Franklin Templeton Launches Sapphire Equity Long-Short SIF, Its First Specialised Investment Fund

Franklin Templeton (India) today announced the launch of Sapphire Equity Long-Short SIF, its first offering under the Specialised Investment Fund category. The New Fund Offer will be open for subscription from 10 April 2026 to 24 April 2026, marking Franklin Templeton's formal entry into India's SIF landscape.

Fund details at a glance

The fund aims to generate long-term capital appreciation across market cycles through a proprietary, model-driven quantitative strategy, anchored in disciplined stock selection, dynamic allocation and robust risk management. Avinash Satwalekar, President, Franklin Templeton – India, said investors today are navigating markets that move through different phases rapidly, making disciplined and flexible investment strategies increasingly important. He noted that SIFs, by allowing managers to take short positions of up to 25% of net assets, can help reduce downside risk during market corrections in a way conventional long-only mutual funds cannot.

The quantitative engine behind Sapphire Satwalekar said Sapphire Equity Long-Short SIF leverages Franklin Templeton's decades of experience in systematic and quantitative investing, using a proprietary, data-driven approach that evaluates stocks across more than 40 factors spanning Quality, Value, Sentiment and Alternative indicators — with a dedicated framework specifically designed for identifying short opportunities, rather than treating short positions as simply the inverse of the long-side model.

Arihant Jain, the fund's Portfolio Manager, explained that the underlying quantitative model is designed to assess stocks using a broad set of leading and lagging indicators, recognising that different factors tend to perform differently across market environments. According to Jain, the framework systematically scores and ranks stocks for both long exposure and selective short positioning, enabling what he described as a more balanced response to shifts in the market, while preserving a strong emphasis on risk management as the model adapts to changing conditions.

A distinctly systematic approach Franklin Templeton has stressed that portfolio construction follows a disciplined, research-driven process, where the investment team overlays quantitative signals with judgment around liquidity, sector exposure, size, risk and style characteristics — an approach designed to manage unintended biases that a purely mechanical model might otherwise introduce.