Mutual Funds: 5 best focused funds managed to beat the benchmark index in the past 5 years

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mutual fund scheme, investors tend to view the historical returns and evaluate them on that basis. Here, we list out the top performing focused mutual funds which have managed to beat the benchmark index in the past 5 years. A benchmark index is a yardstick against which the performance of a mutual fund can be measured.

For instance, in the case of focused mutual funds, the benchmark index is either BSE 500 Total Return Index or NIFTY 500 Total Return Index. Let us first understand what exactly are focused mutual funds ALSO READ | Individual investors' share in mutual fund AUM surges 44% in a year; equity schemes find more takers, shows AMFI data These are mutual fund schemes, which are focused on the number of stocks with at least 65 percent in equity and equity related instruments. The maximum number of stocks in these schemes are 30, as per the Sebi’s categorisation of mutual fund schemes.

There are 28 focused mutual funds with total assets under management (AUM) of ₹1.33 lakh crore, shows the AMFI data as on April 30, 2024. Total number of folios in this category stands at 50.87 lakh. As one can see in the table below, the highest five-year-return of 23.15 percent was delivered by Quant Focused Fund followed by 360 One Focused Equity Fund.

Other mutual fund schemes which managed to beat the benchmark index were ICICI Prudential Focused Equity Fund, HDFC Focused 30 Fund and Franklin India Focused Equity Fund. (Source: AMFI; Returns as on May 17, 2024) It is important to mention here that those invested in other schemes via systematic investment plans (SIPs) are not recommended to transfer their funds to a high performing scheme. This strategy usually does not pay off in the long run, a recently-released Motilal Oswal