Investors have warmed up to exchange traded funds (ETF). Assets under management (AUM) in all ETF excluding gold ETF went up to Rs 277,570 crore as on April 30, 2021 from Rs 77,501 crore as on April 30, 2018 – registering growth at 53 percent per year, according to Association of Mutual Funds in India. But what drives ETFs, despite retail investors preferring index funds? The key push has come from large and institutional investors. The Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has been investing some of its corpus in ETFs, like those from SBI and UTI. The government has also used the ETF route to raise loan funds for central public sector enterprises and also to achieve the disinvestment target.