Mutual Fund Selection Advice

Mutual Fund Selection Advice Spent a while going through the trailing return data for large cap, mid cap, and small cap funds, cross-checking rankings across 3, 5, and 10 years, and then digging into who's actually managing each one. Sharing the reasoning to get some feedback. The filter I used was simple: ignore anything that only looks good over 1 year or 6 months, since that's usually just a lucky sector bet. What actually matters is whether a fund stays near the top of its category across 3, 5, *and* 10 years, whether it's still small enough to be nimble (a fund that's grown to ₹80,000+ Cr in AUM starts behaving like an index fund whether it wants to or not), and whether the person currently managing it is the same person who built that track record, or someone new who just inherited a good number. # Large Cap: Invesco India Large Cap Fund This one stood out because it was ranked 2nd, 4th, and 4th out of the category over 3, 5, and 10 years respectively, which is about as consistent as it gets in the large cap space. What really tipped it over other large cap options for me though was the size. It's sitting at just ₹2,021 Cr in AUM, which is tiny compared to giants like ICICI Pru (₹80,206 Cr) or Nippon (₹54,134 Cr). A fund that small can still take real positions in mid-sized large caps and actually move the needle, instead of just hugging the index because it's too big to do anything else. The expense ratio is 2.19%, which isn't the cheapest in the category but is fair given the consistency. The manager, Hiten Jain, has a BE, CFA, and an MBA in Finance, and came up through CRISIL and Dunia Finance before this. Only caveat worth flagging is that he's been on this specific fund since December 2023, so some of that strong 3-year number was built before his time. Not a dealbreaker, just something to watch over the next year or two. # Mid Cap: Invesco India Midcap Fund Honestly this was the easiest pick of the three. It ranked 2nd, 2nd, and 1st across 3, 5, and 10 years, and it actually gets better the longer you look, which usually means the outperformance comes from a repeatable process rather than a hot streak. At ₹15,905 Cr AUM it's grown but hasn't ballooned the way some peers have. The manager, Aditya Khemani, has a B.Com (Hons) and a PGDM from IIM Lucknow, and spent 14+ years doing equity research at places like Motilal Oswal, HSBC AMC, SBI Mutual Fund, ICICI Prudential AMC, and Morgan Stanley before landing here. That's a genuinely strong research background, and it shows up in how consistent the fund's rankings are. Expense ratio is 1.88%, reasonable for the category. # Small Cap: DSP Small Cap Fund This is the one where the numbers alone wouldn't have been enough to convince me, but the manager tipped it. On rank alone it's solid but not spectacular: 7th, 6th, and 7th over 3, 5, and 10 years. What makes it worth picking over funds with flashier rankings is that Vinit Sambre has been running this exact fund since June 2010. That's over 15 years on one mandate, which is rare in this industry, and it means the entire long-term record actually belongs to him rather than someone who left two years ago. He's a Chartered Accountant, won the Business Standard Fund Manager of the Year award, and is now Head of Equity at DSP. The trade-off is size: at ₹21,659 Cr it's one of the larger small cap funds around, and small caps are exactly where fund size can start to hurt returns because the stocks are less liquid. Smaller funds like Union Small Cap (₹2,667 Cr) have way more room to run. But given how much small cap performance depends on the manager's individual stock-picking skill, I'd rather back someone with 15 years of proven judgment on this exact mandate than chase a smaller fund with a manager who's only been in the seat for a year or two. # TL;DR All three funds cleared the same bar: consistent top rankings across 3, 5, and 10 years (not just a good recent run), a size that isn't yet so large it kills future alpha, and a manager whose tenure and credentials you can actually verify. None of this guarantees future returns, obviously, but it's a much sturdier basis for picking a fund than just sorting by last year's returns.