Despite the markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, demanding that mutual funds broadbase the investor base in their schemes, the holdings of large unit holders -- defined as those holding above 25 per cent of the corpus in individual schemes -- has actually increased Rs 1,100 crore (Rs 11 billion) in the last six months to Rs 4,143 crore (Rs 41.43 billion) as on March 31, 2004.

In percentage terms, the increase works out to a good 33 per cent over the investment of Rs 3,033 crore (Rs 30.33 billion) made by 144 single large investors as on September 30, 2003.

The details of large unit holders published in the daily newspapers by 26 mutual fund houses show 133 large investors have sizeable investment in as many as 114 schemes.

The total corpus of these 114 schemes aggregated Rs 7,550 crore (Rs 75.50 billion) at the end of March 2004 and the Rs 4,143 crore investments held by the 133 large holders amounts to 54.88 per cent of the total.

The UTI Mutual Fund has three schemes in its portfolio, where large investors hold a significant chunk of the corpus.

In the UTI Liquid Fund, a single investor has invested Rs 363.06 crore (Rs 3.630 billion), making up 54.06 per cent of the schemes' total assets of Rs 671.58 crore (Rs 6.715 billion).

Another bulk investor in the UTI Money Market Fund has invested Rs 281.81 crore (Rs 2.818 billion), amounting to 49.12 per cent of the Rs 573.72 crore (Rs 5.737 billion) corpus.

As many as 14 individual investors have invested Rs 640.46 crore (Rs 6.404 billion) in 14 schemes managed by Prudential ICICI mutual fund. Two investors alone invested a good Rs 414.06 crore (Rs 4.140 billion) in the Prudential ICICI Growth Fund and Prudential ICICI Long Term Plan.

A single investor invested Rs 222 crore (Rs 2.22 billion) in the SBI Magnum Growth-99 scheme, taking the total investment by 10 individual bulk investors to Rs 603.34 crore (Rs 6.033 billion).

Similarly, a single bulk investor invested Rs 403.45 crore (Rs 4.034 billion) in the Reliance Short Term Plan, and with this the total investment of five bulk individual investors in the Reliance MF stable touched Rs 565 crore (Rs 5.65 billion).