PGIM India Mutual Fund has announced the launch of PGIM India Healthcare Fund, an open ended equity scheme investing across equity and equity related securities of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. The fund is benchmarked against BSE Healthcare TRI.

The New Fund Offer (NFO) opens for subscription on November 19, 2024 and closes on December 03, 2024. The scheme re-opens for continuous sale and repurchase on December 11, 2024.

“PGIM India Healthcare Fund provides a compelling opportunity for investors to capitalise on India’s burgeoning healthcare sector which benefits from low cost, innovation, growing awareness for health insurance, rising FDI inflows and growing medical tourism and more. We believe the best investment one can make is in one’s own health. The next best investment is protecting yourself and your family with  health/life insurance and investing into healthcare as a segment which is a structural theme,” said Ajit Menon, CEO, PGIM India Asset Management.   

“We expect healthcare sector to be a structural beneficiary of the India growth story. The sector is likely to witness multiple tailwinds like stable and growing domestic demand, strong pricing power, superior exports potential due to India's competitive advantage and China +1 strategy being pursued by global pharma," said Vinay Paharia, CIO, PGIM India Asset Management.

The scheme will invest a minimum of 80% in stocks of pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, up to 20% in other equities, debt and money market (up to 20%), REITs & InvITs (up to 10%) and foreign securities including overseas ETFs up to 20%).

The fund may consider investing in various sectors within the healthcare industry, including healthcare services and healthcare manufacturing. Healthcare services include, pharmacy, diagnostics, hospitals and health insurance. Healthcare manufacturing encompasses CRAMS (Contract Research and Manufacturing Services), medical devices, specialty chemicals, formulations and API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient), among others.

The portfolio will be built utilising a combination of top-down and bottom-up portfolio construction process, focusing on the fundamentals of each stock, including quality of management. The equity portion of the scheme will be managed by Anandha Padmanabhan Anjeneyan, Vivek Sharma, and Utsav Mehta while the debt portion will be managed by Puneet Pal.