Top Mutual Funds

What are the top mutual funds in India?

There are different ways to answer this question. One way to look at it is to see the fund houses that are most popular in terms of attracting investments. Going by this criteria, the best fund houses would be (as of September 2012):

(listed in order)

HDFC Mutual fund

Reliance Mutual fund

ICICI Prudential Mutual fund

Birla Sun life Mutual fund

UTI Mutual fund

SBI Mutual fund

Franklin Templeton Mutual fund

Kotak Mahindra Mutual fund

DSP Blackrock Mutual fund

IDFC Mutual fund

These fund houses are the top ten fund houses in terms of assets under management as of the date above.

However, a different way to look at the list of top mutual funds is to consider which fund houses have the most well-rated funds in offering. According to Money Life magazine’s 2012 research, these fund houses have been listed:

HDFC Mutual fund

UTI Mutual fund

Reliance Mutual fund

Birla sun life mutual fund

Franklin Templeton mutual fund

Tata Mutual fund

ICICI Prudential mutual fund

SBI Mutual fund

IDFC Mutual fund

DSP Blackrock mutual fund

Although there are several commonalities between the two lists, one can see that there are new entrants in the second list and ordering is quite different (except at the top!)

What does this tell us? One thing is that a fund house might be the top mutual fund in terms of gathering assets, but might lag in performance. The second, and more important thing is that when it comes to investment decision making, it is important that we choose based on performance and not on popularity. What works for one set of investors or the majority of investors might not work for us.