Union Mutual Fund has confirmed its entry into India's Specialised Investment Fund (SIF) category, unveiling a new brand called "Arthaya SIF." The name is drawn from the Sanskrit word Artha, meaning wealth, and is meant to signal purposeful wealth creation — a philosophy the AMC says blends Indian roots with a modern investing outlook. The move brings a mid-sized, public-sector-backed fund house into a segment that, by early 2026, already counted large private players such as Edelweiss, Aditya Birla Sun Life, SBI and ICICI Prudential among its participants.

Building the team first Ahead of any product launch, Union AMC — led by CEO Madhu Nair — appointed Rajesh Aynor as Investment Lead for the SIF platform. Aynor brings more than two decades of experience managing tactical, hybrid and long-short strategies, a skillset the AMC has flagged as central to navigating the added complexity SIFs allow relative to traditional mutual funds.

Arthaya SIF is being positioned to eventually span the three broad strategy categories permitted under SEBI's SIF framework:

  • Equity strategies

  • Hybrid strategies

  • Debt strategies

As with all SIFs, the category requires a minimum investment of ₹10 lakh per investor (aggregated at the PAN level across an AMC's SIF strategies), sitting between the low entry point of mutual funds and the ₹50 lakh–₹1 crore thresholds typical of PMS and AIF products. The framework also allows fund managers to take naked short positions — capped at 25% of the portfolio — through derivatives, a facility unavailable to conventional mutual fund managers.

Union AMC's entry comes at a point when the SIF category itself was less than a year and a half old, having only taken effect from April 2025, and already showing signs of rapid growth in assets under management as more fund houses entered the space through late 2025 and early 2026.

Distributors note that Union MF's backing by Union Bank of India — one of India's larger public sector banks — gives Arthaya SIF a distribution advantage through the bank's existing branch network and wealth management channels, potentially widening SIF access beyond the private wealth desks that have driven most early adoption. The AMC has indicated that its first Arthaya product, expected to be an equity long-short strategy, is under regulatory review, with further details — including exact launch dates, fund managers and benchmark — to be announced closer to the New Fund Offer.