Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertation

I. IntroductionINDIA IS UNDENIABLY budding as the next big investment destination,riding on a high savings and investment rate, as compared to other Asianeconomies. The average real GDP growth in India is likely to be in the rangeof 5.8 percent between 2007-50, with per capita income rising to US$ 20,000from the current US$ 2,932. More than half of the population is less than 25years of age, with the proportion of working population likely to increasesignificantly over the next decade. Not only the personal income of youngpopulation has seen a rising trend, but also the high net worth (HNI) segment,which have substantial amount to invest. The household segment thereforeextends enormous scope for attracting investments. India has a strong middleclass of 250-300 million, which is expected to double over the next two decades.Unfortunately, these encouraging statistics have not been able to reflect whenit comes to investments in mutual fund through individual investors. Majorityof Indian population continues to follow the conservative approach of puttingtheir savings in bank deposits, land or property and even gold. The Indianmutual fund industry has not performed up to the mark in gaining investorconfidence. The assets have been garnered based on the performance ratherthanconfidence of investor. Indeed, mutual fund penetration as a percentageof household savings is a meager 3 per cent in India, as compared to 16 percent in the West (Nayak, 2007). To muster new household savings, assetmanagement companies require reaching Tier II and Tier III cities(PWC Report,2010). Finding it hard to solve the problem of low penetration of retailinvestments in mutual funds, business practitioners are often guided by theacademicians to adopt different approaches to handle the markets. However,such repeated advocation is not backed up by much significant empiricalwork. It was found that the two major aspects namely growth, performance