The SIF Roundtable 2025

Summary: SIFs are being pitched as a new middle ground between mutual funds and PMS. This piece captures what fund managers really think about long–short strategies, where the risks lie, and who these products actually suit. On most days, derivatives and dinner conversations do not mix. Yet on a recent evening, a full house of investors turned up to hear four fund managers talk about something with a very bureaucratic name but with a very real promise: SIFs, or Specialised Investment Funds. So, Value Research’s SIF Roundtable sat down with the talking heads of qsif (by quant Mutual Fund), altiva SIF (by Edelweiss Mutual Fund) and Diviti SIF (by ITI Mutual Fund) to understand this product better. So, what on earth is an SIF? For most investors, SIFs sit in an unfamiliar middle zone. They are more flexible than a mutual fund, yet more regulated and accessible than a PMS (Portfolio Management Service) or hedge fund. Put simply, for over 25 years, Indian investors have lived in a long-only world. More than 99 per cent of money in mutual funds has been deployed only in buy-and-hold positions. Shorting to protect the downside, or to profit from obvious excesses, was simply off the table. SIFs aim to change that. They allow managers to take positions on both sides of the market. Fund managers can pick quality companies and, at the same time, short weaker names or sectors whe