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Emkay Investment Managers Limited (EIML), the asset management arm of Emkay Global Financial Services, has announced the launch of Emkay Emerging Stars Fund – Series VII, a SEBI-registered Category III Alternative Investment Fund designed to capture India’s next phase of wealth creation across both listed equities and high-conviction pre-IPO opportunities.

A core differentiator of Emkay Emerging Stars Fund – Series VII is its ability to participate in India’s rapidly expanding pre-IPO landscape, with upto 35% investment in unlisted/pre-IPO opportunities. With strong domestic capital pools and robust retail participation, pre-IPO investing has emerged as a high-potential avenue for alpha generation, especially when backed by disciplined selection. Emkay Emerging Stars Fund – Series VII will identify opportunities in businesses with strong fundamentals and defined liquidity timelines at relatively attractive valuations opportunities, 6–9 months before IPO filing. This strategy is particularly timely given India’s surge in primary market activity. The country now accounts for 32.5% of global IPO volumes, up from 5.8% in 2019, positioning India as the world’s leading IPO hub.

The fund is centred on five powerful shifts that are reshaping India’s growth story i.e. digitalization, financialization of savings, artificial intelligence, manufacturing and energy transition. India’s digital backbone is expanding at an extraordinary pace, with 900 million internet users in 2025 compared to the 751.5 million at the start of 2024, while digital payments surging to 185.8 billion UPI transactions in FY24–25. This is bringing millions of consumers and businesses into the formal economy and driving greater participation in financial markets. At the same time, AI deployment is gathering momentum, manufacturers are investing for scale, and renewable energy is becoming a mainstream engine of growth. Together, these forces are set to influence which sectors lead, how companies grow, and where returns are created in the decade ahead. This new AIF is designed to tap into these long-term themes with a sharp, research-led investment approach.

The fund is anchored in Emkay’s proprietary E-Qual Framework, a governance-first, data-driven evaluation model that has been refined over a decade to objectively assess management integrity, capability, wealth distribution practices, investor communication and liquidity. Supported by a detailed Risk-Reward Matrix, the framework helps the fund manager identify scalable, high-quality businesses while proactively eliminating companies with governance gaps, excessive leverage or other structural red flags.

Manish Sonthalia, Chief Investment Officer, Emkay Investment Managers Limited said, “The launch of Emkay Emerging Stars Fund – VII comes at a time when India is entering a “Golden Decade,” shaped by five long-duration drivers—financialisation of savings, expanding household consumption, accelerating digitisation and AI adoption, rapid energy transition, and the country’s rising manufacturing competitiveness. These macro forces, coupled with a favourable demographic and policy environment, create a compelling backdrop for long-term equity performance.”

The fund aims to build a diversified basket across market capitalisations and sectors, combining listed equities with selective pre-IPO opportunities. Using its rigorous Risk-Reward Matrix, the fund will filter companies based on quality, valuation and size-adjusted return expectations, while actively eliminating red flags such as excessive leverage, shareholder pledging, weak disclosures, and governance gaps.

The investment objective of Emkay Emerging Stars Fund – Series VII is to achieve long term capital appreciation by primarily investing in equity & equity related instruments across sectors and market capitalization with the option to have exposure of upto 35% in unlisted/pre-IPO opportunities. The fund offers fortnightly subscriptions, quarterly redemptions with applicable exit loads of 3% for redemption within 24 months from date of allotment against final drawdown and 2% thereafter. It will be benchmarked against BSE 500 TRI and will have an investment horizon of 2 years and more. The fund will be managed by Manish Sonthalia, Director & Chief Investment Officer, and Kashyap Javeri, HOR and Co-Fund Manager.

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