Fund houses ranked: equity funds vs their categories

The question

Is there such a thing as a good fund house, or only good funds? One way to look is to take every actively managed equity fund, compare it with the other funds in its own category, and then see which houses keep turning up above the middle.

How we measured it

• The funds: 263 actively managed equity funds, Direct-plan Growth, with at least three years of NAV history to 1 October 2026, in eleven diversified categories: large cap, mid cap, small cap, flexi cap, multi cap, large and mid cap, focused, ELSS, value, contra and dividend yield. Sectoral and thematic funds are left out, because their categories mix unrelated themes.
• The yardstick: each fund's three-year annualised return against the median of its own category.
• The houses: the 29 fund houses with at least five such funds. Each fund counts once, whatever its size.

The scorecard

"Median gap" is the middle of a house's funds' differences from their category medians: +6.18 means Motilal Oswal's typical fund beat its category's middle fund by about six points a year. The one-year column counts funds above their category's one-year median, for the same funds.

What the scorecard says

The leaders are mostly mid-sized and smaller houses. Motilal Oswal and WhiteOak Capital had every eligible fund above the middle of its category. HSBC had eight of nine, Invesco and quant seven of nine, ITI seven of eight.

The giants sit in the middle or below. The five largest houses by assets, per our April–June AUM table, are SBI, ICICI Prudential, HDFC, Nippon India and Kotak Mahindra. ICICI Prudential did best of them, seven of ten above the median. HDFC had four of ten and SBI two of ten.

At the bottom, a few houses were behind almost everywhere. Franklin Templeton had none of nine funds above its category median over three years, and none over one year. UTI had two of nine over three years and none over one.

The last year mostly agreed with the last three. All seven houses with the widest three-year lead also had a positive one-year gap, and all five at the bottom had a negative one. That is partly built in: the last year is a third of the three-year window. A few houses diverged. ICICI Prudential had seven of ten funds ahead over three years but only three over one; Aditya Birla Sun Life had four of ten ahead over three years and eight over one.

Why this is a starting point, not a verdict

• Style moves in and out of favour. A house with a value or mid-cap lean can lead for three years and trail for the next three. Three years to October 2026 is one market phase.
• Equal weights hide where the money is. One large flagship fund matters more to most investors than three small ones, but each counts once here.
• Managers move. A fund's three-year record may belong to someone who has left. Each fund page lists the current managers from the scheme's own documents.
• Costs are already in. These are Direct-plan returns after expenses, so a house's lower fees show up as part of its gap.

Where to go from here

• Every fund house has a page listing its schemes and assets; start from the fund house list.
• To compare individual funds within a category, use the screener and sort by three-year return.
• For the category picture behind this, see our October equity category scorecard.

All returns are Direct-plan Growth NAVs to 1 October 2026. This is a description of past returns, not a recommendation of any fund or fund house.