mumbai thirtythreeyearold priya prakash an executive at a financial services firm had some surplus funds to invest on which she wanted reasonable returns the advice she received from family members is that she should invest them in a fixed deposit scheme of a company where the yields were more and not a bank the number of people like prakash are growing with companies such as shriram transport finance mahindra and mahindra financial services and dewan housing finance offering 200300 basis points more than what banks provide for three or fiveyear deposits company deposit applicants have trebled the intent was to look for higher returns i was advised to invest money in these company fixed deposits says prakash who is comfortable with the 125 that she is getting from the company fd it was mainly the interest factor that got me to invest in company fds i was looking for higher returns and a strong background of the company company fixed deposits that used to be a rage in the late 90s lost their charm as businesses begin to access funds easily from the banking system also instances of fraud forced regulators to come up with tough guidelines and link it to their net worth but high inflation in negative real returns from bank deposits are making company deposits attractive again so much is the attraction that when investors are pulling out funds from mutual funds and bank deposits are growing at neardecade lows the number of depositors for mahindra finance rose 60 yearonyear to 200000 depositors hdfcs deposits grew 37 to rs 49763 crore in december 2012 from 36293 crore a year earlier dewan housing finances deposits nearly trebled to rs 1900 crore in march from 760 crore a year earlier this is in contrast to banks where deposits grew 15 yoy the interest for good corporate fds has increased said v ravi cfo mahindra finance we get 400450 forms every day from 100150 last year there are three factors why these are popular stable avenue of income safety of the investment due to the high reputation of the corporates and the interest rate arbitrage that has come down in debt schemes owing to revision in dividend distribution for mutual funds he added bestrated fixed deposits from mahindra and mahindra finance offer 122 per annum and fixed deposits issued by jaypee group offer rates as high as 1507 on a threeyear fd on a cumulative basis against this banks such as sbi offer 875 deposits of similar tenors and private banks like hdfc bank are offering anywhere between 8 and 875 shriram transport finance fds offer up to 1194 while dewan housing finance offer 1198 on an annualised basis for threeyear deposits in terms of rates they are far more attractive than bank fds the plain vanilla bluechip company fds are not very attractive but the ones offered by the real estate companies are being taken up by investors who have enough risk appetite for ultra hnis they know