The chief executive officer of Apple Mutual Fund, Nischal Maheshwari said: ``Though the mobilisation in the mutual fund industry for the past one year has not been good, we believe that in the current fiscal the best performing funds would garner a sizeable amount of corpus. In view of this expectation coupled with the strong thrust on marketing efforts, we expect to garner around Rs 80 crore in the current financial year''.

The company plans to launch one fund in the current financial year. The mutual fund at present manages two schemes both of which are equity oriented growth schemes. The combined current corpus of both these schemes is Rs 67.6 crore. The fund plans to increase the corpus in these two schemes to Rs 100 crore, which would mean an increase of 48 per cent in the corpus ofboth these schemes, while the remaining Rs 50 crore will be mobilised through a new scheme.

Both Apple Midas Fund and Apple Platinum Share, launched in 1994 and 1995, respectively, had focussed the investment strategy initially on primary issues and with the steady decline in the primary issues, the values of these two funds remained depressed. The fund, however, went for a portfolio restructuring.

With the change in management, the fund acquired stocks of large cap companies with sound management, stocks of non-recessionary, non-cyclical industries like software, pharma, telecom and fast moving consumer goods among others. Apple Midas Fund, a close ended growth scheme, has shown annual returns of 35.6 per cent. The NAV of the scheme as on April 1, 1997 was Rs 6.55 and has appreciated to Rs 8.88 as on March 31, 1998.

Apple Platinum Share, an open-ended growth scheme, has shown an annual return of 31.6 per cent. The NAV of the scheme as on April 1, 1997 was Rs 5.09, while it has appreciated to Rs 6.70as on March 31, 1998. ``The schemes have substantially outperformed the benchmark indices for the same period,'' said the senior manager equity research of Apple MF, Hitesh Zaveri. The Sensex gave a return of 15.8 per cent, BSE-100 15.9 per cent and Crisil-500 13.3 per cent during the same period. The mutual fund in the short term has been witnessing the fruits of changes undertaken. The NAV of Apple Midas Goldshare has shown an appreciation of 24.09 per cent from Rs 8.05 on December 31, 1997 to Rs 9.96 as on April 15, 1998. Apple Platinum Share has shown 28.2 per cent growth in NAV from Rs 5.95 in December 31, 1997 to Rs 7.63 as on April 15, 1998.