Pharma and healthcare funds in June 2026: up 10% this year

A sector going the other way

On Thursday, 18 June 2026, the median pharma and healthcare fund was up 10.03% for the year. The Nifty 50 was down 7.57% on price over the same months, and the median flexi-cap fund down 1.66%.

The sector index has done the same. The Nifty Pharma closed at 24,282.20, up 7.29% for 2026 on price and 2.45% below the record it set on 21 May, 24,890.90. Seven of the 18 funds closed at a record NAV on 18 June, and 12 were within 1% of one.

The group here is the actively managed sector funds with "pharma" or "health" in their names: 18 funds, the youngest launched in December 2025. All figures are for the Direct plan, Growth option, from daily NAVs to 18 June 2026. Returns under a year are absolute; a year or more, annualised.

The spread, against two indices

The index estimates add NSE's daily dividend yield to the price index, since we don't hold the official total return series.

Here, the longer the window, the more funds beat the index. Over one year, fewer than half did. Over five, all eight did. The four funds with ten years of history returned 14.79% to 16.34% a year, against an estimated 9.31% for the Nifty Pharma. The index's ten-year figure is held down by a long flat stretch: it closed at 13,831.15 on 8 April 2015 and did not close above that level again until 10 May 2021.

Fund by fund

Among the younger funds, HDFC Pharma and Healthcare had the best one-year return of all, 21.66%, followed by Kotak Healthcare at 19.46% and WhiteOak Capital Pharma and Healthcare at 18.10%. Baroda BNP Paribas Health and Wellness, not yet two years old, returned the least, 1.68%.

ICICI Prudential Healthcare has the best three-year return and one of the weakest one-year returns. A fund's place depends heavily on the window.

The passive version tracks closely: ICICI Prudential Nifty Pharma Index returned 12.81% over one year and 22.34% a year over three.

Less bumpy than the market

Sector funds are usually expected to swing more than diversified ones. Over the last three years these did not. The nine funds with a three-year record had a median annualised volatility of 13.39%, against 14.08% for flexi-cap funds.

A rich index

The Nifty Pharma's P/E closed at 37.11 on 18 June. Since 31 March 2021, when NSE moved to consolidated earnings, its median has been 33.39 and its range 27.73 to 39.63. Only 161 of 1,286 trading days in that period closed higher.

What this does not tell you

One sector, one cycle. Three years of strong returns from a single sector say nothing about the next three. The Nifty Pharma went six years, from April 2015 to May 2021, without a new high.

The benchmark is our estimate. NSE's official total return index can differ from ours by a few tenths of a point a year.

Small samples. Nine funds have three-year records and four have ten. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell any fund.

Where to go from here

The sectoral and thematic fund page lists every sector fund, and sectoral and thematic funds covers the risks of a one-sector holding.

For the index's valuation earlier this year, see the Nifty Pharma P/E in April. For the opposite sector story, see technology fund returns in May, and for the style funds this week, value and contra fund returns.