Specialised investment funds so far: 33 strategies

The number

Specialised investment funds (SIFs) are a year old. On 30 September 2026, 17 SIF brands were running 33 strategies, sold as 122 plan and option variants with a published NAV.

A SIF is run by a mutual fund house but sits in a separate category with a ₹10 lakh minimum investment. What sets it apart is the short side: it can bet against stocks through derivatives, within limits, which an ordinary mutual fund cannot. AMFI publishes SIF NAVs separately from mutual fund NAVs, and every figure here is computed from that daily series on our SIF page.

Five strategies, mostly two

Equity and hybrid long-short account for two-thirds. "Ex-Top 100" means the long book excludes the 100 largest companies, so it is a mid- and small-cap strategy.

qsif runs the most, five strategies and the only sector-rotation one. iSIF runs four, Apex and DynaSIF three each, and Magnum, Titanium, Altiva, Arudha and WSIF two each. Eight brands run one.

The launches came steadily. The first NAV was qsif's Equity Long-Short Fund on 8 October 2025, followed within the month by hybrid funds from qsif, Altiva and Magnum. The newest are Apex's two equity strategies, from 1 September 2026, and Magnum's Ex-Top 100 fund from 2 September.

The oldest strategies so far

No SIF has a full year of history, so the returns below are absolute, not annualised, from each fund's first NAV to 30 September 2026, on the Direct Growth plan:

Volatility is the annualised standard deviation of daily returns. The spread is wide even within one strategy type: among these four hybrid funds, volatility ranges from 3.31% to 10.26%.

How they did in a falling month

September was the first real test. The Nifty 50 fell 6.1% over the month. Over the month to 30 September, 25 of the 33 strategies lost money, seven gained and one was flat.

• Equity long-short: all 11 fell. The median fall was 3.99%, from −1.90% (Apex) to −6.76% (Diviniti). Diviniti was the only SIF to fall more than the index.
• Hybrid long-short: the median was −0.09%. Five of the 11 gained, though all but one gain was under 1%.
• qsif's two outliers: qsif Hybrid Long-Short rose 16.91% in the month and qsif Active Asset Allocator rose 13.63%. Most of it came early: on 4 September the two NAVs rose 6.33% and 5.34% in a single day, and kept climbing to mid-month.

The NAVs alone do not say what caused the jump, and SIF portfolios are not in our data.

The most defensive funds were the newer hybrids. Arudha, RedHex, Prism, Apex and Infinity Hybrid Long-Short have had worst falls of 0.23% to 0.56% since they began, with volatility of 1.18% to 3.09%.

What this does not tell you

Under a year is not a record. The oldest SIF has 242 trading days of NAVs, the newest 20. One good or bad month moves these numbers a lot.

The start dates differ. A fund that began in October 2025 and one that began in March 2026 have lived through different markets, so their since-start returns are not comparable with each other.

A short book is not a guarantee. Most SIFs fell less than the index in September, but 25 of 33 still fell, and a short position loses money when the market rises.

None of this is a recommendation. It describes what these funds have done, not what they will do.

Where to go from here

The SIF page lists every strategy with its returns, worst fall and NAV chart. The guide to AIFs vs mutual funds places SIFs between the two. For September's market backdrop, see who bought and sold in September, and for this month's mutual fund launches, the new fund offers of September 2026.