1.

INTRODUCTION

Investors have always been in search of new investment options, which can give more rate of
interest or seek for the value appreciation. In this era of high stock market volatility, people
are unable to read the market properly. So, a mutual fund is an option to invest in stock
market. People are interested in government securities, company bonds and money market
instruments, which are less volatile and give constant returns. Being a naïve in instrument
arena he can’t directly invest in these areas. So mutual funds provide an option.

As you probably know, mutual funds have become extremely popular over the last 20 years.
What was once just another obscure financial instrument is now a part of our daily lives. More
than 80 million people, or one half of the households in America, invest in mutual funds. That
means that, in the United States alone, trillions (yes, with a "T") of dollars are invested in
mutual funds.

Mutual funds became popular in India only in the early nineties during the Bull Run in the
stock market but even today they are number of comparisons to their popularity in current
market where recourses mobilized by them have often overtaken the bank deposits.

As a whole, mutual funds cater to the most of financial needs of the investors basing on his
risk-taking ability. This project mainly attempts to understand mutual funds, its advantages
and disadvantages. It is also aimed to measure the performance of various equity schemes for
the current year.

A study is also conducted to understand the different investment options people know in
respect to mutual funds.

A mutual fund is a special type of company that pools the money of many investors who share
common investment objective or financial goal. Mutual funds raise the money by selling
shares of the fund to the public. The money thus collected is then invested in capital market
instruments such as shares (stocks), debentures (bonds) and other money market securities or
some combination of these investments.

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Mutual fund acts as an intermediary between the investors and capital market. Such a kind of
investment is ideal for small investors who want to invest in stock market but can’t invest in
most of the scrip’s because of limited amount of capital at their disposal.

Mutual funds are also suitable for those investors who do not have sufficient knowledge of
capital market and by investing through a mutual fund it can make use of knowledge of
specialized people which the mutual funds employs.

Every mutual fund has a sponsor who establishes the fund and can be considered as similar to
a promoter of company

The combined holdings the mutual fund owns are known as its portfolio. The investment
manager would invest the money collected from the investors in to assets (securities) that are
permitted by stated objective of scheme.

For example, an equity fund would be invested in equity and equity related instrument and
debt fund would be invested in debentures, bonds, gilt’s etc. Those securities are
professionally managed on behalf of the shareholder or unit holder.

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2. NEED OF THE STUDY

 The basic purpose of the study is to give broad idea on Mutual Funds and analyze
various schemes to highlight the diversified investment that Mutual Fund offers to its
investors.

 Through this study one can understand how to invest in Mutual Funds and turn the raw
investment into ripen fruits by taking wise decisions, taking the risk factors into
account.
 To understand the risk-taking ability of different investors according to their age,
salary, and dependents
 Investors have always been in search of new investment options, which can give more
rate of interest or seek for the value appreciation.

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3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY

 Understand the benefits of investing in mutual Funds over other forms of investments.

 Portfolio of Mutual Funds

 To understand the risk-taking ability of different investors according to their age,
salary, and dependents.
 This project mainly attempts to understand mutual funds, its advantages and
disadvantages.
 It is also aimed to measure the performance of various equity schemes for the current
year.

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4. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

 To study the Mutual Funds.

 To examine the concept of mutual fund and the benefits that it offers.
 To analyze the market trends of the mutual fund investment.
 To evaluate the risk-taking ability of different investors according to their age, salary and
dependents.
 To summarize the investor’s opinions and their investment options.
 To make a more informed investment decision while selecting a specific scheme.
 To study the consumer attitude and awareness towards the ICICI mutual funds.
 To study the performance of the ICICI mutual fund schemes regarding to their annualized
returns.
 To see the possibilities for converting the current bank customers into ICICI mutual fund
customers.

HYPOTHESIS:
1. There is no significant difference in awareness level among mutual fund investors.
2. There is no significant association between demographic factors and investors perception
towards mutual fund.
3. There is no significant difference between the factors affecting the mutual fund selection.

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5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION:

Methodology is the way in which we find out the information. It describes how the project is
done. The methodology includes the methods, procedures and techniques used to collect and
analyze information. The total project is divided into two modules the first module deals with
investor’s opinions and their investment options. The second module deals with the
performance of the ICICI mutual funds.

Sampling procedure:
Random sampling was used as a method for selecting the interviewees.

Sampling Size:
A sample of 100 is taken for the survey. The collected data consists of both the primary and
secondary data.
 PRIMARY SOURCE
 SECONDARY SOURCE

METHODLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION

PRIMARY DATA SECONDARY DATA

RAW DATA COMPANIES

PUBLISHED DATA
ANNUALREPORTS
QUESTIONNAIRES MAGAZINES

PRIMARY SOURCE
It is the first-hand information on any happening or event collected mainly by observation and
communication. Communication is mainly done by the structured questionnaire.
Structured questioner is the formal list of questions formed so as to get the facts. Hence the
questions are asked strictly in accordance with pre analyzed order.

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  I gathered information by interacting with investment relationship manager
ICICI.

SECONDARY SOURCE

It is very difficult to collect entire data through primary sources it is also very costly process
to collect all the data from the primary source. Any data that have been gathered either for
some other purpose is known as secondary data is collected from past records, magazines,
newspapers, and net.

 I referred MUTUAL FUNDS related articles from various magazines,

newspapers and journals.
 Material provided by ICICI.
 Browsing the concerned sites.
 The collected data was analyzed by using graphs relative rating methods.
 We did a sample survey for to find how many people aware of mutual funds
and how many people invested in mutual funds and how many people
invested in mutual funds and their savings patterns etc

For any survey to be successful the objectives need to be very clear. Firstly, the objectives
were set which gave a sense of direction

TOOLS
Simple and convenient statistical tables, bar charts and simple methods are used for my
research work.

6. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

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  Information relating to the internal aspects regarding various items is not provided.
 Study is limited to ICICI schemes only.
 Most of the information is from secondary data.
 People not willing to spend their time for answering the questionnaire.
 People will not have clear idea about the concept of mutual funds.
 Unsatisfied investors are not willing to talk about the mutual funds.
 The schemes have been compared only on the basis on one performance parameter.
 The comparisons of various schemes have been done on the basis of theoretical data
the opinion of the employers in ICICI mutual funds have not been taken into
consideration.

CHAPTER PLAN

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CHAPTER-1- INTRODUCTION
In this first chapter will provide introduction of the topic, need, scope and objectives of the
study. The research methodology and limitations for the study are also discussed.

CHAPTER-1I- REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

This chapter includes different authors written articles and brief explanation of the topic.

CHAPTER- III- INDUSTRY AND COMPANY PROFILE

Chapter III explains about how Industry growing in India and what are the strategies and
explain about the company like history of the company, board of directors, awards, milestones
and product etc.,

CHAPTER-1V-DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

CHAPTER-V-FINDINGS, SUGGESTIONS, CONCLUSION

ANNEXURE- It includes Bibliography and questionnaire (If any).