PUNE, March 26: The Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd (HDFC) is all set to launch a close-ended real estate mutual fund apart from entering the insurance sector, pending clearances for both. The corporation aims at emerging as a third party, not proprietary, distribution house for housing-finance products, according to HDFC director D M Satwalekar.The proposed Rs 300-crore close-ended real estate mutual fund could have a foreign partner to offer either an equity or fixed income fund through rentals or growth as investment opportunities. The fund would be a managed one, and initially at least, as an institutional investment. However, such a fund would require approval from the RBI and SEBI, which the former may be reluctant to grant given the South-east Asian crisis which has seen a fall in values of real estate in the over-heated markets of the region.Satwalekar said separate companies would be set up to handle these activities. He was positive that once the insurance sector was thrown open,HDFC would enter both the life as well as non-life products. It may be recalled that HDFC has already signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Standard Life of the UK for a 50:50 venture.
