Multi-cap funds: young category, wide gaps, October 2026

The number

The median multi-cap fund returned 4.28% over the year to 1 October 2026, with 10 of 32 funds in negative territory. Over three years the median was 13.28% a year, behind only mid-cap and small-cap funds among the diversified equity categories.

The category is young. Only 22 of its 33 funds have a three-year record, 9 have five years and just 5 have ten. SEBI requires a multi-cap fund to keep at least 25% each in large, mid and small caps, and most of today's schemes launched after that rule, so the long-run numbers describe a handful of funds.

All figures are for the Direct plan, Growth option, computed from daily NAVs to 1 October 2026. Returns of a year or more are compounded annual rates.

The spread, period by period

The one-year gap between best and worst is 21 points. Over three years it is 9.3 points a year.

Best and worst over three years

The best one-year returns come from newer funds with no three-year record: Groww Multicap (16.84%), TrustMF Multi Cap (14.94%) and then ITI Multi Cap (11.71%), which does have a three-year number of 16.05%.

The few with five years

Only nine funds can show five years. Kotak Multi Cap leads at 15.87% a year, followed by Nippon India Multi Cap (15.43%) and Mahindra Manulife Multi Cap (14.93%). Nippon India is an instructive case: second over five years, but -3.54% over the past year and 11.70% over three.

Risk

The median three-year volatility was 14.92% and the median worst fall over three years was 19.8%. The deepest fall was Quant Multi Cap at 25.3%, which has the highest volatility of any fund with a three-year record (17.0%) for the second-lowest return (9.07% a year). The shallowest was SBI MultiCap at 15.1%.

Reading this

A multi-cap fund is supposed to hold a spread of company sizes so that the investor does not have to choose. The numbers show that fund managers still have to choose within that spread: the three-year gap between Axis Multicap and Tata Multicap is more than nine points a year, which is the difference between doubling money in about four years and in about eight.

For earlier readings of this category see the May update, and for the neighbouring categories large & mid-cap funds and small-cap funds.

Returns are historical and computed from NAVs; they are not a forecast. Past returns do not indicate future performance.