Templeton plans to tap the service-sensitive educated class of people, who keep their money in bank deposits. "This is a vast untapped class of customers whom mutual funds have ignored. We plan to concentrate on this class as nobody caters to this teeming strata of society who have disposable income, but want safety, security and service" said the president and chief executive officer of Templeton Asset Management Pvt Ltd, Vijay C Advani.

Templeton has targeted eight offices by the end of the current financial year 1998-99, a better nexus with brokers, improved distribution network and launch of a money market mutual fund by the end of next month. "We are here to stay and are long-term players. Thewhole exercise of establishing ourselves took us 35 years in the United States, 10 years in Europe and will take us four years in India," added Advani.

According to him, the weakest link in the industry today is the distribution network. Templeton plans to strengthen its distribution network by concentrating on a few distributors whom they have recognised as approved distributors and consists of people at the lower end, the brokers and the banks. The lower end would concentrate on mobilising through fixed deposit, the brokers would concentrate on high net worth individuals and the banks have the largest access to retail clientele.

Templeton has recognised Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank. On the brokers' front, Templeton has recognised Kotak Securities, DSP Merrill Lynch and Birla Global. For the lower end, brokers like Sajag Securities in Pune and Bajaj and Integerated have been identified. The eight cities targeted by the fund are Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad.

Meanwhile, the twoexisiting schemes from the Templeton stable are performing well. Templeton India Income Fund, launched in March 1997 as an open-ended debt fund is giving annualised returns of 16.27 per cent for the last fiscal. The assets of the fund have grown by a whopping 180 per cent to Rs 91.66 crore as of March 31, 1998, from Rs 32.71 crore as of March 1997.

The Net Asset Value of this scheme as on April 15 is Rs 10.30.Templeton India Growth Fund, the maiden fund launched in 1996, an open-ended growth scheme has seen an increase of 50 per cent in the corpus of its portfolio from initial Rs 50 crore to Rs 100 crore. The NAV of this scheme as on April 15 is Rs 10.82.