Three findings that change how you should read any fund's numbers, and the catch hiding in every “top funds” list, including ours.
When you check changes the answer.
Over the last five years the Nifty 50 index fund earned 5.8% a year. That period began in Oct 2021, with the market close to a record high: an unlucky starting point.
Across all 459 five-year periods since 2013 (one per week), the typical one earned 13.3%. The latest was worse than 96% of them.
So one return figure on an advert tells you very little. Always ask: measured from when?
Yearly return of every 5-year period, UTI Nifty 50 Index (Direct). Orange holds the most recent one.
Small caps earned the most, and fell the furthest.
Averages by type of fund, Direct plans, since 2013. Every type dropped between −35% and −42% at some point. No kind of equity fund protects you from a crash.
| Type of fund | Funds | Typical 5-year return | Average worst fall | SIP yearly return | Periods beating Nifty 50* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Index fund | 2 | 13.3% | −38.4% | 10.5% | – |
| Large cap | 5 | 15.3% | −37.1% | 12.3% | 71% |
| Flexi cap | 5 | 15.8% | −36.0% | 13.7% | 81% |
| Mid cap | 4 | 19.1% | −35.0% | 18.3% | 94% |
| Small cap | 5 | 21.5% | −42.5% | 18.8% | 99% |
*Compared with UTI Nifty 50 Index, which holds India's 50 biggest companies. For mid- and small-cap funds this mostly shows that smaller companies did better than big ones after 2013, not that their managers were more skilled.
The catch: this site only studies winners.
Look up a fund here and active managers often seem to beat the index. That conclusion is wrong, and why is the most useful lesson on this site.
71%
of 5-year periods in which our 5 popular large-cap funds beat the Nifty 50 index fund.
84%
of all Indian large-cap funds did worse than their benchmark over the 5 years to December 2025 (76% over 10 years).
We picked today's famous funds.
They're famous because they did well. Judging fund managers by them is like judging cricket coaching by studying only players who made the Indian team. That's selection bias.
Losers disappear from the data.
Funds that did badly get merged or shut down, and their records vanish. Over ten years, 27% of Indian funds didn't survive. That's survivorship bias.
The honest takeaway: picking a winning fund is far easier in hindsight than in advance. The plan you choose and the fee you pay are the parts you control.
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices, SPIVA India Year-End 2025 Scorecard. The two figures measure slightly different things (different benchmarks and periods), but they point in opposite directions.
How this was made
Daily NAVs for 21 funds, both plans, from mfapi.in (which republishes AMFI data). Cleaned and analysed in Python with pandas and DuckDB (SQL), then built into this site with Next.js, Framer Motion and ECharts.
Everything starts in January 2013, when Direct plans were introduced, so both plans are compared over the same years. Rolling returns use every weekly start date. Returns ignore taxes and exit loads. For learning only, not investment advice.