The honourary chairman of F&C, James Ogilvy, speaking to The Financial Express said that we wish to maintain and build our presence in India.``On the political front, there is a stalemate which would further unfold in the next few days but the highlight about India was that it did not collapse as dramatically as the Asian tigers'', said Ogilvy.

Ogilvy said that India's advantage lay in the enormous population and a big middle class, a stupendous 7,000 listed companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange, huge number of retail investors through UTI or the stock exchanges and now its was more a question of being able to produce the right product at the righttime.

``The disadvantage that India has of political stalemate would wane away as globalisation, which is taking place all over the world, would actually force countries to move ahead and not stagnate,'' he added.

``Politics is not a problem for India in the long term. The economy does have a quite high deficit and higher inflation than a number of emerging markets with concerns that the growth will slow down. Despite all this, the outlook for India as a country for long term investment is exciting but patience is required,'' observed James Ogilvy.

Sun F&C is currently working on a strategy to enter the Indian market in a big way. ``For the last three years, we have concentrated on performance and quality service through our operations. Now, we will try and build our brand and name recognition and increase distribution. We would be looking at managing money for insurance companies, corporate pension pools, high net worth clients and others,'' said the chief executive director of Sun F&C, mutual fund,Nikhil Khattau.

``We want to make our presence in the retail market as well as create awareness that we are long term players. India is an emerging market having its own set of problems. On the other hand, we comprehend that a country of this size should have at least a hundred funds to manage assets,'' said Ogilvy.

F&C, Ogilvy said, was very enthusiastic about the authorities letting Indian funds to invest abroad but now that the government if not focussing on this area, it was prudent to build up business in the country.

``India is the only country where we have representative offices and we plan it to be this way for a long time to come,'' he said.

``The Asian meltdown has taught the investor that the structure of the stock exchanges of emerging markets was fragile and had low liquidity. Despite this downslide, we found that some big institutions continued buying in India but in a more selective manner,'' said Ogilvy.

On the plans for the future, when regulations permit, Ogilvy said that Sun F&Cwould get into managing pension funds. He said that there was tremendous potential in the Indian market but the Indian investor over the last few years had burnt his fingers.

``This was a phenomenon which did occur in countries where financial development is taking place and the initial investors tend to buy without really being properly educated on the fundamentals and therefore there is potential resistance. But, the Indian investor is much more savvy and indeed more careful and would come back if right products with good services packed properly backed by companies with good credentials came to the market,'' said Ogilvy.