Bandhan AMC has expanded its Arudha SIF platform with a second product, launching the Arudha Equity Long-Short Fund for subscription today. The New Fund Offer will remain open until 18 March 2026, arriving roughly six weeks after the close of Arudha's debut hybrid fund and marking Bandhan's move into pure equity long-short strategies within the SIF category.

Fund details

  • Structure: Open-ended equity strategy (unlike the debut fund's interval structure)

  • NFO window: 5 March – 18 March 2026

  • Unit face value: ₹10 during the NFO

  • Equity allocation: 80–100% in listed equities

  • Short exposure: Up to 25% unhedged, via derivatives

  • Benchmark: NIFTY 500 Total Return Index

  • Fund managers: Nilesh Saha and Brijesh Shah

The Arudha Equity Long-Short Fund is designed to generate long-term capital appreciation through a dynamic long-short equity strategy, aiming to give investors a structured way to participate in market growth while managing downside risk — particularly relevant, the AMC noted, at a time of sectoral churn, shifting market leadership and elevated volatility.

Bandhan has positioned the fund as offering equity-like returns with comparatively lower volatility. According to the strategy document, back-tested data over a 10-year period pointed to a compounded annual growth rate of 14.1% with annualised volatility of 8.0% — figures the AMC said outperformed standard Aggressive Hybrid and Balanced Advantage mutual fund categories on both return and stability metrics over the same back-tested window. The AMC was careful to caveat that, as an SIF product, the fund still carries meaningfully higher risk than traditional mutual fund schemes, including exposure to derivative-related and liquidity risks.

Commenting on the launch, Vishal Kapoor, CEO of Bandhan AMC, said equity investing has traditionally forced a trade-off between higher returns and higher volatility, and that the long-short framework is designed to let portfolios capture opportunities regardless of market direction rather than depending solely on markets rising.

With two products now live under six months of each other — a hybrid long-short fund and now a pure equity long-short fund — Arudha SIF has moved quickly to build out a multi-strategy platform, giving investors a choice between a more income-oriented, tax-efficient hybrid structure and a higher-conviction, equity-focused approach within the same brand.