The fund has decided to put in place systems to facilitate this and plans to rope in an external agency to carry out the activity. Three firms have bid for the contract and the fund is expected to make the final selection in the next couple of weeks.``This job was earlier to some extent done by corporates and market research agencies. We are putting such a system in place and three firms have already made presentations,'' said a top SBI Mutual Fund official.

After the agency has been finalised, it will take them a maximum of one month to complete the job, he added. The mutual fund has a total of 18-20 lakh investors across the country.The aim for undertaking data warehousing is to have a better understanding ofthe kind and variety of investors that SBI Mutual Fund has. ``It will help us target specific segments of our investors. Apart from being a tool for management information systems it will be an important marketing tool,'' he said.

``Sometimes, even SEBI needs information about investors and which can be provided by SBI to them,'' he said.The way in which data is planned to be categorised is based on the level of income, age and address of investors. The classification of investors is in the category of individuals, corporates, NRIs, and trusts, institutions & societies and the "others" category for unspecified investors.

Under the category of individuals, the investors will be classified into Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) and minors.

The additional information that SBI MF will be looking at in the case of corporates is the line of business operations. For trusts, institutions and societies the classification is going to be on these lines only. The mutual fund is facing problem to gather this informationas the investors are vary of providing information about their incomes and various investments made.This may be the reason why it has decided to opt for a professional agency to help get it know investors better.