India's largest equity fund manager Prashant Jain to leave HDFC: Report

Prashant Jain was the longest-serving mutual fund manager in the industry, served for 28 years. With corpus crossing the Rs 1 trillion mark, he became the country's biggest equity fund manager in July

Prashant Jain, chief investment officer (CIO) of HDFC AMC, has reportedly called it quits. One of the early poster-boys of the mutual funds industry in India, Jain was responsible for overseeing Rs 4.21 trillion worth of assets under management (AUM), a Moneycontrol report stated.

Jain was the only mutual-fund manager and served in the industry for 28 years. With his corpus crossing the Rs 1 trillion mark, in early July, Jain became the country's biggest equity fund manager.

After completing his engineering degree from IIT Kanpur, Jain went on to pursue an MBA from IIM Bangalore. He started his career with SBI Caps and then moved to 20th Century Mutual Fund.

20th Century Mutual Fund was, in 1998, acquired by Zurich Mutual Fund. Zurich MF was then taken over by HDFC Mutual Fund in 2003. Since then, Jain has been at HDFC.

One of the biggest schemes, HDFC Balanced Advantage Fund, was managed by Jain. It has a corpus of over Rs 43,000 crore. Since 1994, it has returned an average of 17.87 per cent yearly.

Jain's schemes, like HDFC Top 100 and HDFC Flexi-cap, have delivered an average of 18 per cent per annum since their inception.

Jain's career, averaging a return of 28 per cent, has remained one of the most successful careers in India's mutual fund industry. However, his returns took a hit after 2015 due to more exposure to public sector banks.

But by the end of his career at HDFC, Jain had bounced back and became the largest equity fund manager in the country as his value stocks started making a comeback post-pandemic.