By Business India Editorial

To support and aid underprivileged people suffering from cancer, HDFC Asset Management Company partnered with Indian Cancer Society (ICS) established in 1951, as India’s first voluntary, non-profit, National Organisation for Awareness, Detection, Cure and Survivorship of those affected with Cancer.

In addition to voluntary contribution, HDFC AMC leveraged on its investment expertise and launched HDFC Debt Fund for Cancer Cure in 2011, a first of its kind, mutual fund offering in India, dedicated to philanthropy. The idea of pooling investor/donor funds through a mutual fund structure was pioneered by the company through a three-year close-ended fund.

Under this fund, the subscription the AMC takes from investors is invested and returns thereof, in the form of dividends are donated to ICS. Donation of income to ICS is eligible for deduction U/S 80G of Income Tax Act, 1961. The principal raised is returned to the investors on maturity. HDFC AMC does not levy any investment and management fees to manage the fund for cancer cure.

Cancer in children constitutes 5.5 per cent of total cancer cases in India according to the Indian Council for Medical Research. This percentage has more than doubled from 2.5 per cent ten years ago. A disturbing reality, however, is that only around one in 10 of the childhood cancer cases receives complete therapy. As a consequence, while cure rates for common childhood cancers like lymphoma and leukaemia are over 80 per cent in the developed world, in India, they have remained abysmally low at around 30 per cent. More than 80 per cent of all childhood cancer cases occur in low- and middle-income countries.

The idea behind launching a cancer-dedicated fund was to create a corpus, invest and generate returns so as to provide financial assistance to ICS. The key element of the product has been its close-ended nature with a lock-in of three years thereby providing predictable and sustainable cash flows over the life of the product. With predictable cash flows, the ICS has been able to develop an efficient delivery structure to carry out its efforts for this cause. ICS has 16 affiliated hospitals to help cancer patients benefit from this programme. The needy patients through these affiliated hospitals are identified after thorough due diligence by a team of doctors and finally approved by Governing Advisory Council. The cancer patients identified have an annual income of less than Rs2 lakh. The maximum amount sanctioned per patient at Rs4 lakh invariably covers the entire cost of treatment in most cases and this helps the patient and the hospital start the treatment early.