Days after inking a deal to take over IL&FS Mutual Fund, the country's biggest UTI Mutual Fund on Tuesday said it was on the look out for more acquisitions and launch six more schemes as part of its growth plans.

"Our assets under management has grown from Rs 13,000 crore (Rs 130 billion) to Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) in the last 12 months. In the next 12 months we want to make significant additions both organic and inorganically," UTI Mutual Fund chairman, M Damodaran, said after signing a distribution tie-up with Bank of India in New Delhi.

• The UTI Saga

"We will not acquire small funds managing Rs 100-150 crore (Rs 1-1.5 billion) worth of assets. We are looking at well-performing funds," he said, adding that UTI has enough money to acquire more funds in the days to come.

UTI will be looking at funds which have greater presence of institutional and high net worth investors, he said.

UTI, which would finalise the merger with IL&FS by March 31, will enhance its assets under management by another Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) to Rs over Rs 22,500 crore (Rs 225 billion) by end of this fiscal.

Although UTI will retain the fund managers of IL&FS, not all the employees would be absorbed in the fund, he added.

"We believe, the process for consolidation in the mutual fund industry has started. There will be fewer number of players in the years to come," he said.

On organic growth, Damodaran said the fund will add 55 more branches countrywide in addition to tie-ups UTI has with Bank of India, Indian Bank, Corporation Bank and Allahabad Bank for selling mutual funds schemes through their branches.

"We have plans to launch six more schemes for which we have obtained SEBI nod. They will be sectoral funds focusing on pharma, auto, PSUs and large-cap companies," he said.

On US-64, he said the scheme was formally closed and investors have been repaid either in bonds or in cash.

About 80 per cent of the investors of US-64 opted for bonds, he said adding the fund was sorting out grievances of a small segment of investors who have not yet got the money.

Damodaran said seven schemes of erstwhile Unit Trust of India has been foreclosed this fiscal and the total cash outgo would be around Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion).

Eight more assured return schemes of UTI are still remaining each having assets under management of 800-1,300 crore (Rs 8-13 billion), he said.

Damodaran said the health of the fund was improving as UTI has made hefty provisions to bring down the net non-performing assets to Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.50 billion), while gross non-performing assets are now at Rs 6,100 crore (Rs 61 billion).

Recoveries of bad assets worth Rs 1,300 crore was in the pipeline and this would bring down the shortfall of the UTI-I, he said.

"As we recover more NPAs, the shortfall will come down. Therefore, it was not advisable to close down the remaining schemes of UTI, he added.

Damodaran said UTI has overcome the difficulties and has emerged as not only the biggest but 'different' from others. "At one time we were ancient, backward and did things which did not bring value to investors. But now, we have a full-fledged in-house research division, a risk management department, full-time compliance officers and truly independent trustee," he said.

"Our growth in the last 12 months have been faster than the industry and most major mutual funds," he said.

UTI Mutual Fund has 41 domestic schemes and four offshore funds at present. The number of schemes would go up by 10 after the acquisition of IL&FS is completed.

The fund has more than 4.7 million investors, which covers 82 per cent of the population that has put in money in mutual funds.