The mutual fund industry has come a long way since the days of the UTI. The number ofmutual funds and the funds managed has also increased over the years. Mutual funds are seen as an avenue for the retail investor to enter the
stock markets and bonds. They provide the professional competence to the retail investor. In India, the retail investor is increasingly seeing mutual fund as an alternative investment avenue to the low-yielding bank deposits.

The sampling for the study was a convenient sampling and this was essentially a dipstick survey. The survey was conducted among Indian investors, who are more knowledgeable and inclined towards taking risks in investments. It came out with some interesting findings and shows that investors in the West prefer to take risks in their investments as against investors in the South, but in terms of diversity of investment portfolio South India has come up with a surprise. The investors in the South have the most diversified investment portfolio. The investors of Gujarat have retained their numero uno position by investing directly in shares and the bond market, followed by the investors of Andhra Pradesh, which is reflected by their high level of confidence in stocks and the high return they expect from their
portfolios. Even in mutual funds they are ready to park their money in schemes which promise high returns. The mutual fund investor households by and large were from the middle and high-income brackets. Mutual fund units owning households in the low income group with income of less than Rs. 2,500 constituted only 4% of total mutual fund investor households. The groups having different levels of education had different perceptions about investment. The level of education had a direct bearing on the investment patterns. The higher the education, the higher was the level of understanding of investment complexities. As such a large number of graduates were found to have
invested in mutual funds.

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