strengthened our business across distribution, product capability, digital infrastructure, and institutional trust, and I would add, also a very significant people refresh.

Going ahead, our foremost strategic priority is to grow our mutual fund AUM while building a more resilient, diversified, and scalable franchise, all to be done while maintaining strong cost discipline. With that, I will now request Sandeep to take you through the operational and financial performance of the company in detail.

Thank you, sir. I will speak about UTI AMC's performance during the fourth quarter and for the full year ended 31st March 2026.

Speaking about UTI Mutual Fund's performance, UTI was able to capture a market share of 5.5% of the gross sales of the industry during this quarter and market share of 6.1% of the gross sales for the financial year FY '26. Our equity quarterly average AUM for March 2026 stood at ₹95,824 crore, rising by 5.46% as compared to the quarter ended March '25.

Our quarterly average AUM for the index and ETF funds stood at ₹1,76,673 crore, up by 24.86% in the fourth quarter. ETF and index funds' annual net inflow stood at ₹24,897 crore.

In FY '25-'26, we added 7.16 lakh new investor PANs, taking our total folio base to 1.38 crore. Our SIP AUM witnessed a growth of 5.91% over the corresponding quarter of last year, reaching to ₹39,813 crore as of March '26.

The SIP inflows for the fourth quarter stood at ₹2,457 crore. The SIP gross inflows for UTI Mutual Fund witnessed a year-on-year growth of 13.42%, with an average SIP ticket size being ₹3,381 for March 2026.

For the full year, SIP inflows were ₹9,442 crore, higher by 13. 13.42% as compared to ₹8,325 crore in FY '25.

The active SIP folios as on 31st March 2026 stood at 29.53 lakh, a 9.71% growth as compared to March '25. Speaking about UTI AMC's financials, on a standalone basis, the core income, that is sale of service, for FY '26 amounted to ₹1,255 crore as compared to ₹1,180 crore for FY '25.

The normalized core PAT for FY '26 is ₹460 crore as compared to ₹447 crore in FY '25. The normalized PAT for FY '26 is ₹643 crore as against ₹653 crore in FY '25.

The employee cost of ₹437 crore includes the one-time item on account of revision of family pension benefits of ₹25 crore incurred in quarter two of FY '26. Excluding this one-off item, the normalized employee cost is 420- ₹412 crore.

On a consolidated basis, the core income, sale of service, for FY '26 amounted to ₹1,539 crore as compared to ₹1,445 crore for FY '25. The normalized core PAT for FY '26 is ₹452 crore as compared to ₹492 crore in FY '25.

The normalized PAT for FY '26 is 511 crore as against ₹731 crore in FY '25. The employee cost of ₹553 ₹553 crore includes a one-time item on account of revision of family pension benefit of ₹25 crore incurred in quarter two of FY '26.

Excluding this one-off item, normalized employee cost is ₹528 crore. On UTI Pension Fund Limited, our 100% owned subsidiary, UTI Pension Fund Limited, has recorded a growth of 12% year-on-year in its AUM, reaching ₹4 lakh crore as on quarter four of FY '26, and currently it manages 24.36% of the NPS industry's AUM.

UTI International, which represents our international business interest, has an AUM of US$1.74 billion, that is ₹16,144 crore, as of 31st March 2026. Our international clients are in more than 30 countries, and they are primarily institutions, pensions, insurance companies, banks, and asset managers.

One of our flagship funds, the India Dynamic Equity Fund, domiciled in Ireland, has an AUM of US$540 million, which is ₹5,012 crore, as of March 31, 2026. On UTI Alternatives, it has an AUM of ₹5,280 crore.

It currently manages five active funds across performing credit and multi-strategy themes. Structured Debt Opportunity Fund II has exited all the investments and made the final distribution in quarter three FY '26 at an above-benchmark performance with an IRR of 13.4%.

UTI SDOF III has an AUM of ₹609 crore, and the fund is currently in the investing stage. During the second quarter, UTI Alternatives launched the fourth fund of the SDOF series.

This fund has been planned as a ₹1,500 crore fund plus with a ₹500 crore green-shoe option, with a current AUM of ₹674 crore. UTI Multi Opportunity Fund I has an AUM of ₹1,598 crore.

Currently, the fund is in investing stage. UTI Real Estate Opportunity Fund, with its commitment of ₹187 crore, is currently in fundraising and investing stage.

I would now request the Managing Director and CEO for his concluding remarks. Sir?

Thank you, Sandeep, for sharing the operational and financial updates of the company. I'm also pleased to inform you that at the board meeting today, UTI AMC has declared a dividend of ₹40 per share for the financial year 2025-'26.

The same is subject to the approval of shareholders at the ensuing Annual General Meeting. We would like to open the forum for questions and answers.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the opportunity. My question is on the expenses side.

There is some one-off you called out in Q4 FY '26, but I could not understand the same completely. Then on reported numbers, what we are seeing is year-on-year, there is a sharp increase.

If you can help us understand what is the one-off? For FY '27, how should we build or think about the employee expense and also the other expenses bit?

Because if we look at FY '26, I don't think there is much one-off in the other expenses bit. That for the full year has also grown 15%, which is on the higher side.

If you can help us understand how should we think on the both from FY '27 perspective?

Yeah. Hi, Gaurav.

Vinay here. On the employee cost, there is a one-off on account of VRS and family pension.

The total quantum of that is close to around ₹130 crore that we provisioned in Q3 of this particular financial year. Plus, on account of labor code, there has been an impact of close to around ₹4 crore as well because we have to provide for an additional liability of ₹4 crore.

Total employee cost that you see is close to around ₹412 crore at a standalone and ₹528 crore at a consol level. In terms of guidance for the next financial year, because obviously there'll be a benefit on account of VRS, the run rate on a quarterly basis should be around 90 to ₹95 crore for the standalone entity and 125 to 130 crore on the consolidated firm obviously because we are building capacity expansion into all the three lines of business.

With respect to the other expenses, yes, it has increased at 15%. I would say some of these items are not actually a cost, but as an investment that we are doing in our business, both on the digital front as well as on the physical front.

On the digital front, we have upgraded our IT infrastructure, specially with respect to the cloud infra, and because of that, there's an additional expense line item of close to around ₹8 crore. On the physical part, since we have expanded close to around 90 UFCs in the last 1.5 years, that has obviously increased our cost.

The guidance for the other administrative expenses, it should increase close to around 7% to 8% for the standalone entity and maybe 100 or 200 basis point more for the consol entity since for UTI Pension Fund, we are expanding into newer geography. For the consolidated one, it could be in the range of around 10%, and for the standalone, it's around 8% for the other expenses.

Gaurav, did that answers your question?

Yes, sir. Just one follow-up on the employee expenses bit.

Basically Q4, when I'm looking at the consolidated employee expense, it is ₹132 crore. That is normalized run rate, what you are saying, post VRS and there is no one-off in this?

For Q4, there's no one-off in it.

In that case, sir, on a year-on-year basis, at the consol level, even after VRS, we are at a 14% increase, right? Q4 to Q4, Q4 FY '25, our employee expense was ₹116 crore.

Q4 FY '26, we are at ₹132 crore. That has still grown at 14% even after VRS.

Some is on account of additional provision for account on variable pay and quarterly incentives. As I told you, at a consol level, since we are expanding into all the three lines of business, there have been additional recruitment in all these three, that is why it is increasing.

Okay. Sir, my next question is to Vetri sir, that post taking over as CEO, if he can help us understand what are the key three, four areas or aspects that he plans to work on for the coming year, and what is his roadmap that he wants us to guide for, how he wants to run the company from here, that will be helpful.

Gaurav, before that, let me clarify the run rate for standalone is close to around 90 to 95% ₹95 crore per quarter, and for the consol, it's around ₹125 crore. Over to you, Vetri.

Yeah. As I said in my opening statement, Gaurav, I think from our point of view, the company has carried out very significant refresh of its platforms, of its technology, of its infrastructure, of our reach in terms of the branch expansions that we have done.

If you ask me what is the single-line agenda, the single-line agenda is growth. We are operating with roughly 270 branches.

I gave you the employee count, which is now in the 1,200 number. If I look at all of these numbers put together, I would say we are operating below our capacity.

The simple target over the next few years is to grow, is to grow faster than certainly our peers in the top 10 of the industry, such that we can start to get the benefit of the operating leverage that is now already built in because we have absorbed a lot of those costs. From a people point of view, I mentioned in my opening comments, there's been a significant refresh in terms of the people, and also, I would say over the last few years, there's been a dramatic transformation if I just look at the age group of what we call our frontline cadre.

The average age of the team has dropped from 41 years in FY '21 to 36 years in FY '26, and Gen Z now makes up 38% of the workforce, and if I go back 5 years, it used to make up 5% of the workforce. There's a very dramatic people refresh which has taken place.

My sort of call out to the internal team is to make sure they are well-equipped, they are trained, they have best-in-class support, be it from our data platforms, be it in terms of technologies available to them, to be able to raise their productivity and their efficiency so that we can raise our share of gross sales, net sales, and achieve a much higher level of AUM without in any way having to add further costs on the people front, particularly within the context of the MF business. The single-line agenda is growth.

If I were to drill down into the second-line agenda, it would be to sort of grow our share of SIPs disproportionately, because I think that is the key to growth, particularly on the active equity side of the business, and we know that is a much higher-yielding part of our business mix. Clearly, on top of these two, all the technology refreshes that we've done are allowing us to engage effectively with the young cohort and in the digital space.

If you look at the new SIP signups which are happening, I would say, given on which data point you look at, more than 50% of the SIPs are now originating digitally. All the investment that we've made in digital is something that we hope to use once again to be able to increase our growth rates.

Single-line agenda, grow the business; second, manage the costs, increase the efficiency, and use all the other tools that I mentioned.

Very helpful, sir. Thank you, and all the best.

Thank you.

Hi. Good evening.

Am I audible?

Okay. Very well captured on the single focus of growth as an engine.

Since last three, four years, we had not witnessed a sharp correction led by so many headwinds into the market. This could have been a good time to acquire customers, right?

To some extent, it was pretty risky for the overall equity market. How did we see the customer acquisition going during this time, right?

What were the major schemes that are engaging interest of SIP buyers? Also, do you connect the data of first-time SIP buyers with you?

Or how do you track that, if you could give some light on that? Those are some questions.

Naman, you are right. There was a lot of volatility which came into the market, and we are very happy to see that investors have been consistent in their SIPs, while generally March is a higher number of SIP closures because people achieve their target, people have started their SIP in the month of April and close it in the month of March.

Overall, there was not a very high amount of redemption pressure that the mutual fund industry saw. You had asked a very interesting question on how do we track the first-time SIP investors, and we track them on the basis of the PAN number that we have.

As both Vetri and Vinay mentioned that we have invested a lot in the digital infrastructure, we have now created a complete data lake, and we get to know each and every investor whenever he or she comes in and start their folio, we get their entire database. We know that whenever there is a new customer who's coming, all the data that they have.

The major scheme that the first-time investors generally look at are the index funds, and we have seen good traction, specially from the fintech platform, for the Gen Z investors, and they generally take their first investments at around ₹1,000, ₹1,500 SIP.

This is Vetri here. Just to add to what Sandeep said, one of the numbers that we are now tracking closely, and we are also putting that into our sales metrics so that we know what those numbers are and we know what strategies we can use to drive it, is the new customer acquisition, which to us basically means, are we getting a customer with a PAN number which we earlier did not have in our MF folio base.

The idea is to target that number, and I mentioned that last year, we added 7 lakh PANs. This year, we are targeting to grow that number significantly.

A lot of the activity that we are doing in the digital space as well as on ground, including B30 cities etc. as an example, women investors as an example, is to widen that pool because that has been our historic legacy, but also we think that is a great way to create the customers who, as they grow, you will grow with them.

What we also have now with our Salesforce marketing automation is the ability to communicate with these clients using our Salesforce marketing automation and being able to cross-sell and upsell opportunities to them. We implemented the Salesforce marketing automation sometime in the middle of last year.

Early days at this point of time, but we are starting to see that driving engagement with those customers helps you make them think through their investments better and also gives you that opportunity to upsell and cross-sell. New customer acquisition is certainly a key part of that, and now with digital, there is an ability to target and communicate appropriately with them to raise your share of AUM with them.

Okay. Actually I didn't mean to ask you from this SIP stoppage, actually I wanted to understand that did you witness any sharp inflow from first-time SIPs in March when there was extreme volatility, did that help you fast-track some customer acquisition by educating them rightly because we have a very strong feet on street, right?

That is what I wanted to understand. Did it accelerate during this volatility window, right?

Not so much because sometimes sharp market corrections also pause people's thought processes. Plus, March, as I mentioned, is a period when people look at SIPs and renewing their SIP.

However, one good factor that we saw that in the month of February, the number of new SIPs which we opened were quite good. Industry-level, the numbers were slightly lower.

We did better than the industry in that sense. Volatility has been helping in terms of getting new investors because now they look at the market being at a lower level and starting their SIP, but not so much in the month of March itself.

Maybe because of the sharp volatility which we saw in the market. Again,

Vetri here. I don't think there's a specific call-out on March per se, but we track our SIPs which are sort of let's say, canceled or ceased vis-a-vis the total SIP book and the new SIPs that we are adding.

We also compare how our performance is relative to the industry because the same number you also get from AMFI. I would say, in general, we have seen our numbers have been slightly better in recent months, but I wouldn't really call out something which is particularly distinct in terms of a trend.

Sir. Fairly understood.

Congratulations, and all the best for the upcoming quarters.

Yeah.

Hi, and thank you, sir, for giving me an opportunity. Sorry, I joined a little late.

I'm not sure if these questions have been asked. Can you please explain the impact of the revised norms, SEBI's new norms from 1st April?

TER on account of exit load has been cut by 5 basis point, and obviously there has been some rationalization in the base TER as well. As a fund house, we are of the view that whatever impact is there, that we will be passing on to the intermediaries.

We don't foresee any challenges as far as this rate cut is concerned on our AMC yields.

Okay. Got it.

Sir, secondly, what do you see as the yield impact going forward for the year?

It's a combination of actually what our asset mix as well. Maybe a basis point or two dilution could be there because ETF and index fund is going at a slightly higher yield, and on the fixed income side as well, there's a stronger appetite for a low-duration product, which have a slightly lower yield as compared to a high-duration or a credit yield fund.

Maybe a basis point or two dilution in the overall yield number per se for financial year '26-'27.

Got it, sir.

Sir, can we Just to add to that, Vetri here. From my point of view, the most critical line to grow is the revenue line.

Of course, I would like my higher-yielding products to grow faster, but eventually from our point of view, there is a cost base that we have, and anything that helps us grow the top line faster, we're happy to take it. There is a separate challenge of can we raise our share of higher-yielding products relative to what we have in passives?

We know our share of passives as a percentage of our total AUM is much larger than some of our peer groups. Managing yield for the sake of managing yield is not a thing that I'm in favor of.

I would rather manage revenue. Yes, certainly we would like to raise our share of net sales coming in from active equity schemes.

Got it. Sir, on the employee front, are we seeing this as a normalized run rate, or how do we see employee costs from here on?

We have

given some guidance on the employee run rate going forward. At least for the standalone entity, it's close to around 95 crore per quarter, and at a consol, it will be closer to around ₹125 crore per quarter, higher on the consol side because we are building capabilities in all our three subsidiaries' lines of business.

Got it, sir. Lastly, sir, on the pipeline of the products, what is there for the coming quarters, or what can we expect?

Yeah. We are going to file multiple passive funds with the regulator.

Now we have received the board approval. Some of the fund that we are going to file with SEBI are UTI Nifty 500 Index Fund, both on the index side and the ETF side; UTI BSE Index Sector Leaders, again both on index and ETF; UTI Nifty India New Age Consumption; and UTI Nifty India Internet Fund.

These are the four funds with both index and ETF side.

I can just add to what Sandeep is saying. Our focus has been only on the core diversified categories, which is why you see even in the last, I would say 3, 4, 5 years, we've stayed away from launching a flurry of sector and thematic funds.

We are continuing to be guided by that principle. We will launch in the passives the full bouquet, because we think of those as access products, where, for our point of view, we are providing access to themes and sectors which investors are welcome to take and pursue.

In the diversified space, we have covered the core categories, and there's no interest in doing anything beyond that. We do plan to, however, launch at least one fund in the SIFs category during this current year.

It's a process in terms of getting all the board approvals and regulatory approval, and I think if you see the industry data, it is clear that there's been some action in SIFs, but it's not that the growth over there has been particularly dramatic. We think we have one or two good product ideas, and certainly we would like to launch one of them during the current year.

I think that would be the target over there. Separately, we've also received the permission from the IFSC, which is GIFT City.

Our subsidiary rather, which is UTI Alternatives, they already had their license in the GIFT City, but that was for a wholesale what they call a non-retail FME license. We have now just last week received the approval for retail FME.

We will intend during the course of this year to also use GIFT as a two-way solution, both for partnering products which domestic investors might want to invest overseas, as well as providing vehicles in GIFT City for global investors who might want to invest through that route into our domestic funds.

Okay. Got it.

Sir, lastly, on the flows front, what would be the share of the banking channel in total equity and hybrid?

Just give me a second, Meghna. Yeah.

The share would be about 1.5%.

Okay. Got it.

Thank you. That's all from my end.

Thanks for the opportunity. I was actually seeing at your PPT

Is it better?

Yeah. Actually I was looking at your PPT and I was actually little surprised that your equity net flows, both on quarterly and yearly has been kind of negative.

Though from '25 to '26, we see some kind of a moderation. What are our strategies to improve the net sales within the equity space?

A hybrid is doing well, that is fine. Within the pure equity space, what can we do to increase our market share as well as bring it in the positive territory?

Yeah. Mohit

Let me answer that. Vetri here.

There are two, three things you need to do. One is, of course, as I mentioned earlier, we need to raise the SIP book, right?

That is a key metric for our sales team now to raise the SIP book, and that is where I believe you will be able to build a more sustainable level of both flows as well as, over time, it builds into a lot more stable AUM. That is point number one.

Secondly, when you look at that net flow number, you're absolutely right. Last year was Uh year before last was hugely negative.

Last year, the negative number came down. This year, it was, I would say almost close to zero.

Now this reflects the fact that, some of our strategies have seen large outflows over the last few years. See, this is really a question of repositioning the sales team in terms of saying, how do we take multiple products to the market, and how do we make sure that we are able to simultaneously sell and bring in net sales from different schemes.

One of the things we are happy is that this year, we were able to, if you look at our, sort of core what we would call 19 funds, eight of them actually saw positive net sales. We've now reached a situation where unlike in the past where maybe one or two flagship schemes dominated the entire inflow, we are trying to diversify the inflow across the entire basket of funds that we have, very simply I would say everything from value to GARP in the middle and quality growth.

From my point of view, the only way to avoid the cyclicality which is otherwise inherent in this business is the fact that your flows are procyclical to performance. I would like to dial that down by making sure that we have competent silos for each of these different sort of strategies, so that in all market strategies, the sales people are able to take some performing products.

Equally, what I'm increasingly seeing in this marketplace is that a fair number of distribution as well as other investors are also open to seeing where is the opportunity for me to participate in a fund which maybe currently is suffering because market conditions are not favorable, but where perhaps something might change to my advantage in the future. What we are trying to double down on is training the sales team and empowering them, making sure that they're able to carry multiple products to the market, rather than the firm being reliant on only on a narrow set of funds.

That's the way we try to diversify, and that is what, along with the SIPs, I think will hopefully let us turn the corner and increasingly build it into a sustainable number.

Understood. This is helpful.

Now, taking this forward, and I was looking at your employee number. Your employee number has reduced, but your sales team has kind of increased.

That is something basically within your strategy to increase your net sales? Should we refer to it that way?

Sorry, will you repeat that question?

Yeah. Basically I was looking at your number of employees.

Your number of employees were around 1,400 in Q3. That got reduced to 1,250-odd, but your sales was around 775, but that's around 799.

Just wanted to understand that you're increasing your core sales team members, but at the same time reducing your overall employee strength as well. That's the right way to look at it?

That's the right way to look at it because I think historically if you look at our workforce, I won't just say Q3, but if I go back a little bit in time, the ratio of people who are actually responsible for bringing in business relative to those who are in let's say corporate-related functions who were not really people who are bringing in the money, that ratio was not a very favorable ratio for us. What we are trying to do through all of the people refresh that I mentioned is essentially correct this, that, of course there will always be a large investment team, there will be a large assurance-related team, obviously the CFO and those kind of control functions as well.

It needs to be more balanced than where we used to be. Having said that, I don't see the RM count going up too much further from here.

I think we've reached a stage where with 260-odd UFCs as we call it, I think we are pretty much fully staffed to the extent we require.

Understood. That's helpful.

Lastly, on the international piece, basically. This was not a good year, and even the last quarter was not good.

I think we had strategies earlier as well to grow this piece as well. Just wanted to know how, going forward into financial year '27 should we look at this subsidiary, basically?

To put it very simply, this is a little bit of a schizophrenic view on India. Domestic investors hugely positive, hugely committed to investing for the long term.

Then, you see a completely opposite viewpoint with global investors, where they're pulling money out of India right, left, and center and rotating it to every other developing market and of course to developed markets. This is a trend that we can't do much about because appetite for India is a function of many, many things.

I think if you look at calendar '25 and just the first quarter of FY this calendar '26, effectively foreigners have pulled out $40 billion out of India. Our international business, honestly, is just feeling the pain of that outflow front and center.

We are looking at sort of trying to diversify that AUM. We did launch a government bond ETF, saying, why do we only have equity products?

We should also have bond products. It doesn't help when your currency drops 9% over the year and then your bond investors also end up with a hugely negative return.

It's just been a very, very difficult market to position India right now with global investors. I've seen this time and again, it's a cyclical business.

There are some points in time where nobody is interested in the country, and there are other points where they want to bring the money back in a flood. Right now, I would say it's just hold our ground.

Where possible, we are looking to bring in some of our institutional clients into our alternative products. We actually started this last year itself, but it takes a while to get global investors completely to understand the domestic alternative products.

Thankfully, UTI Alternatives, having returned money on two of its strategies during this year, has a solid track record. I'm hoping whatever traction we see in the alternative space will help the international business sort of overcome some of the headwinds in their P&L account.

The larger challenge of India being seen negatively is a headwind that we have no way of overcoming right now.

Understood. Makes sense.

Lastly, on SIF, basically, if you can just elaborate on how you see this piece, and will the yields be similar to that of mutual fund? A little bit on that would be helpful.

I think too early to call that out. I think if you can do something which is genuinely differentiated in terms of risk and reward to the investor, my intention would be then to price that at a superior yield to the mutual fund.

If you are offering something which is more in the nature of a plain-vanilla structure which is only slightly differentiated from the traditional MF product, then your yields may not be different. I think it's still evolving.

There's a whole series of long-short opportunities which are available in that SIF space. Some of them over time, once we have the ability to execute them in a way that it makes a material difference to the investor, right?

I can charge higher fees if the investor ends up with a risk-reward ratio or with a return which in his mind is superior to what he's getting from the MF product, then of course, I would like to earn a higher yield. I think it's still very early days over there to give you a guidance on that.

If I can offer a product with superior risk return, long short, etc., of course, I would certainly like to retain a higher yield for myself.

Understood. Are we kind of exploring that area, is there anything in the pipeline?

I think the first product will be just a little bit more than a plain-vanilla product. I would not expect it on the first product.

We are trying to launch some in that long-short space over time. It's still in sort of testing phase, which could use quant.

If we launch that successfully, and we are able to build the track record, certainly we would like to position that as a differentiated product, and we would like the benefit of that to reflect in my yield. Again, if you just look at the market, I'm sure you've seen the data yourself.

I think it's very early days. The space is still evolving in terms of what does the product offer, and B, does it really meet the need of an investor, which the traditional mutual fund product is not able to offer?

I don't think we have solved this both ways. I think the whole industry is trying to figure this out.

All right. No, I think that's helpful and very clear.

Wish you all the best, sir.

Thank you.

Yeah. Am I audible now?

Yeah. Thank you, sir.

Please provide us the yields breakup of the segment—equity, debt, liquid, and ETF. Secondly, your funds are little underperforming.

What are you doing in this respect so that your overall AUM grows little smartly? These are two questions from my side.

Vijiya, I'll provide the yield breakup. Equity and hybrid is 75 basis point.

ETF and index fund put together is around 8. Cash and arbitrage around 10 basis point.

Income fund is around 18 to 19 basis point. Combined put together, depending on our asset mix, is weighted average yield is around 32.

Yeah. The second question, sir, can you give color on how your funds are performing?

If not, then what are you doing to have more funds in the first quartile?

I would love to do anything if you have ideas about how I could get all the funds into first quartile simultaneously. I'm not sure, having been a fund manager for many years, that there is any easy way to do that.

I look at it now from a business angle. From a business angle, I'm saying that I've got to make sure that I've got funds which are ring-fenced for different market seasons.

Because what will be the market season which will cause a fund of a particular market cap, a fund of a particular style to do well, what season it will be is not in my control. What I can do is make sure that my strategies, either by number or by AUM, though I can really control number, not AUM, are distinctly positioned from each other.

That is something that I think we have established quite well in terms of saying what is in our value-oriented strategies, what is in our blended strategy, what is in our quality growth strategies. I would only say our biggest problem has been more in the quality growth, which to my mind is more a function of the season of the market.

Of course, there are things that we could have done better in terms of stock picking, that's a continuous process, but essentially the season did not match what those funds were trying to do. In the GARP side, which is the blended side, you could say there is some scope to improve execution, those are tinkering that we continue to do.

I feel very positive that maintaining this diversified set of funds which are operating across the spectrum may not result in all my funds being in top quartile at the same point of time, but at the same time, it gives me a platform which is a lot more sustainable through market cycles. I think that's a conscious choice that we have made, that we would like the platform to be diversified.

We will tolerate the cycles that come. We will back our fund managers through the cycle.

We engage with the marketplace to explain how these funds are differently positioned. We engage with the market to try and explain to them how they can exploit the positioning that we have developed for each of these funds to be able for them to meet their investment goals and their aspirations.

To my mind, that's the way to do it rather than saying that I would like all the funds to be in top quartile. What I have seen as a fund manager, if you aim for the first quartile, you will get there at some point of time, but when the market season reverses, it directly causes you to swing to the back foot.

I'm approaching this as a business platform and saying, how do I build diversity across my platform which will make my business less cyclical and more sustainable?

True, sir. Very helpful.

I was more inquisitive about the measures you are taking. That's helpful.

Thank you so much.

Hello. Hi.

My question is to Vetri sir. Congratulations, sir, for being appointed as a

Sure. Is this better?

Yes.

Great. Hi, my question is to Vetri sir.

I want to understand more of balance sheet perspective. We hold almost ₹4,000 or ₹4,500 crore of cash and investments on our book at consolidated level, and this equals to almost 35%, 40% of today market cap.

When I look at the listed AMCs, this is significantly on the higher end. I want to try to understand how do you look at this investment and cash flow from a strategic perspective?

Is there any way you are planning to create a value for shareholders through this part of the balance sheet as in any buyback plans given the valuations are on the lower side and also the latest buyback reform announced in the budget? How do you see this significant portion of our balance sheet?

Okay. Thanks, Mahesh.

We have that amount of cash on our books also because we are a very old institution. We have built up that balance sheet over time through the good work that we've done in terms of serving investors, and that's where that cash balance has come from.

As you would be aware, in recent years, whatever we are generating in terms of profits, we are pretty much paying that out in large measure back to the shareholder by way of dividend. We will continue that policy.

There is no need to add to that cash pile. We also believe company of our kind, there is a need to have some liquidity on the books, some cash on the books.

There could also be opportunities down the road in terms of M&A, etc. We will not add to that cash in the future because we will keep dividending out, but no other plans to do anything dramatic with the cash at this point of time.

Okay. Understood, sir.

Thanks a lot. Just to follow up on the dividend side, the last couple of years, we declared some special dividend as well in addition to regular dividend.

This year, I believe it's all the regular dividend. Going forward, do you have a guidance on a percentage of profits that we intend to declare as dividend, or was the trial that we saw in the last couple of years?

How do you give guidance on the dividend policy going forward?

If you look at that trend line, I'm not discussing policy, but if you look at the trend line, I think, including what we've just announced today, which is ₹40, I think roughly we are at about 93%, 94% 95% almost in terms of a trend line. I think that's a good way to think about it.

The trend line itself is suggestive of our basic view that there is no need to add any more cash on our books. We have enough liquidity for any corporate optionality that we might want to preserve.

Anything that we generate in the businesses, we are happy to just give it back to shareholders. This is not a capital-intensive business.

Okay. Thanks, sir.

That's all from my side.

[unclear] now?

I joined a little late. Could you help me with Industry AUM is being reaching approximately ₹80 lakh crore.

How is UTI positioned to capture the larger share in expanding this pie?

We are very happy that the industry is reaching new milestones, and that just reinforces the belief that people have in the mutual fund penetration and in mutual funds overall. For us, we are focusing on three clear growth areas.

We will continue to deepen our retail participation, particularly in the SIP and for the long-term flows. At the same time, we will not only reach out to the metro cities, but we are also strengthening our distribution in the B30 cities and the emerging markets.

As Vetri mentioned that, we are focused on broadening our equity funds to ensure that at any point in time, some of the funds require and are able to cater to the requirement of the investors. We also mentioned that we are very strongly investing in our technology as well as in process improvement and therefore also in our communication.

We are well poised to lead and create new possibilities to participate in this growing mutual fund journey. As we discussed that we are also looking at launching new passive funds so that investors can achieve their life-cycle goals.

Does that answer your question, Mandira?

Got it, sir. Got it.

Secondly, what trend are you seeing in investor behavior during the volatile market? Is there any change in the ticket size of the participation pattern?

Yeah. As we discussed that, we have seen over a period of time that investors have become more resilient and they understand that this volatility which is there in the market will go away eventually, and they believe in the long-term growth story of India.

We don't see so much of redemption pressure that we used to see in the earlier years because investors are now aware about how these markets are functioning. Having said that, March is generally a period when you see a lot of SIPs getting closed because of multiple reasons.

One is people start their SIPs in the month of April, and the natural cycle closes in the month of March. People look to change their SIPs because they would have done some portfolio readjustment.

Those things will always happen, and that will show you a higher redemption of SIPs in the month of March. Overall, if you look at the trend, and especially if you see the month of February, the trend has been very encouraging where we saw a drop in the number of SIPs which are being stopped at the industry level, and that number was even better if you look at UTI's overall SIP book.

Got it, sir. That was really helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, sir. I have just one question basically on the industry slide.

We are being seeing, there's a cut-throat competition in this AMC space with the fintechs and everyone coming with their products now. In such an competitive environment, how are we seeing the key distribution on UTI's end?

Is there any sustainable visibility over there?

We have been doubling down on our distribution, specially with the banks as well as with the fintechs, and these are two segments which are growing, and specially the fintechs, because there are a lot of new fintechs which are coming, and the younger generation find it very easy to invest through a fintech platform. We have increased our engagement with them, and we are seeing good traction coming specially from the fintech platform.

Yes, sir. That answers my question.

Congratulations on the good set of numbers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, Yashashree. Thank you, everybody, for joining us here on this call today.

Hope we've been able to provide you an insight into what our thoughts are and how we are looking to move ahead in the future, and look forward to engaging with you again next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.