The stocks Indian mutual funds own most: August 2026

The number

On 31 August 2026, ICICI Bank was held by 336 of 587 equity schemes, with ₹1,64,123 crore of their money in it. No other stock was in as many portfolios, and none was as large a position.

The figures come from the monthly portfolio disclosures the AMCs publish. We read them for every scheme in SEBI's equity categories (large cap through sectoral and thematic), one row per scheme, because a fund's Direct and Regular plans hold the same portfolio. Index funds, ETFs, hybrids and fund-of-funds are not included. A rupee value is the holding's weight times the scheme's net assets on the disclosure date.

Between them, the 587 schemes had ₹39.05 lakh crore of net assets and ₹37.18 lakh crore invested in shares.

Held by the most schemes

The average weight is among the schemes that hold the stock, not across all 587.

Four of the ten are banks. Shriram Finance (208 schemes), Kotak Mahindra Bank (200) and InterGlobe Aviation (200) come next.

By value, the order changes

Rank by rupees instead of by count and Axis Bank moves up to third, at ₹77,930 crore. It is held by fewer schemes than Bharti Airtel, Eternal or SBI, but in larger amounts. Kotak Mahindra Bank enters the top ten by value (₹55,226 crore) although it is twelfth by count.

The ten largest positions by value are ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel, SBI, Reliance, Eternal, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Larsen & Toubro and Infosys. Together they account for 21.6% of the ₹36.89 lakh crore the schemes held in Indian shares.

The concentration fades quickly after that:

• the top 25 companies hold 32.6% of that money
• the top 100 hold 60.1%
• the top 250 hold 83.1%

The schemes held 1,131 Indian securities in all, and only 69 of them were held by more than 100 schemes.

Why the same names keep appearing

A large-cap fund has to keep most of its money in the 100 largest listed companies, and a flexi-cap or ELSS fund is usually measured against an index made of them. Leaving out ICICI Bank or HDFC Bank means betting that two of the market's largest companies will do worse than the index. So a stock's appearance in 300 portfolios says as much about benchmarks as it does about conviction.

The weights tell you more about conviction. One scheme held 17.94% of its portfolio in ICICI Bank and another held 20.73% in Bharti Airtel. Those are Taurus Banking & Financial Services Fund and Franklin India Technology Fund, both sector funds, not diversified ones.

What this does not tell you

It is one month. This is the 31 August 2026 disclosure. We do not have an earlier month to compare it with, so nothing here says what funds bought or sold.

It leaves out passive money. Index funds and ETFs hold these same large companies in large amounts and are not counted here, so the rupee totals understate how much fund money is in them.

Popular is not the same as good. A widely held stock is a fact about other people's positions. It says nothing about future returns, and this is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stock or fund.

Where to go from here

The stocks page ranks every company funds hold and lists who holds each one: ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank are good places to start.

For the banks in particular, see how much equity fund money sits in banks. For the other end of the list, see the stocks only a few funds own. And how to read a factsheet explains where a fund's own top-ten list comes from.

For the schemes the money sits in, see the largest equity funds by AUM.