Four doors into the same listed market.
Each minimum below is a rule about the investor walking in. None of them is a grade on the strategy behind the door.
| The door | Minimum | What the gate actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Mutual fund SIP | Rs 500 | Retail product. Some funds open at Rs 100. |
| Systematic basket | Rs 24000 | The price of ten whole shares in your own demat. |
| PMS | Rs 50 lakh | SEBI wealth threshold. Was Rs 25 lakh until 2019. |
| AIF | Rs 1 crore | SEBI wealth threshold. Set by regulation, not returns. |
To be fair to the costly doors. A PMS holds stocks in your own name and can concentrate harder than a mutual fund is allowed to. An AIF reaches assets a fund cannot. Those are real structural differences. What the bigger ticket does not buy is better odds. The minimum went up in 2019 because SEBI wanted fewer small investors inside the risk, not because the strategies got better.