This article highlights the best-performing equity and hybrid funds, based on their historical performance compared to the Nifty 50 index.

Disclaimer: The Fund names in this article are not recommendations to buy/hold/sell. Mutual funds are subject to market risks. Do not invest real money without adequate research.

📚 Table of Contents

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• What is the concept of relative risk vs. return performance of mutual funds against the market benchmark?
• Which mutual funds have higher returns at lower risk vs the broad market?
• What should investors do with this data?

The ultimate investment goal for mutual fund investors is high returns at low risk. The stock market always offers opportunities to pick up funds that have the potential to give stable returns with lower fluctuations.

Identifying funds that have done well in the past vs. the Nifty 50 index fund can be tricky since getting and analysing the data might be tricky.

This article shows a list of mutual funds based on their historical returns.

What is the concept of relative risk vs. return performance of mutual funds against the market benchmark?

If we split the list of all equity mutual funds then we will end up with four categories:

• funds that give better returns than the Nifty 50 index fund but with lower risk which are ideal for any investor
• funds that give better returns than the Nifty 50 index fund but with higher risk which are great for investors with high risk tolerance
• funds that give lower returns than the Nifty 50 index fund but with lower risk which are good for debt funds
• funds that give lower returns than the Nifty 50 index fund but with higher risk which is a terrible place to be for an equity fund

Incidentally, users of the free Arthgyaan mutual fund portfolio review service will get the above chart created for all funds in their portfolio.

In this article, we will look at the latest list of equity mutual funds, including index funds tracking indices other than the Nifty 50, to check if they are in the best category of higher returns and lower risk.

In the analysis below, we have chosen equity and hybrid mutual funds with higher returns at lower risk using the last three years of market data from AMFI for the period ending 06-Jun-2025. The funds that have fallen the most from their 52-week high levels are presented first.

Which mutual funds have higher returns at lower risk vs the broad market?

Note: This chart represents point-to-point data. The funds in the list will change over time as the future performance of any particular fund is random and cannot be predicted in advance.

Equity: Sectoral or Thematic

Fund	Change (%)	NAV (52w high)	Latest NAV
Tata Digital India	15.83	65.7465	55.3375
Aditya Birla Sun Life Digital India	13.74	220.9900	190.6200
ICICI Prudential Technology	12.04	249.9900	219.8800
Tata Ethical	11.88	493.1378	434.5704

Equity: Focused

Fund	Change (%)	NAV (52w high)	Latest NAV
Motilal Oswal Focused 25	14.63	59.9011	51.1373

Equity: Flexi Cap

Fund	Change (%)	NAV (52w high)	Latest NAV
Samco Flexi Cap	14.51	13.2300	11.3100
Shriram Flexi Cap	14.14	26.2302	22.5205

Equity: ELSS

Fund	Change (%)	NAV (52w high)	Latest NAV
Shriram ELSS Tax Saver	13.44	27.0346	23.4001

Equity: Multi Cap

Fund	Change (%)	NAV (52w high)	Latest NAV
Sundaram Multi Cap	11.78	101.0619	89.1584

Other: FoF Domestic

Fund	Change (%)	NAV (52w high)	Latest NAV
Axis Equity ETFs FOF	11.54	17.0468	15.0797

What should investors do with this data?

There are three key takeaways from this data:

1. Review existing funds: Investors should check if their current funds are on the list and evaluate their next steps, including consulting their advisor. Such funds should be shortlisted for future additional investment
2. Bottom fishing opportunities: Funds in the list might represent bottom-fishing opportunities since their performance has been stable vs. the market index
3. Introduce hybrid funds into the portfolio: This might be a good opportunity to move some portion of the portfolio to hybrid funds that have an allocation to both equity and debt with automated tax-free rebalancing