JioBlackRock’s Flexi Cap NFO raises Rs 1,500 crore, invests heavily in large-cap leaders in Oct

JioBlackRock, one of India’s youngest and most closely watched mutual fund ventures, has taken its first major step into active management. After spending the early months of the year building a suite of passive index products, the fund house launched the JioBlackRock Flexi Cap Fund in September. The New Fund Offer (NFO), which opened on September 23, 2025, and closed on October 7, 2025, has now revealed a noteworthy pattern: strong investor appetite, rapid deployment of capital, and a wide-ranging portfolio built in record time.

Strong demand

The new fund attracted around Rs 1,500 crore, a sizeable inflow for a debut. Industry observers had expected interest due to the Jio-BlackRock partnership’s brand power, but the magnitude still surprised many. The company positioned the scheme as an actively-managed vehicle guided by a hybrid human–AI decision-making system — a positioning rarely seen in India’s mutual fund industry.

Large and fully deployed portfolio

What makes JioBlackRock’s entry truly stand out is how quickly the fund has taken positions. Instead of easing into the market, the scheme has deployed almost the entire corpus and already holds 142 stocks. This level of diversification is atypical for a newly launched flexi-cap fund.

Financials dominate the early allocations at 30.9%, with Industrials and Technology following. This approach contrasts sharply with category averages: most flexi-cap funds maintain 4–5% in cash, while some popular names, such as Parag Parikh Flexi Cap and HDFC Flexi Cap, hold double-digit cash buffers.

Large-cap bias, familiar leaders

The first portfolio snapshot confirms a clear large-cap tilt. HDFC Bank (8.9%) and ICICI Bank (5.4%) headline the list of top holdings, followed by Reliance Industries, Infosys, State Bank of India, and L&T. These companies, together representing India’s most influential corporate groups, form the bedrock of the portfolio.

Overall, the scheme has invested 65% in large caps, 21% in mid caps, and the remainder in small caps — a slightly more conservative distribution than the flexi-cap category average.

Among the mid- and small-cap exposures, Polycab India, Fortis Healthcare, JK Cement, Max Financial Services, and Vishal Mega Mart stand out as the highest-weighted positions.

Top 10 holdings

Company    Net asset (%)
HDFC Bank    8.9
ICICI Bank    5.4
Reliance Industries    5.2
Infosys    4.1
State Bank of India    3.4
Larsen & Toubro    3.2
Tata Consultancy Services    2.7
Bharti Airtel    2.4
HCL Technologies    2.3
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone    2

Source: Value Research

AI-steered stock picking

Under the hood, the fund draws heavily on BlackRock’s Aladdin system, which crunches large datasets — from corporate numbers to sentiment indicators — to identify potential winners. Early results indicate that this model-driven process is generating differentiated outcomes.
Five stocks in the portfolio are not held by any other flexi-cap fund as of October 31, 2025, including Allcargo Logistics, Dodla Dairy, Chambal Fertilisers, Elecon Engineering, and GMM Pfaudler. Three more counters — such as Abbott India and Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC — appear in only a handful of peer portfolios.

Fund review

Maneesh Taneja, Chief Distribution Officer at ZFunds, said the Jio BlackRock Flexi Cap Fund has generated major market interest, collecting Rs 1,500 crore in its NFO, largely because it is the joint venture’s first actively managed equity fund and uses a distinctive “AI + human” investment model. He noted that while Jio BlackRock previously focused on passive index funds, this scheme marks a strategic shift toward active stock selection with full flexibility across large-, mid-, and small-cap segments.

Taneja explained that the fund is built on BlackRock’s Systematic Active Equity (SAE) framework, where the Aladdin AI engine scans real-time data — including consumer behaviour, macro trends and spending patterns — and ranks over 700 Indian stocks. Human fund managers then validate these signals based on fundamentals and governance, and only stocks cleared by both systems enter the portfolio.

He emphasised the fund’s flexible structure, 65-100% equity, up to 35% debt and 10% REITs/InvITs,  along with low minimum investments, no loads and a competitive expense ratio, making it attractive to retail investors.

Taneja added that while AI-driven models bring innovation, they also carry risks if signals misfire in sentiment-driven markets. Even so, he believes the fund represents a pivotal step for India’s mutual fund industry and could shape the future of AI-enabled investing.

The JioBlackRock Flexi Cap Fund’s first disclosure shows a strategy that is broad, fast-moving, and data-led. It balances predictable blue-chip exposure with pockets of uncommon, AI-identified stocks. Whether this high-speed, high-diversity approach converts into outperformance will be closely watched — not just by investors, but by competitors evaluating how technology may reshape India’s active fund landscape.