Put three schemes side by side.

A higher NAV does not mean a scheme is expensive

This is the most common misreading of the table above, so it is worth being plain about. Net asset value is the value of one unit. A scheme with a NAV of ₹450 is not dearer than one at ₹15 — you simply receive fewer units for the same money, each worth more. ₹10,000 buys 22.2 units of the first and 666.7 of the second, and both are ₹10,000.

What NAV reflects is mostly how long the scheme has existed and what has happened since. It is not a price tag, not a discount, and not a measure of whether a scheme is doing well. Two schemes holding identical portfolios can have very different NAVs.

The figures that do tell you something — returns over standard periods against the scheme's benchmark, expense ratio, portfolio holdings, the risk-o-meter — are published by each AMC in its own scheme documents and monthly factsheet. Those are the authoritative source, and they are free to read.

Where "what it must hold" comes from

Every scheme sits in a category, and SEBI decides what a scheme in that category is allowed to own. A Large Cap Fund must keep at least 80% of its money in the hundred biggest listed companies. A Liquid Fund may hold nothing maturing more than 91 days out. Those are not house views or preferences — they are conditions of being called that at all, and they shape the outcome far more than anything else on this page.

The wording in that row is our plain-English restatement of SEBI's scheme categorisation circular of 26 February 2026, which replaced the 2017 framework and gave existing schemes six months to align. It is a summary for reading, not a quotation, and the circular itself governs. Where a scheme's category is not one of the standard ones, the row says so rather than guessing.

Tax treatment is the position as at 14 September 2026. Where a category can sit either side of the equity threshold — balanced hybrids, dynamic asset allocation, multi asset — we say the treatment is unsettled rather than picking the likelier answer, because it turns on what the scheme actually held, not on its name.

Why there are no returns on this page

We are an AMFI registered mutual fund distributor, not a SEBI registered investment adviser. A distributor may not publish its own performance comparisons of named schemes without the prior written approval of each fund house concerned, and we do not hold those approvals. So this page stops where our permissions stop.

It is also the honest place to stop. A returns column invites you to pick the biggest number, and the biggest number over the last three years is not a reason to buy anything. Which category suits the money, how long it is being left, and what happens if it falls by a third — those questions come first, and none of them is answered by a table.