Report Card: 5-year performance of India’s top 25 equity funds

An analysis of the 5-year performance of top 25 active equity funds in terms of AUM shows that 11 of them surpassed respective benchmarks for the five-year period ending in March 2024.

Noteworthy, among these top performers were SBI Contra Fund, Nippon India Small Cap Fund and Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund. These three funds have generated alpha of over 5%.

SBI Contra Fund which manages AUM of Rs.27,000 crore generated alpha of over 7% in the five-year period. The fund delivered a CAGR of 25% as against 18% CAGR of its benchmark.

Similarly, while Nippon India Small Cap Fund delivered alpha of close to 6%, Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund made an additional 5.60% for its investors in the five-year period ending in March 2024.

Additionally, several other funds demonstrated commendable performance. ICICI Prudential Value Discovery Fund, SBI Long Term Equity Fund and ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund secured alpha ranging from 4.59% to 2.19%.

Other outperforming schemes were HDFC Flexi Cap Fund (1.39%), SBI Small Cap Fund (1.35), Nippon India Large Cap Fund (1.06%), Nippon India Growth Fund (0.67%) and Nippon India Multi Cap Fund (0.36%).

India’s largest MF scheme – HDFC Mid Cap Opportunities Fund that manages AUM of Rs.62,000 crore performed in line with its benchmark with marginal underperformance of 37 bps.

The next two largest schemes - Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund and ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund, which manage Rs.61,000 crore and Rs.54,000 crore, respectively outperformed their respective benchmarks in five-year period. 

However, not all funds fared equally well. Among the top three underperformers were Axis ELSS Tax Saver Fund, Axis Midcap Fund, and UTI Flexi Cap Fund.

Please note that we have considered only regular plans for this analysis.

Now, let us look at the performance of the top 25 actively managed schemes based on their AUM. Outperformers market in yellow: