ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund has officially launched its first two Specialised Investment Fund (SIF) offerings under the "iSIF" brand — the iSIF Equity Ex-Top 100 Long-Short Fund and the iSIF Hybrid Long-Short Fund. The new fund offer (NFO) for both strategies opened on January 16, 2026, and remained open for subscription until January 30, 2026.

The launch is a significant milestone for India's SIF category, introduced by SEBI in April 2025 to bridge the gap between traditional mutual funds and more complex, less-regulated products such as PMS and AIFs. Both new iSIF strategies require a minimum investment of ₹10 lakh per PAN, in keeping with SEBI's framework for the category.

Speaking at the launch, Sankaran Naren, Executive Director and Chief Investment Officer at ICICI Prudential AMC, said the iSIF segment was designed to offer investors differentiated strategies capable of adapting to evolving market conditions. He noted that long-short approaches give fund managers greater flexibility to manage risk while pursuing more consistent outcomes across different phases of the market cycle.

The iSIF Equity Ex-Top 100 Long-Short Fund is an open-ended strategy focused on companies outside India's top 100 by market capitalisation — effectively the mid- and small-cap universe. It aims to capture growth opportunities in this segment while using long-short positioning and derivatives to manage the higher volatility typically associated with smaller companies. The fund will take long positions in businesses with strong fundamentals while selectively shorting stocks it considers overvalued, an approach intended to help the portfolio participate in market upside while cushioning against sharp corrections.

The second fund, the iSIF Hybrid Long-Short Fund, follows a more diversified, interval-based structure, investing across equities, debt and derivatives, with limited short positions permitted in both asset classes. The fund plans to dynamically adjust its net equity exposure based on market valuations and internal models, and will also look to tap opportunities such as IPOs, qualified institutional placements (QIPs), buybacks and tactical fixed-income trades. Its performance will be benchmarked against the CRISIL Hybrid 50+50 Moderate Index.

Both strategies will rely on multiple sources of return generation, including active stock and sector selection, derivative-based income strategies such as covered calls, and carry-based investments in corporate bonds and money market instruments.

Fund managers Sankaran Naren (equity long-short strategy) along with Manish Banthia, Rajat Chandak and Akhil Kakkar (hybrid strategy) will lead the two offerings, drawing on ICICI Prudential's in-house research capabilities.

The launch comes as several large fund houses — including SBI, Edelweiss, ITI and 360 ONE — have entered or are preparing to enter the SIF space, underscoring growing acceptance of the category as a genuine addition to India's investment landscape rather than a niche experiment.