Are you exploring investment avenues to earn handsome gains? Better ways to achieving this objective is to invest in equities or equity oriented instruments in an increasingly popular Indian markets. But one needs to be cautious in the search of better returns, as your investment is exposing to risk of losing of capital invested. UTI Infrastructure Fund can help you to manage this task efficiently. If you look at the objective of UTI Infrastructure and performance of the fund since launch, you will observe that the fund stood firm to its objectives. Launched in March 2004, the UTI Infrastructure with objective of providing the investors growth of capital over a period of time as well as to make periodical distribution of income from investment in stocks of respective sectors of the Indian economy.

UTI Infrastructure has delivered first-rate returns in the long as well as short term horizon. Look at returns (annualised) over the past one year, the fund bestowed 64.39% beating the benchmark BSE 100 index by a wide margin of 18.86%. In longer term perspective, the fund presented returns of 53.82% and 56.09% during the past two and three years respectively, as against 40.88% and 43.82% provided by benchmark index in the same period. In the near term also, the fund reported return (absolute) of 55.38% in last six months, as against 41.85% returns delivered by benchmark index in the same period.

When queried by myiris about how the fund is different from its peers, Sanjay Dongre, manager of the fund said, "Consistency is our USP. UTI Infrastructure Fund has been, one of the most consistent performers, on a longer time horizon, among the theme based funds available in the market." "We have been sticking to the investment objective of the fund. Unlike other funds, UTI Infrastructure Fund has a good mix of large cap and mid cap stocks," he added.

During the year, total assets corpus of the fund jumped by 165.40% to Rs 14,173.8 million in September 2007 compared with Rs 5,340.54 million in October 2006.Since the past performance of the fund does not provide any guarantee of future, investors needs to understand how the fund house is utilising your money. Let's understand this process step by step. At least 90% of total assets corpus of the fund is invested in equities and rest in the debt instruments. The fund while picking up the stocks, selects high growth oriented stocks. "UTI Infrastructure Fund follows a top down approach with regard to stock selection, keeping in mind the evolving economic scenario. The fund endeavour to pick sectors, which are expected to perform better and select fundamentally strong companies within those sectors," Dongre said.

The fund is primarily betting on basic engineering, energy, and construction sectors. These sectors are accounting for about 57% of total assets corpus. Commenting on prospects of these sectors, Dongre said, "We continue to remain bullish on these sectors and we feels that there is significant value that can be extracted over the long term."

The hike in fund allocation in union budget to rural infrastructure development, to boost to power generation and transmission segments together with rise in defence capital expenditure by government are some of the positives for the engineering companies. The government is largely focusing on power sector to remove power scarcity. Recently, the government granted two of the Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPP) at Sasan and Mundra. This is expected to help companies engaged in the business of power. Since government spending on infrastructure is the most important growth driver for construction companies, the proposed increase in allocation in union budget will translate into awarding of more projects.

While advising to the investors, Dongre said, "Person having higher risk appetite and medium to long term horizon should invest in UTI Infrastructure Fund. Never attempt to time the market, systematic investment plan is the best way of taking advantage of volatility in the stock market."