Bandhan AMC's Arudha Equity Long-Short Fund closed its New Fund Offer on 18 March 2026, completing the second product launch under the Arudha SIF platform within roughly two months of the debut hybrid fund's own close. The back-to-back launches mark one of the more active starts among AMCs that entered India's Specialised Investment Fund category over the past year.
Arudha's platform so far
Arudha Hybrid Long-Short | Arudha Equity Long-Short | |
|---|---|---|
Launched | January 2026 | March 2026 |
Structure | Interval, exchange-listed | Open-ended |
Core exposure | Equity + debt | 80–100% equity |
Short exposure | Via derivatives | Up to 25% unhedged |
Benchmark | — | NIFTY 500 TRI |
Target investor | HNIs, institutions, family offices | HNIs, sophisticated investors |
The Arudha Equity Long-Short Fund is tailored for high-net-worth individuals and sophisticated investors comfortable with advanced strategies, with the standard SIF minimum investment threshold of ₹10 lakh per PAN across all Arudha strategies (reduced to ₹1 lakh for accredited investors). Investors were able to subscribe through licensed distributors, registered investment advisers, online investment platforms, or directly via the Arudha SIF digital platform during the NFO window.
Bandhan AMC has not yet disclosed final subscription figures for either Arudha product, but the pace of the platform's build-out — two distinct strategies launched within roughly ten weeks of each other — signals a clear intent to establish Arudha as a full-suite SIF platform relatively quickly, rather than testing investor appetite with a single product before expanding further.
Market commentary around the close has focused on how Bandhan's approach compares with other large AMCs that entered the SIF space with a single hybrid or equity product and have taken longer gaps between launches. Distributors say the swift follow-up suggests Bandhan sees strong enough early demand — and sufficient internal fund management bandwidth across its equity and debt desks — to justify running multiple SIF strategies in parallel.
With both products now live, attention shifts to performance tracking through their first full quarters, and to whether Bandhan follows through with a debt-oriented Arudha strategy, which would complete the three-category spread (equity, hybrid, debt) permitted under SEBI's SIF framework and give the platform full coverage across the risk spectrum.