HOW WE ZEROED IN ON THE FUNDS

SOME FUNDS STAND OUT FOR THEIR CONSISTENT OUTPERFORMANCE COMPARED TO PEERS. HERE ARE THE 100 BEST-PERFORMING MUTUAL FUND SCHEMES IDENTIFIED BY BT & VALUE RESEARCH

- 

Universe and sources: Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi)-defined mutual fund categories were evaluated and funds were compared within the same category.

The universe includes all currently active open-ended schemes with a minimum three-year history (one-two years for debt funds). Net Asset Value (NAV), expense and portfolio data are from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI), scheme disclosures, Sebi filings, and asset management companies’ (AMCs’) factsheets. All returns are based on Direct Plan-Growth NAVs to standardise costs. Data cutoff: September 30, 2025 for performance and August 31, 2025 for portfolio data.

► Evaluation criteria: Rolling returns were taken (not point-to-point) to capture behaviour across market cycles. Returns are post-fee (embedded in NAV), pretax from an investor perspective.

Equity and hybrid funds: Monthly rolling returns over three-year and five-year windows.

Debt funds: Weekly rolling returns over one-and-a half-year and three-year windows.

Index funds tracking Sensex, Nifty 50 or Nifty Next 50 indices, with a minimum history of one-year are considered.

SCORING PILLARS

Performance & consistency — Fund return vs category peers, and persistence across cycles.

Risk and drawdown — Volatility, absolute losses and underperformance over a risk-free guaranteed investment.

Costs and capacity — Expense ratio percentile, and assets under management (AUM) screens to measure stability/impact.

Team and process — Manager tenure & stability, and governance flags.

► Quality controls: We apply survivorship screens, exclude strategy/share-class duplicates, cap outlier influence, and run manual audits on any score.