AIF & Fund ManagementAIF & Fund Management

First-time fund managers almost always benefit from external setup — the regulatory work is specialised and one-time.

Past the first fund, in-house operations capability grows. We typically continue with multi-fund managers in a partner-grade compliance and SEBI-liaison role even after the in-house ops team is built. For single-fund or first-time managers, end-to-end external support is the norm.

Cat I for early-stage / venture / social impact (broadly the regulator's 'positive externality' fund types).

Cat II is the default for growth / private equity / debt funds that don't have positive-externality classification. Cat III for hedge / long-short / liquid strategies. The decision drives leverage caps, tax pass-through treatment, and SEBI reporting load. We scope the structure decision in week one of engagement.

Setup is a fixed engagement fee tied to milestones (structure approval, document drafting, SEBI application, registration, first close).

Ongoing operations is a quarterly retainer scoped to fund size, investor count, and SEBI compliance load. Trustee and custodian fees are separate (paid directly by the fund). All fees on the engagement letter before kick-off.

Twelve to sixteen weeks from engagement letter to first close, assuming structure is straightforward and PPM commercials are largely agreed.

Cross-border structures (GIFT City / IFSC, offshore feeders) add four to six weeks for additional regulatory steps. SEBI's own processing time for the AIF registration is six to eight weeks of that window — predictable but not compressible.

Mutual NDAs at engagement letter and individually with each LP onboarding.

LP records sit on access-controlled systems segregated per fund. We never use LP information from one fund to inform another fund's marketing or operations. SEBI's reporting requirements limit disclosure scope to aggregate data — individual LP disclosure beyond what SEBI requires never happens.

Law firms do excellent drafting work — PPM, contribution agreement, trust deed.

What we bring on top is the operational design (drawdowns, NAV cycles, investor communications, quarterly compliance), the SEBI liaison through registration, and the post-launch operations capability. Most managers use a law firm for the documents and us for everything around them. We coordinate the workstreams.

That's the steady-state engagement.

Quarterly SEBI returns, drawdown notices, investor reporting, NAV cycles, audit timelines, regulatory filings, and the trustee / custodian / fund-administrator liaison. Most fund managers retain us through the fund's life rather than re-staffing each function in-house — the economics favour external for any fund below US $200M AUM.

We handle the response — drafting, evidence packs, follow-up correspondence, and the formal meetings with the SEBI desk officer.

Most enquiries are routine clarifications resolved within four to six weeks. For more serious matters (show-cause notices, enforcement), we work alongside SEBI-specialist counsel; that pairing is documented on the engagement letter so fees are clear if it ever happens.

Yes. GIFT City IFSCA-registered fund management entities are a growing share of our work — both as a primary domicile and as a feeder into a domestic AIF. The structuring decision (GIFT vs domestic AIF vs offshore vs hybrid) is driven by LP base, asset class, and tax efficiency. We scope that decision before engagement.

US $10M corpus for a Cat I or Cat II fund is the practical floor — below that, the fixed cost of setup, trustee, audit and compliance outweighs the management fee.

The economics improve sharply above US $25M. For sub-$10M strategies we sometimes recommend the company set up as a non-AIF structure (LLP / private trust) with lighter regulation, scope-permitting.